Wings Over Scotland

The past week saw the return to the public eye of the former Independent columnist Johann Hari, who vanished in disgrace a few years ago in a plagiarism scandal over claiming to have done things that he hadn’t.

It also saw the return of ubiquitous Scottish politics scribe David Torrance from a trip to San Francisco, the details of which he shared at stultifying length with the unfortunate readers of The Scottish Review.

Or at least, what he SAID were the details of where he SAID he’d been.

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Scottish people are the BEST at compliments 🙂

Readers, have you ever noticed how the letters pages of Scottish newspapers are full every day of the same names, a clutch of a couple of dozen super-hardcore frothing ultra-Yoons tirelessly and reflexively raging against independence, the SNP and pretty much anything without a Union Jack on it?

Have you ever found yourself thinking it must be some sort of co-ordinated group that gets together, plans topics in advance then writes in backing each other up, to create an illusion of speaking for a wide cross-section of society, before dismissing that idea as a daft paranoid conspiracy and getting on with your day?

Because we thought that too, until an alert reader infiltrated it.

Our very favourite bit is “we must not advertise the existence of the group. It can be mentioned verbally, in safe environment, that some people share letters/encourage each other, but anything more risks editors discriminating, nationalists reacting, and this diverse group being portrayed as a monolithic campaign”.

Probably don’t put it in an email, then. But your secret’s safe with us, lads.

In today’s Herald, for no apparent particular reason, this drivel again:

And who might this latest impartial “expert” be, we wonder?

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The Sunday Times has a breathless account today of Jeremy Corbyn’s triumphant five-day tour of Scotland.

It sounds like quite the event.

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Just so we’re absolutely clear on what happened today:

There’s been a U-turn (The Sun):

Except that nothing has changed (the Scottish Lib Dems):

Let’s see if we can get a rhythm going.

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Today’s Daily Record has a swipe at Jeremy Corbyn for, well, let’s call them “mixed messages” over a second independence referendum. It suggests his Scottish branch manager Kezia Dugdale would have “her head in her hands” over his latest comments, which is a bit rich considering Dugdale’s own history on the subject.

And since her headline boast when she took over as leader of the North British office was that people would know exactly what Labour stood for (and indeed she spent all of the weekend’s keynote Sunday Politics interview listing all the things she’d been very very clear about), we thought we’d have a recap and see how that was going.

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Politics is still on hiatus after the dreadful events of Manchester, so we’ve taken the chance to go and enjoy the sudden summer weather while nothing was happening.

And today, as we (“Drove at a legal speed” – Ed) across the pretty hills overlooking Bath in an inexpensive convertible, a song came on the stereo that made us think of all the Unionist trolls who were still busily raging on Twitter – mainly about the SNP’s awful failure to light up every building in Scotland with the Union Jack in tribute to the dead (no, really), but also at the most recent data “proving” that independence would mean the country regressing to the Stone Age and whatnot.

So we thought we’d share it with you, because as well as having a jaunty tune it’s got a good attitude to adopt when they’re screaming and yelling themselves red, white and blue in the face about something or other, rather than wasting your time and mental equilibrium on being dragged into their fetid mind-swamp.

It works on any day, even if you’re not in a sports car.

So the French presidential election result is in. And we’re getting early reactions:

Well, those are a bit weird, aren’t they?

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When our dear old pal the Scottish Labour super-goon Duncan Hothersall tweeted this earlier today, we just couldn’t resist a wee fact-check. We love to see people take the moral high ground, but numbers are fluid these days and you can’t be too careful.

So exactly how “accurate” are we talking here?

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An alert reader received a letter today about the forthcoming general election, from Scottish Labour’s only current MP, Ian Murray. (Although you’d have to know that in advance, as he doesn’t mention the Labour Party in it once.)

Here’s a close-up of part of it:

And below, we swear, is what’s on the other side of the page.

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Martin Kettle in the Guardian today:

That sounds like the sort of thing we like to fact-check.

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