Wings Over Scotland

Earlier today we reported the Edinburgh Evening News’ coverage of a study by Sheffield Hallam University which found that households across Edinburgh would lose an average of £780 each thanks to the coalition’s welfare cuts, with the worst-affected area – Craigmillar – likely to take an annual hit of £1,240 per household.

Today’s edition of the Daily Record has a prominent feature on the same survey, but chooses to focus on Glasgow rather than Edinburgh, and finds that things are even worse. Households in the poorest part of Glasgow – Calton, infamous for its low male life expectancies – stand to see a shocking £1,760 a year ripped out of their budget.

The Record being the Record, of course, it characterises the cuts – quite correctly – as being the responsibility of the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition. But then, weirdly, it asks a Labour MSP to comment on them.

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WEDNESDAY: Panini “politics sticker album” jokes are evidence of vile abuse:

SUNDAY: Panini “politics sticker album” jokes are light-hearted comedy material:

The BBC: you have to pay for this or you go to jail, readers.

The Sunday Mail has an editorial leader today about “cybernats”, in which the Daily Record’s sister paper offers the view that “far too much attention is given to these clowns”. It’s a good point – there’s been a surfeit of coverage of the subject lately.

From the last four days alone. Why can’t people just stop going on about them, eh?

David Cameron, Prime Minister’s Questions, 30 April 2014:

“I think that what Alex Salmond said [about Vladimir Putin] was a major error of judgment and that all of us in this House should be supporting the Ukrainian desire to be a sovereign, independent country and to have the respect of the international community and party leaders for that ambition.”

(Our emphasis.) It’s not only us finding that just the tiniest bit hypocritical, is it?

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Yesterday, we discovered a rather curious anti-independence “listicle” on the popular viral-meme website Buzzfeed. Entitled “Scotland. The UK. 10 Myths. 10 Facts.”, it describes itself as “myth busting” by an author identified only as “YouDecide2014”.

It was shared or retweeted by a variety of Conservative Party special advisers, the 10 Downing Street Facebook account, and even the UK Ministry of Defence.

The crude, extremely biased article gives no indication that it’s written by the UK government. The closest it comes to doing so is right at the end, where it says “Get the facts at www.gov.uk/scottishreferendum“. The Buzzfeed account page makes no reference to the UK government, and the layout makes the piece look like any normal article on the site, although in fact it’s posted on Buzzfeed Community, which is an area where users can post anything they want to without censorship.

We decided to find out more.

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We absolutely love the fact that only one of the stories in the “Referendum News” section of the Herald website this morning is headlined in all capitals:

It paints a rather lovely picture of everyone at the “Better Together” HQ running around shouting “THERE IS NO PANIC! EVERYONE HERE IS TOTALLY CALM!” at the tops of their voices to anyone in the general vicinity.

But there’s something less amusing about the very short piece.

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We read yesterday how Labour and the Tories have both, in rather different ways, been expressing their concern about the demographic timebomb that will affect Scotland unless it can attract a major increase in immigration.

“An independent Scotland would need almost one million immigrants by the middle of the century to boost the workforce and defuse its pensions time bomb, [Labour shadow pensions spokesman Gregg McClymont] has warned.”

And just a few months earlier:

“Economists believe the population needs to grow by 24,000 people a year just to keep pace with European economies. Conservative finance spokesman Gavin Brown said: ‘A country like ours needs people, particularly young people, to come in to work and increase the tax base. That is absolutely essential for the economy.”

So we’d imagine that’s always been the Labour and Tory policy, right?

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… they think you are.

(UK edition on the left, Scottish edition on the right.)

The other (and more complete) view of this story from yesterday:

Remember, readers, when we were all over the papers as “creepy as f**k”, intimidatory “spies” for peacefully and non-confrontationally documenting alleged “Better Together” events with long-distance photos in which we carefully avoided publishing anything that could be used to identify any individuals?

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Bill Jamieson in the Scotsman today:

“Yes, there should be No poll abuse

The independence debate has been getting ever nastier and it’s time for all sides to take a breath.”

It must have been a short breath, because just six paragraphs later:

“Bill Munro, the head of Barrhead Travel, one of our most successful Scottish companies, was subjected to a volley of threats and abuse after he advised staff in a letter to vote No.

A line has been crossed here between fair rebuttal and menacing nastiness. More of this and we could be on the way towards a Caledonian Kristallnacht.”

Because a surefire way to calm debate is to liken one side to the Nazis, right?

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The advert below is being distributed by Glasgow Subway to its passengers today.

But that’s okay, because it’s not “political”.

It was good to see our old pal, prolific Labour and “Better Together” activist Duncan Hothersall, welcoming the chance for everyone to learn from mistakes yesterday with regard to giving out people’s personal information on the internet.

Of course, Roseanna Cunningham only revealed contact info that was already in the public domain and easily accessible to anyone who wanted it, and which had been widely sent out by the person concerned in a spray of unsolicited begging letters. It’d be much worse to give out contact information that was previously unknown and was only sent to one person in a private email, right?

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