Your defamatory lies really ought to stop.
In today’s edition, you allege in reference to me that:
This, as I’m sure your journalists are perfectly well aware, is absolutely untrue.
Is mine, of course. From last night’s Scotland Tonight, in case you missed it:
Particular kudos to STV for finding footage (it’s right at the start of this clip) of Clare Lally introducing and launching Johann Lamont’s Scottish Labour leadership bid in November 2011, even though the Daily Record said in August 2012 that she had “no previous political experience”. We expect someone will resign.
We spent much of yesterday evening trying to actually track down the “vicious barrage” of vile cybernat abuse that Labour and “Better Together” activist Clare Lally says she was subjected to after being revealed to be rather less of an “ordinary” member of the public than the No camp presented her as at its recent Glasgow rally, and which has received wall-to-wall media coverage.
As yet, we’ve drawn a blank. We’ve made repeated requests, some to people who’ve contacted us angrily claiming to be her friends or family members, for evidence of any abusive comments at all. All have been met with an abrupt outbreak of silence.
Scotland 2014 devoted almost its entire 30-minute show to the issue last night. To depict the terrible onslaught, the above tweets were all they could come up with. The entire affair, readers might feel, is starting to smell distinctly piscine.
It’s been a pretty bad-tempered day in the independence debate, as the No campaign drags everything down into the mud yet again in an attempt to hide their latest shame. Let’s end it on something beautiful.
If you missed it, today’s John Beattie show featuring Hamish Macdonell and myself:
Sorry we’ve deserted you today, readers. I’ve been dashing around the BBC Bath radio cupboard, the ITV West Country studio and BBC Broadcasting House in Bristol talking mainly about the Clare Lally business, which the No campaign is throwing everything at. You’re going to have a hard time avoiding my big stupid face on the telly tonight.
The three appearances were very different in nature. On BBC Radio Scotland I had a very civilised discussion with host John Beattie and fellow guest Hamish Macdonell (of various publications), where everyone got to say their piece without us interrupting each other, while at Broadcasting House for, I think, Scotland 2014, I got pretty aggressively grilled but in a perfectly proper and professional journalistic manner. No complaints there – pending, of course, what makes the edit.
The ITV gig for Scotland Tonight was something else.
The New Statesman has been doggedly ignoring all our polite requests to release the audio of its controversial interview with Alistair Darling for several days now, but today it very quietly released the full text of it on its website.
Where previously it had reported the “Better Together” leader as having made an “inaudible mumble” in response to a question about whether the SNP were guilty of “blood-and-soil nationalism”, apparently the mag had given its ears a good swabbing out with a cotton-bud and concluded that it HAD been able to hear him after all.
The Times has a front-page lead this morning on the “Better Together” rally held in Glasgow yesterday, at which the official lead campaign group debuted its new “No Thanks” slogan. The article makes an interesting claim:
Well, that all seems legit.
The Daily Record carries a story this evening about a man placing a £200,000 bet with William Hill on a No vote in the independence referendum.
And readers might be forgiven for finding it a bit familiar.
Our ever-attentive readers will already have noticed that since the weekend there’s been a new link on the centre column, called “CAMPAIGN MATERIALS”. Over the next 100 days it’s going to be key to getting our message out to the people of Scotland, and it’s your chance to take it directly to your own neighbourhood.
Because even with quarter of a million readers, it’s no good just sitting here preaching to the already-converted. We need to go on the road.
The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days.
1. OBAMA INTERVENES IN REFERENDUM
All two words of it. We’re not sure how to feel about that.
2. It’s about democracy, stupid
A more eloquent response from American Scot Jean Muir.
3. What Alistair Darling said
We’re still waiting for the New Statesman to release the tapes.
4. Zombies walk the Earth
The reason Labour have shoved Anas Sarwar off onto a bus.
5. How times don’t change
You’d already forgotten the Strathclyde Commission happened, hadn’t you?
This week’s theme: spot the sensible.
The latest leaked poster from our spy in the No camp. “They’re pretty sure this one’s legally bulletproof“, was all it said on the note in the envelope.
“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
– Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
