From this interesting documentary last month on Al Jazeera.
This is how they think they’ll win. 49 days left to prove them wrong.
The referendum is NEXT MONTH, everyone. NEXT MONTH.
We’re big fans of Kevin Bridges. Not only is he one of the finest comedians Scotland has produced in many years, it turns out the Glasgow comic is also a top fella. On seeing a tweet last month from the Maryhill food bank showing some perilously empty shelves, Kevin got straight in touch, asked how much money it would need to fill them and turned up with Tesco vouchers for the whole £1000.
We salute him wholeheartedly, and it was right and proper that the story was widely covered in the press, with the Scottish Sun (pictured above), Daily Record and STV News all reporting the generous gesture, and all of them also mentioning that Celtic star Kris Commons’ wife Lisa Hague had made much-needed contributions too.
There was something missing, though.
This man is still regularly invited on TV by both the BBC and STV as a serious pundit.
Were anyone to still be unsure of the fact that different rules of behaviour apply to Unionists and Yes supporters, we invite them to consider the evidence.
This is Andy Burnham, Labour’s shadow health secretary, earlier this week:
And here’s a press release from the Unite trade union in 2009, when Labour were in power and Mr Burnham actually was the Health Secretary:
We can only assume the No campaign and media are in a growing panic about the imminent TV showdown between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling or something. Even by the high previous standards of insanity from the UK side of the referendum debate, this week has seen something of a disintegration in sanity.
Apart from the usual flood of mad scare stories, we’ve had papers like the Scotsman, Daily Record and Press & Journal promoting a ludicrous poll of a couple of hundred hand-picked expats. We’ve had the Guardian’s Martin Kettle competing with the Mail’s Simon Heffer for the most embarrassingly moronic vision of a post-independence future yet committed to print. (This time, a Yes vote sparks a new civil war in Ireland.)
And then there’s this:
We did tell you this was coming:
The poll in question can actually be found on Daily Record sister site Scotland Now, so we’re not entirely sure why the Scotsman is plugging it for them. But if you’d like to see the hilariously loaded and leading questions that delivered the result in question, just pop back to this Wings Over Scotland piece from about three weeks ago.
To be honest, in the circumstances we’re amazed it was as low as 74%.
Readers have had a small handful of replies in response to our “Infrequently Asked Questions” post of last week. (Have you written to your MP/MSP yet? WHY NOT?)
They’ve mostly been pretty rubbish, as you’d probably expect. But while pondering them, a thought suddenly came to us out of the blue, in that irritating “Why on Earth didn’t I spot this before?” way that’s the curse of all writers.
It’s about the idea that the rUK would have to impose border controls – logically, including a 100-mile-long physical barrier from Gretna to Berwick patrolled 24/7 by armed guards – if an independent Scotland adopted a significantly different immigration policy to that of the remnant UK.
The notion has always been cobblers, for all sorts of reasons including the ludicrous cost such an undertaking would entail and how upset poor Rory Stewart would be, but if you think about it there’s an even more obvious one.
There’s been a small furore this week over fracking, and the possibility that the UK government could grant licences for drilling in some of Scotland’s most beautiful locations, including – astonishingly – Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.
But in fairness, we can’t say that we weren’t warned.
There’s a remarkable story on the BBC website today. Torn between the referendum campaign and the 2015 UK election campaign, Labour’s health spokesman Andy Burnham has finally admitted in public that yes, NHS England IS being privatised.
But it’s what he wants done about it that made us double-take.
Alert readers will of course remember a few short weeks ago in April, when “Better Together” attracted much great hoopla in the press for its relaunched, “more positive” campaign strategy which would dazzle Scots with the feelgood benefits of the Union.
We thought it’d be worth checking in and seeing how that was going.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
