Wings Over Scotland

Ten days ago, Scottish Labour “deputy” leader Anas Sarwar issued a press release in his capacity as head of Labour’s referendum campaign, noting that “[Nicola Sturgeon] is right to say there has been a lot of negative campaigning. We will be raising the level of debate and ensuring that Scotland gets the level of debate it deserves.”

Here are some extracts from Sarwar and his independence-fearing colleagues’ contributions to yesterday’s epic House of Commons “debate” (in which one side got a little over 10 times as long to put its case as the other) on the motion giving the Scottish Parliament the power to conduct the independence referendum.

Make your own judgement as to how they did, and the level of debate they apparently consider Scotland deserves.

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We can’t even be bothered linking to Brian Wilson‘s latest load of “will-this-do?” money for old rope in The Scotsman. We also can’t be bothered refuting any of its infantile, defamatory lies, which would all embarrass any grown-up newspaper that retained a shred of pride in its content. And we’re not going to occupy any more of our valuable time demolishing the central argument, when Brian has so helpfully done it for us himself right in the middle of his own article.

HEADLINE
“Shetland has the right to go it alone”

COPY
“There is little evidence that Shetland particularly wants to be independent”

There is? That’s that all sorted out, then. We’ve got a long queue of drivelling eejits to deal with today, Brian – have a lollipop and move along, there’s a good wee lad.

The papers this week have been full of stories about the SNP’s plans for foreign aid from an independent Scotland. The Herald led with a story entitled “Yousaf plans £1.5 billion foreign aid budget”, while the Scotsman went for the slightly more inflammatory headline ‘Scottish independence: International aid budget would soar to hundreds of millions’ with the clear implication that this compared to the modest £9 million the devolved Scottish Government currently spends directly on foreign aid.

The headlines were designed to make people think that under independence the Scottish government would be diverting hundreds of millions of pounds away from Scots, increasing our foreign aid over 100-fold. Opposition MSPs claimed such move would mean spending cuts at home or tax rises in order to fund the increased international aid budget.

You need to delve a little deeper into the articles to find the truth.

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Writing a site like this is in one sense an exercise in idealistic cognitive dissonance. No matter how often the opposite turns out to be the case, you always sort of hope, deep down, that if you highlight someone’s occasional failings in a calm and factual manner they’ll say “Oh well, that’s a fair cop”, and even if they don’t change their ways they’ll at least acknowledge the validity of legitimate, honest criticism.

But as we say, it rarely turns out that way. Last night we picked up on what was at heart a fairly minor semantic quibble with high-profile Scottish-politics commentator David Torrance, arising from the evening’s edition of Scotland Tonight. He got in touch with us on Twitter almost immediately to object in rather strong terms to our views, and an exchange went on until around 2am when everyone seemingly went to bed.

We thought no more of it, although we hoped this morning that there might be some answers to some questions that Mr Torrance had explicitly invited during the debate. Instead, to our surprise (we know, still) and dismay, not only were none to be found, but the entire discussion – at his end, anyway – had completely vanished.

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Tory commentator* David Torrance was a little mean about us on Twitter last night, but we won’t hold it against him. As a ubiquitous cross-media Scottish pundit, though, we’re a bit more concerned about his journalistic diligence and grasp of arithmetic.

The bespectacled biographer appeared on the evening’s edition of Scotland Tonight, and tweeted a question about the preceding interview with Blair Jenkins, in which the Yes campaign chief had claimed to recall opinion polls in recent years showing a majority for independence. Helpfully, we sent over a link, annotated with details of several that fitted the criterion of a higher Yes vote than No vote.

But it turns out that according to Mr Torrance, getting more votes than the only other option in a two-choice referendum doesn’t count as a win.

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In the news business, there are some advantages to being second to a story. So when Scotsman journalists were digesting the contents of an exclusive splash in their rival at the opposite end of the M8 this morning, they at least had the opportunity to learn from its mistakes with the benefit of a little distance and time.

By simply avoiding the amateurish, widely-mocked spin of the Herald’s reporting of its own poll, the ailing Johnston Press paper could have scored itself an easy open goal by presenting the facts more truthfully and even-handedly, enabling it to at a stroke look like the more fair and balanced voice in the Scottish “quality” media.

Or, of course, it could shank the golden opportunity hideously and embarrassingly wide. Do we even need to finish this article, or can we go and have a sandwich?

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We hate to be banging on this drum again, but we can’t help asking: if these British nationalists had instead been Scottish nationalists, setting cars on fire and attacking policemen because they wanted the Saltire flown more often from public buildings, would the Scottish media be covering it in such a low-key, non-political way?

