Wings Over Scotland

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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The Herald’s lead story this morning is a fascinating piece from the always-interesting Gerry Braiden. Under the headline “MSP poll plan may backfire”, it reveals:

“Labour’s new selection process for the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections is expected to see high-profile casualties, the return of anonymous MSPs, and bitter infighting among potential candidates.

The party will choose ­candidates it hopes will topple the SNP Government next time around in January, a full two-and-a-half years before the poll.”

It goes on to focus on the local tribal aspects of the decision, and the likelihood that it will strengthen the grip on their seats of some of the party’s “most inconspicuous elected representatives” (Braiden singles out Glasgow list MSPs Anne McTaggart and Hanzala Malik), but uncharacteristically misses what seems to us to be by far the most intriguing consequence of the move.

To find out what that is, we need to go back to a time and place in which many Glasgow Labour politicians will feel very much at home – 1940s Soviet Russia.

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A protest is taking place today from 3pm at 9 Scotland Street, Glasgow G5 8NB, the location of Anas Sarwar MP‘s constituency office. The purpose of the protest is to register people’s disapproval at Mr Sarwar’s failure to attend this week’s House of Commons division on a motion proposing to abolish the so-called “bedroom tax”, which was defeated by 26 votes and at which 47 Labour MPs didn’t turn up.

We urge any readers who are constituents of Mr Sarwar to go along, though we suspect that Mr Sarwar himself, true to his character, will elect to dodge this weekly surgery. But if he’s there, please don’t hurl abuse, jostle him or throw bricks. Instead, we’d be grateful if you could politely and calmly ask him two simple questions for us.

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The bit they always leave out is who it’s better for.

Click either image for the story.

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No.1: Stop.

Labour MPs have been largely conspicuous by their absence on social media today, just as they were at this Tuesday’s bedroom tax vote. With even the Scottish press belatedly picking up on their no-show, most have been keeping their heads down rather than trying to explain their (in)actions.

So kudos to the party’s culture-loving Airdrie & Shotts MP Pamela Nash, who bravely stood up, despite already having one massive bullet-hole in her foot, to take careful aim and have a blast with the other barrel.

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I never understood why everyone hated Maggie Thatcher. Perhaps I was too young. Born in late 1980 I had no direct experience of the unemployment and closures of that decade, whilst the Poll Tax marchers were simply nuisance crowds who blocked the roads. Stuck on the No 14 on Argyle St, I just ate my Monster Munch and asked mum “Why aren’t we moving?” 

To me, Maggie was just a puppet on Spitting Image with mad eyes. She was funny, clubbing the other ones with her handbag. I never felt the hatred for her that everyone else in Scotland seemed to have. Even now – older and, dare I say it, well educated – I don’t hate her and just felt embarrassed by those morons whooping and jigging in George Square on the day of her funeral.

The rage of the 1980s simply passed me by. Thatcher and CND and the miners’ strike belong in the same distant era as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Young Ones and the Sinclair C5. So these days, you could forgive me for feeling a mite confused, because the 80s are here again. Only this time, there’s a much nastier sting.

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