Wings Over Scotland

Brigadoon is the story of a Scottish village which only appears for one day every hundred years. GERSland, on the other hand, is a country – similar to Scotland in many ways – which has appeared, albeit fleetingly, every year since 1999.

GERSland too suffers from Caledonian Antisyzygy – it is simultaneously like Scotland and unlike it. It is not Scotland as we know it and it’s not a glimpse of an independent Scotland either, despite the dogged insistence of countless journalists, analysts and commentators less insightful than Wings Over Scotland’s on presenting it as such.

It is, as the lawyers say, sui generis, or a special case.

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Over time, and particularly since the turn of 2013, this site’s attitude to the Unionist media in Scotland (which is to say, ALL of the media in Scotland) has undergone something of a shift. Previously we held its partisan spin and naked dishonesty in professional contempt, but more recently it’s become increasingly hard not to simply feel sorry for the poor beleaguered hacks on dying publications as they wrestle uncomprehendingly with their bleak future.

To exercise something as poisonous and destructive as hatred or even anger over today’s lead in Scotland on Sunday by Tom Peterkin (cache link), for example, would be about as productive as entering into a debate on a Saturday night with a drunk who was urinating into a skip and simultaneously ranting about immigrants round the back of a Lidl car park. All we can really do is sigh, call social services and walk sadly on.

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We haven’t studied the McCluskey report in detail, and we’re awfully tempted – after 16 months of scrutinising the many abysmal failings of Scotland’s media – to cynically assume that if it’s got them so uniformly up in arms it must be a good thing. But we’ll try to resist the kneejerk reaction.

For now we’ll merely pass comment on a very odd piece against the proposals by Iain Macwhirter in the Herald, ostensibly listing reasons “Why Scotland should be afraid”.

“George Galloway called Tony Blair a murderer – but he won’t be able to say that in print or online. Some of the descriptions of Brian Souter, during the ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign against the promotion of homosexuality in schools, would be actionable, as would many of the remarks made by his supporters. Feminists who say silly things like ‘all men are rapists’ could be in the dock , as would loud-mouths like Ray Winstone who said he was ‘raped by taxes’.”

Um, and these are supposed to be BAD things, are they? If those are really the potential consequences of the report’s implementation, if such counter-productive and divisive and idiotic debasement of intelligent discourse would suddenly become a punishable act, then sign us up right now. Because given that we currently live in a country where this can happen, we’re not sure we’ve got anything to lose.

Recent claims made by Jackie Baillie (Labour’s shadow health spokeswoman and Better Together campaign director) suggested that Scots would be unable to gain access post-independence to medical treatment in England, because a Yes vote would lead to cross-border reciprocal healthcare becoming bogged down by red tape, complexity and costs, leading to treatment being delayed or withheld.

As we’ve explained before, given that reciprocal agreements already exist between the UK and other countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) – in the form of the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) – Baillie’s claim is at its most generous interpretation an absurdly ill-informed misunderstanding, and in a more depressingly plausible scenario, an outright lie.

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A couple of paragraphs in a Vince Cable story (to over-dignify the piece in question) from today’s Scotsman are quite amusing if you swap the order they come in.

“The first day I took up my job as the chief economist at Shell I was given a plaque which had an Arabic saying and when I pressed for a translation, they said ‘All those who claim to predict the future are lying, even if they are later proved right’.”

Righto.

“Business Secretary Vince Cable last night warned that an independent Scotland’s reliance on revenue from oil would result in savage public spending cuts or tax rises, as he addressed the Liberal Democrat Scottish conference.”

Oops!

Running total (updated daily): £28,920 of £29,796 (97.1%).
Donations in last 24 hours: £886.

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Sharp-minded readers will recall a piece from earlier this week, in which we crossed swords with a Scottish Labour press officer angrily denying that the party wanted the Scottish Government to introduce a no-evictions law for Bedroom Tax arrears:

“You wrote that SLab has a specific policy proposal relating to evictions. Don’t assert – prove. Show me where you get it from.”

Will this do, Alan? (Our emphasis, as if it were needed.)

“Labour today called on the Scottish Government to intervene to protect those worst hit by the “bedroom tax” […] Labour claimed the Scottish Government could ease the plight of those due to be hit by the bedroom tax by introducing a ‘no evictions’ policy – pledging no-one would be kicked out of their home simply because of the new rules.”

If there are any other Scottish Labour policies that the Scottish Labour press office needs us to clarify for it, it’s welcome to ask any time.

…about the full extent of the modern Labour Party’s complete and utter betrayal of the poor and vulnerable and its wholesale capitulation to Tory ideology, read this.

We have to go out this afternoon so we’ll make this quick. Blah blah too poor blah blah no jobs blah blah individual smear blah blah fascist state blah blah invaded by Belgium or something blah blah. Frankly we wouldn’t even bother clicking the links if we were you. If you miss them today, the same stories – or very slight variations on them – will be back in the Scottish media tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and all the days after that all the way to autumn 2014.

The media (and some of the more gullible elements of the blogosphere) recently got itself into a lather about Douglas Alexander’s latest contribution to the independence debate – excellently rebutted by novellist and playwright Alan Bissett – which presented his vision of a post-referendum Scotland that voted No to independence.

Here’s an alternative picture. But unlike the typical “Better Together” scare story, these are not fabricated fantasies. Many are happening right now, while others are merely under discussion and in preparation.

This is what you’re voting for if you vote No.

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A little compare-and-contrast to contemplate.

This is from the Scottish Government document about setting up a new constitution in an inclusive process after a Yes vote in a referendum:

“…a constitutional convention should consider how to further embed equality and human rights within the constitution and the extent to which the people of Scotland should have constitutional rights in relation to issues such as welfare, pensions, health care and education.”

This is from a recent speech by Theresa May:

“…and we need to stop human rights legislation interfering with our ability to fight crime and control immigration. That’s why, as our last manifesto promised, the next Conservative government will scrap the Human Rights Act, and it’s why we should also consider very carefully our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights and the Convention it enforces.”

I can’t decide for you, but I know which one seems more appealing to me.

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The calmer heads found in the Scottish independence movement – and in our better moments we like to consider ours among them – can often be heard cautioning against over-deploying allegations of bias, and citing Hanlon’s Razor in doing so.

(And to save you clicking on the link, that’s the one which runs “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.)

It is, of course, possible and frequently the case for BOTH to be present – a glance at any Scotsman column by Michael Kelly or Brian Wilson will verify that – but this morning we’re going to focus on the latter side of the equation.

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