Wings Over Scotland

Earlier today, “Better Together” put out this bizarre graphic, before hastily deleting it.

At the time of writing it hasn’t reappeared on their Facebook page. We’re not sure why it was pulled – perhaps they were just embarrassed by the sheer absurdity of this latest “too wee, too poor, too stupid effort”, or the ease with which Yes supporters could mock it as a claim that an independent Scotland wouldn’t be able to afford buildings more than two storeys high.

Or maybe it was something a little more fundamental.

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There is no technical fault. This is really happening.

Anas Sarwar, there, raging about people not voting to abolish the bedroom tax.

Yes, THAT Anas Sarwar.

Don’t pinch yourself. You’re not dreaming. He’s actually doing it.  Go and see.

Yesterday, right-wing think-tank the Institute of Fiscal Studies issued a document entitled “Fiscal sustainability in an independent Scotland“. It’s rather less than glowing about the prospects of an independent Scottish economy.

For seekers of facts, the most important aspect of the report is not its findings but rather what data was used and from where it was gathered, which severely slanted the outcome of the report before it was even written. Because it doesn’t matter how diligent, honest and thorough an economic assessment is, if the input information that the economists are asked to work from is heavily skewed to begin with.

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Remember how the No camp is conducting a positive campaign, and definitely NOT saying that Scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid to thrive as an independent country, and that only evil cybernats ever suggest that they’re saying that?

Here’s Danny Alexander on Sky News this morning. We’re not sure he got the memo.

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We weren’t going to bother even tackling the Institute for Fiscal Studies report from yesterday on the economics of an independent Scotland, because, y’know, our readers aren’t idiots and it’s all a bit “file under B for Bleeding Obvious”.

But we suppose we ought to at least outline a quick one-stop list of bullet points.

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Sadly we don’t have the ability to capture video here. Or rather, we don’t have the technical knowhow, or the time to acquire it. That’s not usually a problem, because we can capture audio and often other people more savvy than us will archive video clips before they vanish into the inaccessible vaults of broadcasting forever.

Sometimes, though, sound alone just doesn’t properly convey the tone of something. And since we suspect the seven-minute interview Alistair Darling gave BBC News this lunchtime will never be seen in full again [EDIT: Yes it will!], as rolling news doesn’t usually appear on iPlayer, we thought we had to capture it some other way.

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There’s a fascinating piece in today’s Daily Record about Andy Murray, and we’re not talking about the gormless expression Andrew Marr pulls in the accompanying photo.

It’s fascinating because it’s a gold-medal example of the art of reporting exclusively true facts while simultaneously saying flatly untrue things about them.

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As a counterpoint to this unpleasantness from a couple of weeks ago, this is Kevin McKenna in this week’s edition of the Scottish Catholic Observer:

“The difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK at this moment is the difference between “Come to me all ye who are heavy burden’d and I will set you free” and “Come to me all ye who are heavy burden’d and I will stop your benefits”. I know which country I want to live in.”

Click the quote to read the whole article.

So you find oil and want to make life better for your people. It’s an asset that makes you fabulously wealthy and provides the sort of financial security that people normally can only dream of. But you get coerced and cajoled into giving it to your neighbour to look after on your behalf. The neighbour gives it to their banker friends who all enjoy lavish lifestyles at your expense.

Whenever you get fed up with how you’re being treated and begin to long for the good old days when you were free to do as you wished, the neighbour comes up with ridiculous ploys, scare-stories and scenarios to keep you where you are; each time becoming more ridiculous and farcical in order to keep control of your money and please their banker friends.

No, you’re not Scotland; you’re Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies, an American show from the 60s with a plot so ridiculous only backward yokels would fall for it.

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Something rather odd happened over on our Facebook page this week. It’s the most sparsely-populated outpost of the Wings empire, (because it’s mostly just links to articles here), and the average post there is doing well if it’s seen by 2000 people and gets five or six comments.

But yesterday, after running this article, we thought it might be fun to turn the two maps into one of our celebrated series of “leaked Better Together posters”, so we quickly knocked up this image and posted it on the Facebook page accompanied only by the words “Another Union dividend”:

And then things went a bit mad.

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We haven’t mentioned the Telegraph’s blustery old colonel Alan Cochrane for a while, because his columns in the right-wing broadsheet have recently veered from, well, let’s say Nigel Farage to Nick Griffin. Not in content, you understand – for all Mr Cochrane’s unpleasant faults we see no suggestion of racism – but in tone.

Gone is the note of jocularity, the benignly patrician manner of the bluff-but-affable old British gent, replaced increasingly by poisonous, angry and disturbingly personalised hatred twinned with a rank and ugly intellectual laziness – traits which seem to have spread from the paper’s “Scottish political correspondent” Simon Johnson.

Today’s column illustrates both facets.

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