Wings Over Scotland

The referendum on Scottish independence has raised more than a question on what the future constitution of the United Kingdom and Scotland will look like – it’s raised an issue of who should have the ability to decide. This is a far more fundamental point, and the core principle of democracy that we hold dear is dependent on the outcome.

In 2014 Scotland will decide to maintain the UK or to dissolve it.  The possibilities that stem from the decision will shape our future, but a battle is currently raging between power and democracy for control of that choice.

Democracy depends fundamentally on the minority accepting the wishes of the majority, but first requires that it be established what it’s a majority of. Numerous commentators have raised the objection that since a vote for independence would affect the entire UK, then residents of England, Wales and Northern Ireland should also be entitled to vote. Others have raised the issue of whether Scots not currently resident in Scotland should be part of the franchise.

To find out who should properly decide the outcome of the referendum, we need to look at the agreements whose continued existence is at stake, ie the Treaty and Acts of Union themselves.

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We don’t know if anyone still reads the BBC’s “Blether With Brian” column since the Corporation banned Scottish readers – uniquely in these islands – from posting comments on it, nor can we normally think of a reason why anyone would. It’s generally the blandest-possible summary of events people have already seen for themselves, with no effort to impart any sort of insight or analysis.

However, once in a while the understated approach yields a more profoundly powerful result than screeds of polemic, and we can think of no way to better illustrate the bizarreness of Johann Lamont’s chosen line of attack at yesterday’s First Minister’s Questions than to simply relate the events as they transpired, in the most neutral and factual manner, as the national broadcaster’s Scottish political editor does today.

“How to decide who has won an election? The customary method is to count the ballot papers – and to award victory to the one with the most votes. Now the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies adds a degree of sophistication to that. But, still, the spoils tend to go to those with evident popular support.

This, apparently, is an old-fashioned outlook. Just so Twentieth Century. At Holyrood, Labour’s Johann Lamont suggested another test might be used instead. The SNP, she said, might have won the council elections “on the arithmetic”. But “on the politics” they “got stuffed.”

It is difficult to be entirely certain, but I suspect that most political leaders would probably settle, on balance, for winning “on the arithmetic”.“

Stranger still was Brian’s citation of Fat Les in support of his assertion, but other than to wistfully dwell for a moment on our long-held dream of Scottish fans repurposing the song in question with the words “Irn Bru” replacing the title, we’ll let that one pass.

Since we’ve already been nice to a journalist today, it seems only fair to also send out a little bit of love to the press corps’ less-celebrated and much-maligned brothers in arms – the photographers. (We don’t know why we’re being so pleasant to everyone all of a sudden. We think someone may have slipped something in our tea.)

Rangers FC has been in administration since Valentine’s Day. That’s three long months in which the story has featured in the news pretty much every single day, and it’s not a situation that lends itself particularly well to illustration. One picture of a Duff & Phelps press conference looks much like another, and once you’ve knocked out the traditional broken-club-crest it starts to get tricky to find a fresh visual angle.

The nation’s photo-journalists have risen heroically to the challenge, though, and we feel irresistibly compelled to take a moment out from our day to offer them a heartfelt and genuine salute, before whatever this stuff is wears off.

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Alert readers may have noticed a certain undercurrent of cynicism about the Scottish political media in this blog on occasion. But now and again you have to put all sarcasm aside and take your hat off to a professional who bangs the nail straight in with one swing of the hammer. Today it’s Iain Macwhirter in the Herald, who thankfully seems to be returning to form after his Murdoch-inspired red mist of recent weeks.

“‘It’s the big question of separation,’ said the Stirling Labour group leader, Corrie McChord, when asked why he was unable to form a coalition with the SNP – a party which he accepted had almost identical social policies to Labour.

Now, I may be missing something here, but I wasn’t aware that Stirling Council was in danger of separating from the United Kingdom. Why the independence referendum should have had such a decisive bearing on who runs council refuse and leisure services in Stirling is not entirely clear. Perhaps Labour believe the Nats will put something in the water or plant separatist propaganda in the wheelie bins.

Whatever, it seems that Labour think they have more in common with the party that wants to privatise most council services than the party that wants to use them as a bulwark against the austerity plans of, er, the Conservative-led Coalition in Westminster.”

We couldn’t have put it better, or more concisely. As Labour chum up with the Tories across the country (Edinburgh looking like being the sole honourable exception), and the Glasgow party prepares (as widely rumoured by SNP supporters a couple of days beforehand) to set the Orange Order loose on the city’s streets in gratitude for their help, we can’t help but ask the hundreds of Labour activists whose efforts secured the party its better-than-expected result last week: “Is this what you worked so hard for?”

