Isn’t it weird how since we did this, everyone’s suddenly started asking much more interesting questions in opinion polls about independence?

After months with almost no polling at all, and what there was being restricted to boring Yes/No affairs, there’s been an explosion in surveys conducted by every conceivable pollster for everyone and his dog, and nearly every one has followed our lead in digging below the headline response and trying to find out what makes Scottish voters tick when it comes to their views on the constitution.
Today has two new sets of data to chew over, with fascinating results.
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Tags: project fear, vote no get nothing
Category
analysis, psephology, scottish politics
This is a leaflet distributed to pupils at Ellon Academy in Aberdeenshire this week. It was put together by “the school’s Better Together team” as part of the lead-up to a mini-referendum this Tuesday and sent to us by a concerned parent.

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Tags: cringe, project fear, the positive case for the union, too wee too poor too stupid
Category
disturbing, scottish politics
We already knew that Jackie Baillie had a somewhat shaky grasp of chronology. Last week she told Newsnight Scotland that to find some of the £50m required for Scotland to subsidise the UK government’s bedroom tax, she’d magically travel into the past and un-spend £7m (or as she put it, £10m) of tourism investment that’s likely to bring 20 times that much into the Scottish economy.

And on today’s Good Morning Scotland, she had another balletic prance around in the timestream, speaking from the present about how the past was the future.
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Tags: confused
Category
analysis, scottish politics
Just a couple of short extracts from a chilling article on Labour Uncut this afternoon to give you that feelgood Friday-afternoon vibe.

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Category
analysis, comment, uk politics
NOTICE: It has come to our attention that an article on Wings Over Scotland last week contained a factual error. In the post “One man and his props”, we alleged that in addition to a fake government paper brandished by the deputy leader of the Labour Party in Scotland during a televised debate, a “real” one had also been produced.

We have subsequently discovered that in fact, both papers were entirely fake. We apologise unreservedly to Anas Sarwar for the implication that he was telling the truth. We ought to have known better.
Category
admin, scottish politics
Sometimes it’s hard not to salute the Scottish media’s sheer dogged, implacable commitment to misinformation, even in the face of seemingly-impossible odds.

Yesterday’s fiasco at First Minister’s Questions, where Johann Lamont dug herself a great big hole while trying to smear a successful Scottish businessman and imply corruption where none existed, was so farcically absurd and ham-fisted that the Scotsman had to bite its tongue and report it with the headline “Apology demanded over Lamont’s SNP land deal claim”.
Even Newsnight Scotland couldn’t brush it off, with hapless Labour MSP James Kelly wheeled on as the sacrificial bam sent to bluster his way through some rather timid questioning from Gordon Brewer. But no such trifling concepts as basic journalistic integrity or competence were going to trouble Magnus Gardham at the Herald.
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Tags: flat-out lies, misinformation
Category
analysis, media, scottish politics
You know how it is when you’re writing a satirical newspaper website like The Onion or The Daily Mash. There’s a very fine line to walk such that a joke article is ridiculous enough to be funny, yet still just plausible enough to fool the unwary into believing it’s a real story, and it takes real skill to get it right.

So we wish the best of luck to promising new outfit “The Express”, who’ve perhaps just overcooked it a bit with this effort, but definitely show some potential.
Wait, what?
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Tags: flat-out lies
Category
media, scottish politics
One of the most encouraging aspects of the pro-independence movement is the strength of real grassroots activism compared to its Unionist opponents.

So here are a couple of nice shots of a well-staffed Yes Scotland stand attracting lots of attention from students at the Glenrothes campus of Fife College recently.
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Tags: and finally
Category
pictures
The papers, as you’d expect, take some differing views today of John Swinney’s draft Scottish Government budget, delivered in the Holyrood chamber yesterday. But two articles in particular caught our eye.
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Tags: ticktock
Category
comment, media, scottish politics