Here’s a “Better Together” spokesman on Alex Salmond’s New Statesman lecture:
We were there. Want to know what he actually said about England?
We’ve been known to remark from time to time that “Better Together” often has a little trouble getting its scare stories straight. “You won’t be allowed into the EU!” somehow manages to co-exist with “You’ll have to join the Euro!”, while “You wouldn’t be able to bail out the banks!” runs right alongside “All the banks will leave!”
So we take our hats well and truly off to all concerned for helpfully jamming them all together into one big mad super-scare today.
Can you spot it?
Glasgow Caledonian University sponsored David Cameron’s recent “lovebomb” speech in London. We’re sure this is just an unfortunate misunderstanding, though.
So we’re just letting this one slide, are we?
The Edinburgh Agreement seems increasingly not worth the paper it’s written on.
Sounds like Hands Across The Border might be struggling for recruits.
So how long before participation becomes a mandatory part of the Work Programme?
Does any of this sound familiar, readers?
When former chancellor Alistair Darling said the following during the currency row, he should have known better (and no doubt did):
“The nationalist threat to default on debt if they don’t get their way on currency is reckless. The impact of Alex Salmond’s default would be to say to the world that we cannot be trusted to honour our debts.”
The empirical fact is that an independent Scotland would not be defaulting, reneging on, or walking away from anything. That’s because the UK government has already taken full responsibility for all debt accrued up to the date of Scottish independence.
So we can just forget about it, right?
So, wow. Still in its first week, the Wings 2014 fundraiser broke £100,000 last night. We suppose that means we better start fleshing out our “stretch goals” a bit.
And if you’re one of the 99% of readers who haven’t donated yet – perhaps because you’re wasting your money on trivialities like feeding your family or paying bills or something – this is where you can offer us some help that’s just as valuable instead.
Prominent New Labour writer Dan Hodges has a piece in the Telegraph today (because where else would a New Labour commentator have a column?) about UKIP now being an openly racist party. It contains the following passage:
We’ll leave aside that the protest was nothing to do with the SNP or Scottish nationalists, that it was organised by a radical left-wing group and that one of the two men arrested in connection with the incident was in fact English himself. None of those factual inconveniences are allowed to get in the way of Hodges’ bigotry.
We’ve been writing for quite a while now about the absurd-yet-deathless “Project Fear” scare story that an independent Scotland would lose access to BBC broadcasts (and thereby shows like Strictly Come Dancing, Match Of The Day, EastEnders, Doctor Who and, we dunno, Homes Under The Hammer or something), which was given another tired run-through last week by UK government culture secretary Maria Miller.
We’ve pointed out in some detail that it was complete nonsense, because the BBC is a commercial organisation which would actively seek to sell the rights to its output to Scotland, but what we haven’t been able to do previously was put a figure to the likely cost. Thanks to an alert reader, though, we can now fill in that gap.
Scotland on Sunday yesterday:
The Scotsman 24 hours later:
Rinse, lather and repeat for the next six months.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