A&E departments all over Scotland were reportedly swamped by spinal-injury cases yesterday, resulting from the nation collectively falling off its seat in surprise as the Scottish Affairs Committee of Westminster MPs concluded that the SNP’s proposed referendum question (“Do you agree that Scotland should become an independent country?”) was biased. The committee, headed by delightful Labour MP Ian “I only meant I’d assault you physically, not sexually“ Davidson, decided after consulting a carefully-chosen panel of “experts” that a question posed by an SNP government might just be designed to increase support for independence.

We jest, obviously. In fact it’s not entirely unexpected that such a conclusion would be reached by an all-Unionist committee of Westminster MPs who would all lose their £200,000-a-year jobs in the event of a Yes vote and who are currently engaged in producing a document called “The Referendum on Separation for Scotland“. (No, we’re not kidding – it’s really called that, and therefore clearly an entirely neutral and impartial investigation.) But there’s an interesting angle to the committee’s findings that inexplicably doesn’t get a lot of media analysis.

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It’s been interesting to watch how the mainstream media position on last week’s council elections has shifted over the last couple of days. The instant narrative was that of a huge victory for Labour and disappointment for the SNP, as noticed by Mark MacLachlan over on The Universality Of Cheese. All the papers proclaimed Labour’s holding of Glasgow as the key story of the day (reducing the rest of Scotland to the catch-all “elsewhere“), and contrasted it with the SNP’s underachievement, despite that even on Friday it was apparent that the nationalists had won majorities in two councils and increased its total number of councillors significantly.

Most of the media chose to run with a set of misleading figures first produced (we think) by the BBC, which showed that Labour had made the most gains, and by Saturday that spin had turned into outright lying. A fascinating piece on Newsnet Scotland revealed that the BBC’s figures ran contrary to the Corporation’s own official guidelines on how election results should be reported.

Over the weekend, angry nationalists kicked up a loud fuss over such chicanery (though in fact, this blog had called it around Friday teatime), and as a result subsequent coverage of the elections has adopted a markedly different tone. Even the Scotsman was forced to admit, albeit extremely grudgingly and piling on caveats, that in fact the SNP had won the popular vote for the first time ever. Over in the Herald, meanwhile, Iain Macwhirter performed a remarkable 24-hour “reverse ferret”. First the commentator penned a Friday column headlined “SNP in a spin” and talking of Alex Salmond’s party suffering “a huge psychological blow”. The very next day, though, another Macwhirter column, headed “The SNP won it“, included this line:

“the local elections were in no way a disaster, or even a setback for the SNP”

The second column explicitly (if grumpily) noted the angry nationalist reaction to the previous day’s print and broadcast coverage. For all the opprobrium so often directed at the “cybernats”, it’s hard to dispute their influence in keeping an unwilling and hostile media at least partly honest. By swiftly disseminating accurate counterpoints to Unionist spin, they make it far harder for that spin to maintain traction.

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You don't even need to be a particularly alert reader to recall WoSland's worrying piece about recession-hit Bath just a few weeks ago, which drew thousands of viewers from all corners of the net to become one of the all-time top 10 most popular posts on the blog. But this week, Bath's fall from grace was rendered complete.

The image above comes from a piece in Monday's Guardian about dereliction and decay in urban England (click the pic to read the story). The feature talks about northern working-class cities like Bradford, Redcar, Sheffield and Preston, particularly the various consequences (and, it posits optimistically, opportunities) presented by long-term disuse, decay and demolition of long-term empty properties. The picture chosen to illustrate it, though, is of London Road in Bath.

It's not, admittedly, the most salubrious part of town. But Bath is more accustomed to being employed to depict the grand Edwardian age in period dramas. To serve as a passable imitation of deprived modern-day Bradford instead may well be seen by the city's inhabitants as its darkest hour since it was bombed by the Nazis in 1942.

Over the last couple of years, I've been regretfully forced to the conclusion that feminism is the most intolerant ideology currently operating in the UK, leaving ultra-radical Islam trailing a distant second and looking on angrily. Disagree with the orthodox-feminist position on any gender-related subject, in even the most minor of ways, even if you're agreeing with the base principle, and you'll be first shouted down, then called a misogynist and/or "rape apologist" or similar, and then censored out of the debate entirely. (All three often occuring within the space of a few minutes.)

Veteran WoSland viewers may recall the Cara Fiasco, or the interesting "Dickwolves" discussion of last year, but by way of a milder illustration I present a recent Twitter exchange with "rebelgirl59", who appears from her comments to be some manner of activist for the Scottish Socialist Party. (Twitspeak tidied up, otherwise unaltered.)

