Wings Over Scotland

Prolonged exposure to the unfamiliar phenomenon of sunshine appears to be getting to some on the Unionist side in Scotland today. Firstly, Johann Lamont’s spin doctor Paul Sinclair is having some sort of nervous collapse over on Twitter, seamlessly blending every piece of absurd smearing about Alex Salmond from the last couple of weeks into a single thread of tramp-in-a-bus-station lunacy.

(Summary: he’s fat, Saltires are bad, liking golf is bad, the FM is in some way similar to the popular footballing racist John Terry, and there’s even enough time to squeeze in a quick reprise of the classic “cybernat hordes forcing X off Twitter” routine.)

It’s not even today’s best breakdown, though.

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Dear “Better Together”,

Today I, a Scotsman, travelled from England to Wales to buy some Irish chocolate. This might not be possible if Scotland becomes independent. (Of course there isn’t any conceivable reason for that to be the case, but – as you know only too clearly – if you put the word “might” in front of scare stories nobody can say you’re actually lying.)

Feel free to use that one. DON’T LET ALEX SALMOND STEAL MY SWEETS.

We were passed this Scottish Government document through our sinister network of cyber-agents, from an operative who wished to remain anonynous. It’s a list of official complaints made about inaccurate and misleading articles in newspapers since the 2011 Holyrood election. As we’re talking about bias today, we offer it up for your perusal and interest. We’re only surprised it’s so short.

The Times got rather huffy with Alex Salmond this week, when in a speech at a Nigg engineering yard the First Minister made the not-entirely-controversial suggestion (or in the Times’ view, “an unprecedented attack”) that the Scottish and UK printed press was biased against the independence movement.

(Or, as the irony-bereft paper impartially put it, “him and his plans for separation”.)

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The Herald publishes a rather interesting story today, revealing that according to professional media analysts Brandwatch, almost three quarters of social media users in Scotland are planning to vote Yes in the referendum.

(For some reason the Herald chose to publish the piece under the headline “Davey doubts Scotland will reach green energy target”, which we’ll put down to the heat, and to emphasise the notion that the high level of support was “despite” the SNP.)

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Scottish nationalist style:

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Former Labour MEP Hugh Kerr in the Herald, 12 Jun 2013:

“I am on holiday in Denmark and independence is the topic all Danes want to discuss when they learn you are from Scotland. I have met no-one yet who is opposed to Scotland’s independence. One said to me yesterday: ‘Surely it is natural to want to run your own affairs, we certainly wouldn’t want to be run by Sweden.’

I have also discussed it with some former colleagues from the European Parliament who are certain Scotland would be warmly welcomed as members of all European institutions; as one put it: ‘After all, you have been members of the EU for 40 years, you are hardly going to be excluded now’.”

To be honest, readers, if Scotland votes No in 2014 our main life priority is going to be developing a convincing Welsh or Irish accent. It’d just be far too embarrassing and depressing to constantly have to try to explain it to the rest of the world otherwise.

Alistair Darling’s gremlin-plagued “positive case for the Union” speech in Glasgow yesterday, even leaving aside the weakness of its tired, reheated arguments (basically the same old “We cannae dae it” doom and gloom resprayed with an atom-thin coat of All-New Positivitrex!) might be the most boring thing we’ve ever read.

It drones on for a soul-sapping 26 pages and we can’t imagine how long it must have seemed when you were stuck in the room hearing it in Darling’s querulous, vexatious voice, but there’s one saving grace: the graphs. There are no fewer than 23 frequently-incomprehensible boxes, charts and diagrams, of which this is our favourite.

We’re not sure they’ve quite grasped how polling works.

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We’ve been substantially updating yesterday’s feature on the financial strength of an independent Scotland, based on the calculations by the pro-Union economist Prof. Brian Ashcroft. Thanks to the readers who pointed out some of the finer detail.

The results, we think you’ll agree, are pretty breathtaking.

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We have a bit more respect for Professor Brian Ashcroft than most of the No camp’s scaremongers (indeed, we’ve even run an article of his on Wings Over Scotland), so we looked with interest at the latest entry on his blog yesterday, a piece with the fairly self-explanatory title of  “Has Scotland already spent its oil fund?”

It purports to examine what Scotland’s financial position would have been had it been independent for the last 32 years, in response to a Scottish Government document (which was backed up by fullfact.org) showing that Scotland had been a large net contributor to the UK over the period, but arrives at a bizarrely tangential conclusion.

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You’re not too late to catch Alistair Darling’s latest unveiling of “the positive case for the Union” via a live webcast on the “Better Together” website this morning. As we write he’s 10 minutes late, and the audience is rocketing towards triple figures.

We’re all playing bingo. Come and join us.

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