That’s a rhetorical question, obviously.

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Sorry, readers. It’s our fault. Around teatime on Sunday we rather recklessly tweeted “Is Magnus Gardham on holiday? The Herald’s been a much more balanced paper this last week or two”, and in doing so appear to have summoned him back, Candyman-style, despite only saying his name once. It must have been retweets or something.

Gardham’s sticky fingerprints are all over the Herald’s front-page splash this morning, even though he shares the byline with the now-rarely-seen Robbie Dinwoodie. The piece reports a TNS-BMRB poll showing a rather remarkable 2.5% swing towards independence since October – despite that period being depicted uniformly across the Scottish and UK political media as a quarterium-annus horribilis for the Yes campaign, and for the SNP and Alex Salmond in particular – under the extraordinarily contrived headline “Blow to SNP as support for independence stalls”.

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Readers will recall that earlier this week we heartily recommended a fantastic article written by Irvine Welsh for Bella Caledonia. Talking of the “Trainspotting” author’s happy times living with family in England and discussing how Scottish independence could enhance British cultural unity, it was an enormously positive piece which was widely acclaimed and warmly received pretty much everywhere.

Scotland on Sunday saw it through rather different eyes. Ignoring the uplifting message of friendship entirely, it grasped on a couple of isolated lines (so to speak) from the 5000-word essay and used it as an excuse to run a story headlined “Irvine Welsh says young people better off dealing drugs than studying for meaningless degree”.

After being on the website for just a couple of hours (at time of writing we can’t confirm if it was in the print paper), the piece mysteriously vanished, not even being visible in Google Cache. But an alert Wings Over Scotland reader was on the cut-and-paste case. If you want to see SoS’s twisted interpretation of Welsh’s words, they’re below.

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Scotland on Sunday today carries an interview with Michael Moore, in which the Scottish Secretary rather undermines the No campaign’s constant demands for “detail” about an independent Scotland by admitting that the Westminster government will refuse to discuss matters like Scotland’s possible share of UK debt in advance of the referendum. There’s an even stranger passage shortly afterwards, though:

“Moore also signalled that his government would play hard-ball if Scotland did vote for independence – a scenario that would force the UK administration to negotiate an independence settlement with the Scottish administration. In the event of a Yes vote, Moore said the UK government would have to “prioritise” the interests of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish and would be unable to give the Scottish Government everything that it wanted.”

Well, duh. If Scotland votes for independence, then any UK government minister will by definition be acting on the sole behalf of “the English, Welsh and Northern Irish”. Their ONLY responsibility will be to try to get the best possible deal for those people, in a negotiation in which Scotland is on the opposite side of the table. Anything else would plainly be a gross dereliction of duty.

It’s a bit like Ally McCoist saying that if The Rangers were to be drawn against Celtic in the Scottish Cup, he would “have to prioritise the interests of Rangers fans and would be unable to give Neil Lennon everything he wanted” – true, for sure, but as much of a big fat waste of time and newsprint as leading with the front-page headline that the Sun is hot and the sea is wet.

Scotland on Sunday’s circulation fell by almost 20% in the last year.

Two ostensibly-unrelated stories from today’s Scottish press leap out at each other with such force you fear the collision could almost create an actual thunderstorm.

“Benefits reform ‘to force 1 in 4 into poverty'”, roars Scotland On Sunday’s second-top story above a curiously makeover-ish picture of Margaret Curran and news of a report by the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations which predicts that hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable women (in particular) will be pushed into financial catastrophe by the Westminster government’s benefit cuts.

Curran is then quoted as attacking the UK coalition because it’s “prepared to cut the incomes of hard-working Scottish families at a time when people are already struggling to make ends meet”, and demanding “welfare reform that works”. Which makes a story in this morning’s Sunday Herald all the more bewildering.

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Alert readers will recall earlier this month, when the Herald reported that the “flag riots” still going on in Belfast were to spread to Scotland. The paper noted that:

“Demonstraters supporting the Loyalist Union flag dispute in Northern Ireland are turning their attention to Scotland’s independence referendum, with a protest planned against senior SNP figures next week. The protesters are planning to picket Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency office on Glasgow’s south side a week on Saturday.

One demonstrator said the protest at Ms Sturgeon’s office was a “No to independence and to protect the Union”.”

The protests in question took place today, with a number of Wings Over Scotland’s intrepid citizen journalists (whose names we’re withholding for their own safety) braving the ever-present threat of British-nationalist violence to record the events for posterity.

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