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Wings Over Scotland



Margaret Curran, Buzzfeed User 293

Posted on November 18, 2014 by

…is the phrase that was making us chuckle this morning.

mcbu

It headed an article of disingenuous carping so feeble that we can’t even be bothered archive-linking to it, entitled “Ten SNP Fails Since 2007”, because Margaret is bare down with the kids, innit? But we couldn’t help noticing one of the examples.

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Paint a vulgar picture 293

Posted on October 27, 2014 by

Owen Jones in the Guardian today:

“If Scottish Labour does indeed die, historians will ponder just how the party of Keir Hardie allowed itself to be outflanked on the left by a Scottish National Party committed to George Osborne-style cuts to corporation tax.”

You know where we’re going with this one, right?

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Is that your final answer? 126

Posted on October 21, 2014 by

Here’s Nick Clegg in many of today’s papers:

“Alex Salmond reminds me of a Japanese soldier found in the jungle 20 years after the war had finished, still ducking at every shadow, thinking the war was still on. At some point, you have to call it a day and accept that the people have spoken.

After a ferociously contested referendum that has dominated debate north of the border for years, not just months, there was a pretty emphatic result.

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By way of example 698

Posted on October 08, 2014 by

With reference to our post from earlier today, we couldn’t help but notice Scottish Labour whining loudly this morning about the award of the ScotRail franchise to Dutch state-owned railway company Abellio. (On what sound like very good terms.)

kellywhine

We asked the party’s infrastructure spokesman James Kelly what Labour would have done instead had they been in power, and got no reply. So we went and had a look, and it turned out there was a clear and simple answer.

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Brass neck polished again 130

Posted on September 01, 2014 by

The Daily Record, 27 Aug 2014:

“[Gordon] Brown said SNP proposals to cut corporation tax would benefit large companies, including energy firms.

‘The biggest beneficiaries of the SNP’s tax policy are the shareholders and directors of the privatised energy companies in Scotland,” he said. ‘”When you look at the Scottish National Party policies, inequality and poverty will survive until doomsday if Alex Salmond is all that confronts it.”

And Mr Brown again in the Observer, 31 August 2014:

“You’ve got to look at what the SNP is proposing. They’re dining out on Scottish traditions of equality to suggest that Scotland will always be more just in the policies we implement, but their only tax proposal is to cut corporation tax for the richest companies in the country.

They want to cut corporation tax by 3p in the pound. That’s less for health and pensions, not more.”

Veteran readers will know where we’re going next.

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Lie back and think of England 117

Posted on August 10, 2014 by

Any enterprise as crass, witless and poorly-thought-out as Dan Snow’s “Let’s Stay Together” campaign – funded by the same man who gives millions to murderous war criminals and populated by a curious mix of billionaire Tories, Sirs, Lords, Baronesses and Z-list nobodies – will always create all manner of hostages to fortune.

We’ve already mentioned David Starkey, who felt able to pledge his love to Scotland despite having previously called it a “feeble little country” obsessed with the “deeply boring provincial poet Burns” and “the awful bagpipe”. The “celebrity” list also featured Ross Kemp (who previously likened Glasgow to a third-world warzone) and the deeply unpleasant right-wing columnist Rod Liddle, who opined in 2010 that:

“The only reason any people remain in Scotland is on account of the extremely cheap alcohol available in supermarkets, plus a ready supply of heroin for when the alcohol runs out.”

And then there was “hard man” actor and bookies’ shill Ray Winstone.

raywinstone3

Quite a few people picked up on Winstone’s appearance last year as the guest host of “Have I Got News For You”, in which he trotted out a list of tired stereotypes and suggested Scotland should “bugger off”. But as we noted at the time, HIGNFY is a comedy show produced by public schoolboys for whom patronising the “Jocks” is second nature and not worth getting worked up about.

What bothers us a little more is Ray’s view on the country he wants Scots to stay in.

