We suspect this isn’t one of the ones Mr Darling gets paid £10,000 for.
Still, only putting out 12 seats is one way to guarantee a “standing room only” crowd.
For independence supporters of a certain age, the 1979 devolution referendum is one of the most infamous moments in Scottish history. While a wafer-thin majority of Scots voted Yes to devolution, an electoral fiddle conceived by a Labour MP meant that it didn’t happen, and part of the reason was that in effect, dead people were counted as No votes.
(We won’t go into all the details here, but basically an impossible threshold was set for turnout, and people who’d died but hadn’t yet been removed from the electoral roll were counted towards the calculation of that threshold.)
We were put in mind of it by an odd development this evening.
Our mole in the No camp risked life and limb to bring us this behind-the-scenes footage of the filming of the exciting “Scotland, You’re Our Best Friend” video.
To be honest, it only confirms our suspicions.
Only our very alertest readers are likely to recall our first brush with Azeem Ibrahim of the “Scotland Institute”, a right-wing think tank which recently came up with a report on an independent Scotland’s debt that was picked up by some of the less discerning newspapers but which we ignored for being too boring.
And we must concede fair play to the eternally attention-seeking Mr Ibrahim, because he’s come storming right back with something altogether livelier.
Channel 4 has now aired its Dispatches programme about “intimidation”, in which a lot of grown adults from the cut-throat world of business whined about possible vague hints they may or may not have picked up that the Scottish Government would rather they kept quiet about independence.
The estimable Lallands Peat Worrier skewers the subject brilliantly here, so we shan’t detain ourselves further with the specifics – other than to passingly note that as Mandy Rhodes of Holyrood Magazine tweeted during the show, one of the alleged victims was so frightened and cowed into submission that he’s currently suing the Scottish Government at the European Court about something else entirely.
But there was something else that had us puzzled.
There was an article on independence in the Huffington Post yesterday, which we’ve only just seen. Penned by one Dr Nicholas M Almond, a “cognitive neuropsychologist and author” who also has cerebral palsy – a physically debilitating condition but one which doesn’t affect mental capacity in any way – we think it may, word for word, be the most spectacularly ill-informed and offensively moronic article on the subject of Scotland ever to appear in a recognised and vaguely respectable publication.
For fun, we thought we’d count the errors.
Honest Alistair Darling, interviewed by the BBC in 2008.
Smooth.
Our secret agent in the No camp’s taken a real risk to bring you this one, readers. Smuggled out under cover of dusk, we’ve managed to get hold of the early rushes of the first ever combined referendum TV and cinema broadcast on behalf of the Unionist parties and the main campaigning organisations.
As you can see, they’re turning up the fear. Don’t have nightmares.
We think this is how Ed actually sees it.
Because remember, readers, nationalism is a virus.
“Better Together” spokesman, 27 September 2013:
Letter from Danny Alexander MP to Alex Salmond, 30 Jan 2014:
The Telegraph, 23 June 2014:
So, just “anywhere”, then.
If you’re not on Twitter, readers, you’ve been missing ALL the fun today.
Above are just the creepiest two of a series of tweets posted this morning by “social justice campaigner” Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre – previously known to those of this parish – to the effect that he’d really rather prefer if people stopped following my personal Twitter account, @RevStu, because I was so all-around awful.
It didn’t work out quite as well as he’d hoped.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
