Wings Over Scotland

This is astonishing. From tonight’s BBC 6 O’Clock News:

Nick Robinson claims Alex Salmond “didn’t answer” his question at a press conference earlier today. That is a brazen and quite spectacular lie. The First Minister gave the BBC man a detailed and direct response which lasted for over three minutes BEFORE raising the matter of the Treasury link. You can see that response for yourself below.

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Alert readers will already be aware that former Labour MP, minister and nuclear-power lobbyist Brian Wilson is one of our least favourite figures in the independence debate.

A man utterly consumed by tribal hatred of the SNP – even by the standards of Scottish Labour, which is no mean accolade – his Scotsman columns are some of the most mendacious, bilious propaganda to be found in the country, to the extent that we don’t even link to them in our “Zany Comedy Relief” section.

Today, however, he’s outdone himself in spectacular style.

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Here are two snippets from a couple of recent “Better Together” leaflets:

Curiously, that 16% increase has fallen to 13% in their latest “briefing” full of made-up numbers Blair McDougall has pulled out of – well, let’s be polite and say “thin air”. But since they’ve been specifically named, let’s just check the claim with Tesco.

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We’ve been so busy with the Wee Blue Book for the past week or so that we only just got round to listening to last Tuesday’s interview with Alistair Darling on Good Morning Scotland in time, before it vanished from the iPlayer. The former Chancellor gets a quite uncomfortable ride from presenter Gary Robertson, and flaps angrily for much of the ten-and-a-half minutes trying to turn every question into one on currency.

Mr Darling also makes some startlingly and empirically false statements throughout the interview, and we thought it’d be worth noting a few of them and seeing if they crop up on tonight’s BBC1 debate with the First Minister.

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There’s some interesting footage circulating today of a referendum debate for women that took place last week. Many people have focused on No-campaign representative Cat Headley admitting that a “Better Together” leaflet made some highly misleading claims about an independent Scotland’s ranking among the world’s wealthiest countries, but we covered that back in May so we won’t go over it again.

The bit of the meeting that caught our eye is at 1m 36 in the clip above.

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Folks, we seriously sometimes think we’re the only people covering Scottish politics who can actually read. Here’s a page from the Scottish Sun this morning:

The paper, last seen struggling to subtract 4 from 5, makes a big and rather huffy point about this apparently being “the first time” that the First Minister has “admitted” that independence won’t be a walk in the park, “with whisky and oil on tap”.

So we have to wonder what the heck they’ve been doing for the last 14 months.

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Here’s Alistair Darling on Radio Clyde this morning, reported by STV:

“I’ve always said Scotland could go it alone, however you’d have to cut your cloth according to your means.

I think it would be less successful and we’d be less prosperous if we left the UK, if you look at countries like Denmark you pay a lot more in tax, the amount of money that people have got to spend is less.”

You know we’re not going to let that one slide without a fact-check, don’t you?

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This is Conservative MSP John Scott openly lying to an audience in Ayr yesterday on BBC Radio Scotland’s “Big Debate”, on the subject of whether Scottish people would continue to have access to English hospitals (and specifically Great Ormond Street children’s hospital) in the event of independence.

The female voice correcting him is Jeane Freeman. The truth is below.

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This is a “Better Together” graphic about pensions.

We’d like you to note what it says carefully. There’ll be a quiz in a minute.

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Alert readers will be aware that even in a campaign characterised by dishonesty, the ever-smirking Labour MSP Jackie Baillie has carved a reputation for especially notable creativity with the truth. With our hands on our hearts, we don’t think we’ve ever heard her say anything that wasn’t a lie. However, on last night’s The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4, we believe she reached a spectacular personal best. Have a listen.

If you can’t quite believe your ears, we’ll transcribe that for you.

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We telephoned Organ Donation Scotland on Friday for their reaction to the despicable scare stories being put around by a teenage Labour activist from Liverpool bussed up to Scotland last week by the No campaign.

We’re still waiting for them to get back to us with a quote. But in the meantime, it’s been predictable – but no less disgraceful – to see senior Labour figures repeating the lie. It all seems to be part of a major Unionist offensive on health, doubtless sparked by fears that privatisation of the English NHS will lead to a significant reduction in the Scottish block grant and corresponding damage to the Scottish health service.

The No camp, unsurprisingly, has chosen to fight fear with fear.

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The tweet on the left is one of the rare appearances of Scottish Labour’s fabled “2014 Truth Team”, while over on the right is a snippet from Scottish Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale’s column in this morning’s Daily Record.

This shouldn’t take long.

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