Wings Over Scotland

Below is a spread from Aberdeen newspaper the Evening Express tonight, reporting the findings of a poll about the conduct of the city’s council in recent weeks, covering incidents like the Labour/Tory administration’s mind-boggling attempts to ban Scottish Government ministers from all council-owned property and the controversy over a letter sent out with council tax bills which urged people to vote No.

If you click the image you can read the detailed results. And our more alert readers might come to the conclusion that there’s something odd about the paper’s summary.

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Last month there was a mild flurry of activity in the press about the so-called “missing million” – Scots entitled to vote, but who choose for one reason or another not to. Catchy as it is, the phrase seems a significant understatement. Around four million people in Scotland meet voting criteria, but fewer than half of those turned out for the 2011 Holyrood election, and under 2.5m at the 2010 Westminster one.

Obviously that’s a bad thing in principle in its own right. But it could also be seriously distorting polling for the independence referendum, because – perhaps for the only time in their lives – an awful lot of those missing millions ARE going to go out this September and put a cross in a box. And nobody knows which one.

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As commissioners of opinion polls ourselves, we know all too well that one of the more unwelcome aspects of the pursuit is that sometimes you don’t like the answers you get – we were noticeably dismayed, for example, by one or two of the things revealed about social attitudes in our last poll.

Today’s media extensively covers a Survation poll for the Daily Record which finds the highest Yes vote in some time (despite an “if the referendum was today” preamble, which generally works against Yes), equating to 45% Yes 55% No, with almost a quarter of Labour voters now planning to vote for independence.

The full tables aren’t yet available for analysis as we write this, so to while away the time we decided to have a proper delve in the last one from the same company, run on behalf of the Daily Mail last month. And a couple of things leapt right out at us.

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To an alert Wings reader who contacted them last month. Emphasis ours.

“Dear [redacted]

Thank you for your email of 27 February 2014.

We are disappointed that our statement has caused you concern.

To clarify our position, Standard Life currently has no plans to relocate or transfer parts of our operations out of Scotland. What we have announced are precautionary measures to ensure we can provide continuity and protect the interests of our customers, wherever they live in the UK (and around the world), in the event of Scotland becoming independent.

We have no desire to move any aspect of our operations unless absolutely necessary. We have been based in Scotland for 189 years. We are proud of our Scottish heritage and believe that Scotland is a good place from which to run our business and compete around the world. We very much hope this can continue.

Standard Life is strictly non-political and will not seek to influence people on how they should vote. However, we have a duty and a responsibility to understand the implications of independence for our four million UK customers, our shareholders, our people and other stakeholders in our business. We will take whatever action is necessary to protect their interests.

Yours sincerely 

Gerry Grimstone
Chairman”

It’s not quite how the media’s painting it, it is?

We’re given to believe that this is real, not a spoof.

Just when we thought our opinion of them couldn’t possibly sink any lower.

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Here’s the Scottish Conservatives deputy leader Jackson Carlaw, fuming on the BBC website yesterday about the £1.3m cost of producing and distributing the Scottish Government’s independence white paper:

“This would be a considerable spend for a work of fact, but this must be one of the biggest ever taxpayer-funded investments for a work of fiction.

The public will feel extremely shortchanged over this, particularly given there’s only one page on Scotland’s economy.

Alex Salmond himself admitted in the Scottish Parliament chamber that this is a document containing SNP propaganda, and it’s utterly ridiculous that he should be sanctioning taxpayers’ money for this.”

So, that’s pretty clear. Even though they’ve spent much of the last two years demanding the Scottish Government answer literally hundreds of questions about independence, the Tories don’t believe that it’s worth spending slightly less than 25p per Scot to actually give the people those answers.

But wait – what’s this coming over the hill? Is it a monster?

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We don’t mind telling you, folks, we’re struggling on this one.

“If Scotland was independent today we would have no option but to cut spending on services like schools and hospitals or put up taxes – or probably both. Today as part of the UK we don’t have to do that.” (Alistair Darling)

But… don’t…

“Whatever the Scottish government says now, the government of an independent Scotland would be forced to raise taxes and cut public services. We are better off together.” (Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury)

Aren’t… haven’t you…

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A couple of interesting passages from Hansard in January 2012:

“The Government’s decision in March 2011 to increase tax rates on the industry, which increased the top tax rate to 81% and the corporation tax rate to 62%, is inevitably and regrettably having a chilling effect on the leading indicators of investment.

The signs of lower investment in the future are already apparent. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will see from the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s latest energy trends analysis a significant impact on drilling activity, with exploration wells down 50% in 2011.

It is from that exploration drilling that the future large capital investments will flow. The March 2011 tax increase reduced the value of future projects by 25% overnight.“

(Our emphasis.) The words of some dastardly separatist panicking about the value of Scottish oil? Not so much. The lines quoted above were addressed to Parliament by the Rt. Hon. Nicholas Soames, Conservative MP for Mid Sussex.

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We don’t say it very often, readers, but as a civilised human being with even the merest glimmer of empathy it’s hard not to feel sorry for “Better Together” sometimes. It must be absolute agony for them today, trying to talk about the slightly disappointing GERS figures without screaming “TOO WEE! TOO POOR! TOO STUPID!” at the tops of their voices, which is what they want to do so much they must be able to taste it.

Instead of naked glee, they must do their best to fake concern, and not appear too joyful to be reporting bad news for what they insist is (proudly, of course) their nation. We don’t envy them in having to maintain two faces and lie about their true feelings, no matter how practiced at it they are. The constant vigilance must be incredibly wearing, because dishonesty is exhausting.

The only way to never be caught out, after all, is to never have to remember which lies you told yesterday and to whom. So as always, we’re just going to give you the truth.

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The big story in UK news this morning is Ed Miliband’s statement of Labour’s position on an EU referendum. “Ed Miliband will dramatically pave way for in-out referendum on Europe if Labour come to power”, says the Mirror, while “Ed Miliband rules out EU referendum” is the Spectator’s take and the BBC goes with “Ed Miliband says Labour will not commit to EU referendum”. Ah, the media, bringing clarity as ever.

On this occasion, the right-wing magazine is closest to the truth. Miliband’s statement is about as unambiguous as Labour ever get on anything these days – “We strongly believe Britain’s future is in the EU, and my priorities for government after the next election are very different from those of the Conservatives” is pretty hard to misinterpret in the context of the Tories having expressly pledged a referendum long before their manifesto is published.

It is, in the language of politics, a “brave” move.

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Still no sign of any video despite repeated requests, but we’ve finally managed to lay our hands on an audio recording of Alex Salmond’s New Statesman lecture in London last week, including the audience question-and-answer session afterwards.

(The main speech ends at 36m, if you’ve already read it and want to get to the Q&A.)

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We’ve just watched three hours of the Education and Culture Committee at Holyrood discussing the report on media bias by Professor John Robertson of the University of the West of Scotland, which featured the good professor himself and senior BBC Scotland executives including Ken McQuarrie and John Boothman.

The contrast between Prof. Robertson’s absolute frankness and candour – openly discussing his political views and his mild autism – and the BBC men’s evasion and obfuscation was quite something to behold. We’ll have some analysis this week.

One finding of Prof. Robertson’s report was that the anti-independence media (or for short, “the media”) had a strong tendency to personalise the Yes debate in the form of Alex Salmond, and a piece in today’s Scotsman provides us with a handy illustration.

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