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Ray McRobbie has his own blog, but dropped us a line to ask whether we’d be interested in hearing from someone who used to be anti-independence but now resides in the “undecided” camp. We said we’d be delighted. Take it away, Ray.

I’ve written a wee bit on the issue of Scottish independence in the past, without explicitly outlining my own view. A couple of years ago I was quick to criticise the Scottish National Party, and I’m not exactly a fan of Alex Salmond. Since then I’ve seen a lot, heard a lot and read a lot. I’ve studied the issue in some depth for my dissertation at university, and I figure I’ll be reading and writing a bit more in the lead up to the 2014 referendum. So I decided at some point I should actually outline where I stand. At least for the moment.

As it happens, I’m not really a decisive person. I usually like to have all the facts on something before I make a choice. A yes/no question is not often easy for me as I might pick the “wrong” option. This is a strategy I cannot depend on when it comes to Scottish independence. The referendum will most likely boil down to a yes or a no, but in reality it’s much more than that.

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If they spend any amount of time browsing through Wings over Sealand, alert readers may well find themselves noticing a number of recurring themes popping up throughout its pages, and one of the commonest is a violent contempt for nearly all videogames journalism. This is because, not to put too fine a point on it, nearly all videogames journalism is a crime against humanity. (Either in the literary, ethical or sociological senses, and usually all three.)

Practiced largely by cynical-yet-incompetent careerists who regard themselves as essentially the games industry's door-to-door salesmen – rather than as a safeguard standing between the industry and the public, protecting consumers from wasting their money on terrible products – the dismally low standard of nearly all videogames journalism was and remains the reason why your correspondent felt the need to take the job on for himself, so that at least on occasion it might be done halfway-properly.

And if the 21-years-and-counting career that followed that decision isn't a reason to hate videogames journalists, then this reporter doesn't know what is.

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If you’re pushed for time, we’ll give you the answer up front: when it’s in the Scottish media. But a closer analysis of yesterday’s and this morning’s press and broadcasting provides a full and and illuminating picture of the reality. The fact is, the nationalists aren’t paranoid – their own country’s media really is out to get them.

Those of us watching events unfold yesterday afternoon were a little bemused when various sources started tweeting summarised results, which showed Labour as the biggest winners. To anyone comparing the results to those of the last election, those gain/loss figures were perplexing. Set against 2007, the SNP had gained 61 seats, not 57, and Labour just 46 rather than 58. (In both cases almost entirely at the expense of the Lib Dems, who lost nearly 100 seats. Hardly any seats anywhere in the country changed hands directly from Labour to SNP or vice versa.)

We couldn’t at the time, and we still can’t now, find any published record of where the numbers for the second interpretation derive from.

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A quick analysis of the Scottish council election results, then (with Dunoon still to vote and the Cromarty Firth ward in Highlands still to declare, the two areas between them being likely to return 2-3 SNP and 3-4 independents, no Labour or Tories).

The SNP started with 15 more seats nationwide than Labour and will end up with 30-32 more, at least doubling their lead. The nationalists and Labour both gained overall control of two new councils. It looks likely that the SNP will have won the popular vote, which they didn’t manage in 2007.

That would seem remarkably good progress for a government that’s been in power for five years during a recession, is having to implement hefty budget cuts passed down from London, and has endured a large amount of recent bad press. Compare and contrast with the thrashing delivered to the UK’s governing coalition on the same day, and the SNP managing to not only hold what it had but extend its advantage and capture outright control of two councils appears a striking success.

The media narrative, however, is focusing on what the SNP didn’t win, and (not unreasonably) concentrating on the country’s most important councils, so let’s take a look at Labour’s three much-trumpeted big results, in Scotland’s largest cities.

GLASGOW
Labour lead over SNP in 2007: 23 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 17 seats

EDINBURGH
Labour lead over SNP in 2007: 2 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 2 seats

ABERDEEN
SNP lead over Labour in 2007: 2 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 2 seats

So a net gain for Labour of 4 seats in Aberdeen, no change in Edinburgh, and a net gain of 6 seats for the SNP in Glasgow. That means that in Scotland’s three biggest cities, where Labour’s performance was most spectacular, the net result when all the dust has settled is still a 2-seat improvement for the SNP over Labour.

(It remains to be seen, of course, what deals are done and who ends up in the ruling groups in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The SNP have easily enough seats in each city to lead a coalition with other parties and freeze Labour out.)

With the nationalists suffering in Glasgow from the anti-sectarianism bill and the Rangers crisis, and in Aberdeen over the Union City Gardens controversy and the ongoing Donald Trump fiasco, we suspect the party will regard a 2-seat net gain across those cities, accompanied by a raft of substantial and significant gains elsewhere, as the kind of “defeat” it can live with pretty happily.