Wings Over Scotland

It’s weird watching the Sunday papers all decrying the media’s handling of Wednesday’s leaked Scottish Government document. Everyone seems to agree that the Cabinet paper wasn’t any kind of smoking gun – the consensus is that John Swinney’s comments were sensible, cautious and largely misrepresented in the press.

Eddie Barnes in Scotland on Sunday, for example, noted that “Few of the issues presented within the report were in any way revelatory” (though it didn’t stop him from referring to them as “revelations” later in the piece anyway), but then diffidently observed that they “produced a disastrous set of headlines”, as if his own publication hadn’t written any of them, and as if it wasn’t continuing to do so on the very same day Barnes’ piece hit the newsstands.

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From last year, but no less pertinent for it:

“Labour campaigned in Scotland on the basis of being the only party that will stand up to savage Tory cuts in local councils. Whilst the Tories’ vote declined significantly, their influence in Scotland has increased massively due to Labour’s willingness to enter into coalitions with them to keep the SNP out. It goes without saying that this is a complete betrayal of those who thought a Labour vote was an anti-Tory vote.”

(Ben Wray for International Socialist Group.)

1. Scottish Labour says universal free bus travel for pensioners is unaffordable.

2. Scottish Government manages to reduce the cost of universal free bus travel.

3. “CUTS TO CONCESSIONARY TRAVEL WILL HIT HARD-WORKING SCOTS”

4. Repeat ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

There wouldn’t be many people left in the No campaign if these were the rules.

So remember, folks – calling someone a Nazi isn’t political debate. Nazis weren’t comical figures of fun. That sort of poison is “sick abuse and gutter politics”, and must be stamped on if we’re ever to raise the level of debate.

(Another nugget from the Scottish Political Archive.)

It’s almost too easy to take all the cheap shots that David Cameron’s much-trailed, long-awaited speech about UK membership of the EU left open.

From a Scottish perspective it was difficult to suppress a hollow laugh, for example, when the Prime Minister said of some prominent non-EU nations: “I admire those countries and they are friends of ours – but they are very different from us. Norway sits on the biggest energy reserves in Europe, and has a sovereign wealth fund of over €500bn“

It’s also tempting to simply marvel (again) at the mind-boggling witlessness of the “Better Together” campaign, who spent the final weeks of last year hollering from the rooftops about how Scottish independence might bring about the terrifying prospect of Scotland finding itself out of Europe, when they MUST have known that Cameron was about to make that same thing a far more real possibility within the UK than outside it.

(The No camp’s willingness to keep on energetically hurling hefty boomerangs at the independence movement, no matter how many come flying back and hit them in the teeth, is truly one of the wonders of the modern age.)

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We’ve already highlighted the absurdity of the comments made by several Unionist politicians last week (in both the Commons and the Lords) about the Scottish Parliament being “undemocratic” and a “one-man dictatorship”. But we only mentioned Scottish representation in doing so. What about the whole UK?

The majority – 53% – of votes cast by the British electorate in 2010 were worthless, because they were cast for candidates who didn’t win the seat they contested and are therefore simply thrown in the bin by the “first past the post” electoral system. Thousands of people were locked out of polling stations across the country on the evening of the vote, but it didn’t really matter, because statistically speaking their vote would probably have been completely ignored anyway.

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We’re indebted to commenter “DougtheDug” on A Sair Fecht for spotting this one. On Tuesday in the House of Commons section 30 debate, Labour MP Ian Davidson bitterly attacked the Scottish Government for allegedly timing the independence referendum to coincide – at least to within six months – with the 700th anniversary of the Battle Of Bannockburn. (Ignoring the fact that the referendum would have happened years ago had it not been vigorously opposed and blocked by Labour.)

Davidson claimed that the timing amounted to “celebrating the murder of hundreds or thousands of English people“, and accused the SNP of exploiting anti-English sentiment for “partisan advantage”. It was a contemptible enough piece of dog-whistle politics in its own right, but all the more extraordinarily hypocritical in the light of this:

Lurking in the Westminster archives is an Early Day Motion from late 2003, in which Mr Davidson was happy to attach his name to a Parliamentary celebration – tabled by the Conservative MP for Romford, Andrew Rosindell – of what we presume we must call “the murder of hundreds or thousands of French and Spanish people”.

We must admit, we’re a little confused. Apparently openly and explicitly rejoicing at the historic deaths of enemy troops is fine if you’re a British nationalist, but disgusting, racist political chicanery if you’re a Scottish one (even when you’re not actually doing it). Can anyone point us at the rulebook for this sort of thing?

