Wings Over Scotland

For some time now, we’ve been documenting a couple of intriguing aspects of the No campaign. One is its apparent shortage of grassroots activists, leaving “Better Together” to instead rely on the Scottish and UK media to get its message out. The other is a reluctance to engage in public debate with adults.

Where BT has deigned to participate in public hustings at all, the bulk of the events have been those at schools and colleges. Invited to debate independence in front of crowds of grown-ups, the No camp is oddly reticent, as we discovered ourselves last year when we offered to pay for and set up a head-to-head, with a neutral and mutually-approved chair, between respective campaign figureheads Dennis Canavan and Alistair Darling, getting only abuse in response.

Of course, a bunch of evil cybernats such as ourselves might expect to be rebuffed. But what if the cuddly, respectable official Yes Scotland organisation had a go?

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There’s a remarkable piece in today’s Scotsman that we had to share with you:

And if you think that magnificent headline’s good, wait until you hear the rest.

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Peter Arnott in The Global Dispatches, 29 January 2014:

“We have been tempted to believe in Scotland that our tactical pattern of voting one way in a Westminster elections and another in Holyrood elections would continue to shelter us from the worst neo-liberal excesses of Westminster – our parliament after all came into existence as a retroactive shelter from what was inflicted on us (and everyone else in non-Tory Britain) the last time the Conservatives were in power. 

We are still behaving as if this is the case even while history is whisking that carpet from underneath our feet.”

And that, readers, is why it matters that I live in England.

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Apologies to readers who had difficulties accessing any Wings pages this afternoon. Everything seems to be currently behaving, but we’ve had an email from our webhosts (who also, on a different server, host the Conservative Party website, trivia fans):

“The server where your site is hosted is still under a DDOS attack so you may experience some issues with the site today. We’re working on remedying that.”

It’s an interesting development in the light of this recent news, although we’re sure it’s just coincidence – after all, it’s not like a popular Scottish independence website could pose any sort of perceived threat to the British state or oh yeah right.

Incidentally, we had nothing to do with choosing the name, but the server used for Wings Over Scotland, which remains under attack as we write, is called “Truth”.

We do hope none of these shock troops get caught up and hurt in the lovebombing.

Scottish independence: Cable warns of VAT on food

Caroline Flint warns that independence would mean £875 on energy bills

Warning of risk to transport links after Yes vote

No camp in grocery price rise claims (NB unrelated to VAT)

RBS would move to London if Scotland breaks away

That’s all just today. Anyone sound frightened to you?

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Here’s the Herald today on YouGov’s latest independence polling:

“Support for independence has remained unchanged with one in three voters wanting Scotland to leave the UK, the latest poll shows. The YouGov survey put support for a Yes vote at 33%, trailing backing for No on 52%. A further 12% were undecided with the rest saying they would not vote in the referendum on September 18.

Yesterday, a wealthy American man who as far as we know won’t have a vote in the referendum expressed a personal opinion about independence which made the front page of half of Scotland and Britain’s newspapers, was trumpeted all over the TV and radio, and got “Better Together” very excited.

This morning some idiot based in Luxembourg honked about it on BBC Breakfast news, throwing in his own clueless and ill-informed (and of course, unchallenged) view. We’re having some difficulty working out why we’re supposed to care about either man’s position, or why they were given lots of free airtime to espouse them.

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On the eve of Wings Over Scotland’s 2000th post, we thought we’d celebrate.

Because today we learned something strange.

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It seems that today marked the official start of the much-vaunted “lovebombing” campaign aimed at persuading Scots to stay in the UK by showing them how much they’re loved by the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The opening salvo did some unfortunate and costly collateral damage, but luckily the Union had a white knight following close behind to smooth over any injured feelings.

Would you like to meet him, readers?

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The Sun’s editions on both sides of the border today go in heavy with the results of a YouGov poll showing a dramatic turnaround in the percentage of English (and Welsh) people who want Scotland to leave the UK.

Or at least, SOME of the results.

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We’ve already mentioned this in passing, but it’s worth pulling out in its own right, because people hardly ever bother to click links in features and it’s kind of important.

Late last year we had a bit of an epiphany in terms of realising the implications of Scottish Labour’s draft proposals for giving more powers to the Scottish Parliament in the event of a No vote in the independence referendum. We suggested that the plans were in fact a trap, which would be a disaster for Scotland and see billions of pounds of cuts in the Scottish budget.

What we weren’t expecting was for Labour MP Ian Davidson to confirm it for us.

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There’s both good and bad news for the embattled Scottish Labour “leader” in today’s newspapers. But before we get to that, we’d like you to watch this.

The gent posing the rather lengthy question is Sean Clerkin, the man Iain Gray hid from in Subway. We must admit we’re not quite sure why he thinks Johann Lamont has anything to do with Atos sponsoring the Commonwealth Games – something which would presumably be a matter for the Scottish Government and/or Glasgow City Council, neither of which she controls – but the Labour MSP’s reaction is remarkable.

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