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A strangely familiar ring 132

Posted on July 31, 2014 by

This is Andy Burnham, Labour’s shadow health secretary, earlier this week:

“‘Commissioners have been ordered to put all services out to the market, NHS spending on private and other providers has gone through the £10bn barrier for the first time.

When did the British public ever give their consent for this? It is indefensible for the character of the country’s most valued institution to be changed in this way without the public being given a say.’

Mr Burnham has written to the boss of NHS England, Simon Stevens, to call for a pause in privatisation unless patient safety or service is at risk.”

And here’s a press release from the Unite trade union in 2009, when Labour were in power and Mr Burnham actually was the Health Secretary:

‘Roll back the privatisation of the NHS, Andy’

Unite presented a letter signed by 3,000 NHS members to the Department of Health today (Wednesday, 26 August), calling on health secretary Andy Burnham to halt the privatisation of the health service.

The [letter] was part of Unite’s Health B4 Profit campaign designed to preserve the NHS as ‘a publicly owned, publicly accountable, universal and comprehensive health service managed and run for the public good’.

Unite said that an estimated £20 billion would be spent on creating the bureaucratic market infrastructure for privatisation – money that could be better spent on frontline services.

Karen Reay said: ‘Today, we are asking Andy Burnham to protect the heart and soul of the NHS in England and roll back these costly and dangerous plans.

The continuing vicious attacks by vested interests on President Obama over his plans to provide healthcare for the estimated 47 million Americans currently without this safety net is a stark warning of what awaits British citizens, if the mercenary forces of privatisation are allowed to triumph.'”

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What could have been and what was 299

Posted on July 17, 2014 by

Alert readers might be thinking that headline sounds vaguely familiar and they’d be right, because we published a post two months ago with a similar title, highlighting the curiously inverse relationship between media scare stories about alleged abuse in the referendum campaign for which there’s no evidence whatsoever and actual abuse that really happened.

menace1

We were put in mind of it this week, after the Daily Record ran a particularly barrel-scraping “vile cybernats” piece about how a Labour activist from England got a little bit of extremely mild stick on Twitter after announcing he was on his way to Scotland to stick his nose in the independence debate, and how he WORRIED that he might meet a hostile reception at the railway station (although of course, and happily, he didn’t).

“Better Together” campaign leaders Blair McDougall and Alistair Darling constantly demand that the Yes campaign, and Alex Salmond in particular, takes responsibility for and action against random online nutters behaving in abusive or threatening ways, even when those people have no discernible connection to Yes Scotland or the SNP.

But they’re less keen on putting their own house in order.

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As you would be done by 171

Posted on July 14, 2014 by

Below is a clip from the short report on social media in the independence referendum that appeared on tonight’s STV News, and will apparently also air on Scotland Tonight. (You can see the whole thing here.)

Like every other media report of our article about Alex Johnstone MSP, it omits the bit where we explained WHY we called him some rude names, but in this case we’re happy to accept that that was for reasons of time.

The more interesting bit is Johnstone’s own comments, because the MSP’s reaction is a breathtaking piece of hypocritical dishonesty that seems to us to be entirely in keeping with the character of the man.

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That pesky vortex again 195

Posted on July 10, 2014 by

Kudos is due to the Daily Record today, which has a large and prominent feature about NHS surgeon Dr Philippa Whitford, with whom readers should be familiar. Her message, from a position of knowledge and authority, of the fate awaiting the NHS on both sides of the border is a powerful one and makes a strong case for a Yes vote.

Obviously, that upsets both Labour and the No campaign very much.

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We’re confused about the rules again 134

Posted on July 07, 2014 by

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.

mandyswa

But there was something else that had us puzzled.

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Through the vortex again 111

Posted on June 30, 2014 by

It feels almost insulting to you to even mention this, readers, so we’ll be brief.

Balls seeks to reassure business by pledging to maintain low rate of corporation tax

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