Readers may well recall some very recent analysis we undertook on the Scottish Government’s investment in promoting Scotland abroad, and the huge returns it generated in jobs and tourism. They may also remember that the opposition parties in Holyrood, led by Labour, were incandescent with rage at the “waste” of around £500,000 of taxpayers’ money spent on sending government delegations numbering dozens of people to the USA to undertake the work.

Given the recent revelations that almost half as large a sum – £232,708 – was unnecessarily awarded by Glasgow Labour councillors to a Labour crony who formerly headed a charitable body (over and above a severance pay-off which was already mind-bogglingly generous at £240,000), we wonder if anyone could help us with some info on how many tens of millions of pounds and/or hundreds of jobs the Labour-run council’s expenditure has delivered to Scotland? We can’t seem to find anything.

Writing a site like this is in one sense an exercise in idealistic cognitive dissonance. No matter how often the opposite turns out to be the case, you always sort of hope, deep down, that if you highlight someone’s occasional failings in a calm and factual manner they’ll say “Oh well, that’s a fair cop”, and even if they don’t change their ways they’ll at least acknowledge the validity of legitimate, honest criticism.

But as we say, it rarely turns out that way. Last night we picked up on what was at heart a fairly minor semantic quibble with high-profile Scottish-politics commentator David Torrance, arising from the evening’s edition of Scotland Tonight. He got in touch with us on Twitter almost immediately to object in rather strong terms to our views, and an exchange went on until around 2am when everyone seemingly went to bed.

We thought no more of it, although we hoped this morning that there might be some answers to some questions that Mr Torrance had explicitly invited during the debate. Instead, to our surprise (we know, still) and dismay, not only were none to be found, but the entire discussion – at his end, anyway – had completely vanished.

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This is Labour MSP Michael McMahon in today’s Daily Record:

“Now it seems the official record can be changed at the First Minister’s whim without anyone’s knowledge. Parliament should look to its rules.”

For once, we wholeheartedly agree with Mr McMahon. We can’t abide people quietly rewriting history to pretend they said something other than what they actuallly said.

The Scottish media is in full-on outcry mode at the Scottish Government for keeping things from the Scottish people with regard to the possible status of the country’s EU membership status in the event of independence, and to be fair it’s quite understandable when you read official statements like this:

“Whilst there is a strong public interest in seeing what legal advice has been provided to the Government on the implications of EU membership if Scotland were to achieve independence, we have concluded that this is outweighed by a strong public interest in the Government being able to seek free and frank legal advice.”

Of course, in the spirit of Scottish Labour’s creative editing of the First Minister’s words yesterday, we’ve deftly removed a word from that sentence so that it suits our purposes better. Specifically, in between “has been provided to the” and “Government”, we’ve removed the word “UK”.

We’re really not sure how the UK government’s actions differ in any way from those of the Scottish Government in respect of the same issue, particularly when a Scottish Office minister goes on to add that “I have not received formal representations on the possible status of an independent Scotland within the EU.”

It would seem, to the casual observer, that in both cases the respective governments have declined to seek out specific legal advice about an independent Scotland’s EU status, but have sought to conceal that information (or lack of information) from voters on the grounds that confidentiality ensures the government receives candid expert advice undistorted by public opinion.

So perhaps someone can explain to us why only one of them is currently subject to a huge nationwide media storm about it.

The Herald, 25th January 2012 (“SNP ‘will not use new-found wealth for campaign'”):

“The cash-rich SNP will resist the temptation to flaunt its new-found wealth by raising the limits for campaign spending in the referendum, The Herald understands.

The consultation document being laid out by Alex Salmond today is expected to say that the main campaign on each side should be limited to spending £750,000 – as set out in a consultation paper on a draft referendum Bill two years ago.

There will be a similar section in today’s consultation paper and the SNP’s opponents were looking to cast a keen eye on it, given that the Nationalists have received two huge donations in recent months.

If today’s paper had raised spending limits, opponents could have been expected to cry foul. However, The Herald understands the Government is not planning to go down that road”

The Herald, 22nd October 2012 (“SNP threatens to defy watchdog on vote spend”):

“SNP ministers have been accused of trying to rig the independence referendum by imposing tough spending limits on the pro-UK parties. The SNP Government has proposed the two main campaign organisations, Yes Scotland and Better Together, should be allowed to spend no more than £750,000 in the crucial last 16 weeks of the campaign.

Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Margaret Curran, said: “It didn’t last even a week before the SNP decided to move the goal posts.

“No Government has ever gone against the Electoral Commission’s recommendations and if the SNP doesn’t accept its decision on spending limits in the referendum, then it will be an insult to Scottish democracy.””

Hang on a minute, our heads are spinning.

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