Wings Over Scotland

… and someone is brought before me accused of cold-bloodedly murdering the developers of PC iTunes, and the prosecution presents high-definition video evidence of them in the act, and they’re arrested still carrying the brains-covered axe, and the victims have scrawled the full names, addresses and descriptions of their assailants in their own blood on the carpet with their dying breaths, I’ll still find them Not Guilty.

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A more cynical man than I has already suggested that in the event of the SNP winning independence for Scotland, the remnant UK's likeliest flag would be a thoughtful blend of those of its three surviving nations: from England the red cross of St George, and from Wales and Northern Ireland the white backdrops. LOL ETC. I think this, though, would be the obvious real solution:

But is it an issue we're actually going to have to address? Is this really the end of the Union? And what do you call the United Kingdom when it's not united any more? Let's gaze into a crystal ball, then realise we don't believe in fortune-telling and just take a rational look at the facts.

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Start from this premise: all things are possible.

You have an advantage over me, English viewers. The chances are that most of you pay very little attention to Scottish politics, so your heads probably aren't spinning like mine still is at the staggering, incomprehensible magnitude of what's just been achieved. But I'll do my best to paint you a picture.

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“…put out the streamers/It’s gonna be a good day for the dreamers.”

It won’t.

Okay, I should probably expand a little on that.

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I don't know, because I'm not going to count them. But if the latest opinion poll is correct (and it's a big "if"), the electoral map of the Scottish Parliament is going to look rather different in two weeks' time:

65 seats are needed for a majority in the Parliament, and the Greens support an independence referendum, so if these figures are accurate the possibility of Scotland seceding from the UK will suddenly get an awful lot more real. And a Tory-led government in Westminster has already seen support for independence surge by almost 50%, to level pegging with those opposed to it.

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Many, many caveats, of course. And a long spoon is clearly required.

But it's hard to class this as anything other than a significant victory. The Sun is the biggest-selling newspaper in Scotland, and while it's unlikely to have much direct influence on how people vote, it changes the atmosphere of the election considerably. Game on.

It’s been called the “me-too” election. The Scottish media is full of the widely-repeated wisdom that three of the four main parties contesting the imminent Holyrood poll (the other being the Tories, who nobody votes for in Scotland anyway) have triangulated (ie stolen each other’s policies) to such an extent that there’s almost nothing left to choose between them on ideology, and the election is now just a personality contest.

(Which is tough on at least two of the parties concerned, since their leaders in Scotland have no detectable personalities.)

But is it true?

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Not least because I essentially don’t give a shit about the environment. (The result depicted in the image below is from Scottish Vote Compass, and my non-Scotch chums might find it interesting to take the test too.)

I do believe human activities are causing global warming, and that we’re rendering the planet incapable of sustaining human life at a terrifying rate – via greenhouse gases, pollution and overpopulation – to the point where mankind could in my view have well under 100 years left of anything recognisable as our current lifestyle. It’s just that I think that’s a good thing.

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Pictured below: Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls and the leader of Labour's MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, Iain Gray, at a campaign event earlier this week.

Have you spotted it?

"Interview body language experts agree that the less you move your arms and hands about the more confident and in control you are."
– On Using Body Language During Interviews

Non-Scottish readers probably don't know who this man is. You're missing out.

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Readers of a spiritual or elderly bent may be aware of the parable of the Deck Of Cards. (You can listen to a splendidly reverby take of Wink Martindale’s definitive version by clicking this convenient link here.)

But you don’t have to go back to the 1950s for a similarly instructive metaphor for the contemporary age. Because the iOS game Coin Dozer serves, if you don’t want to carry around a bulky copy of Das Kapital, as a bible of the modern capitalist world. Shut up, it’s not bollocks.

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