Wings Over Scotland

One of the main strengths of the No campaign in the independence referendum was that it had an efficient production line for “truthiness”. Best known as a concept from the US satirical TV show The Colbert Report, the term means things that SOUND as if they’re true, and which people will therefore be inclined to believe, even though they fall apart under any factual scrutiny.

One good example is shown above. The facts on the graphic are individually true, and convey – without ever actually saying so explicitly – the message that Scotland is subsidised by the UK to the tune of £7.6bn a year.

But that message, despite being implied through exclusively true facts, ISN’T true, because the extra “spending” on Scotland is actually borrowing, which Scotland has to pay back. The real truth is that the figures on the left are accurate, and that Scotland heavily subsidises the rest of the UK.

But to walk someone through even the basic explanation of that is quite complicated and involved, whereas the original message is punchy and SOUNDS true. The simpler something is the more people want to believe it, so the implicit lie on the graphic is difficult to dislodge from their minds once it’s in there.

(It works especially well if the media is overwhelmingly on the side of those creating the misleading impression, because they can count on the fact that the mainstream press won’t run any analysis pointing out the flaws in the argument, and the only people who’ll ever encounter the explanation are those who actively seek it out.)

Truthiness, then, is a very powerful tool.

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There’s been much discussion in the press lately about Jim Murphy’s plan to change the elusive Scottish Labour “constitution”, a document almost nobody has ever seen and which most people didn’t know even existed until a few weeks ago.

Naturally we were curious to have a wee look, so when we stumbled across a page on the Electoral Commission website which said it held copies of party constitutions and provided them on request, we thought we’d take a shot on the off-chance. We weren’t at all surprised by the reply:

“the Commission does not hold a constitution for the Scottish Labour Party per se, since they are not separately registered with us. The Labour Party is registered for GB as a whole.”

But then an alert reader asked the EC a smarter question.

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The media is aflame today with the claim that Jim Murphy has finally ended weeks of speculation about whether he’ll stand again for his current Westminster seat of East Renfrewshire in the general election. Numerous sources including STV, the BBC, the Scotsman and Murphy’s local press have all announced unequivocally that the MP has confirmed his candidacy.

The only slight hitch is that he’s done absolutely no such thing.

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Below is a clip from today’s “Morning Call” on BBC Radio Scotland. Speaking (from 16m 24s on the full show) are SNP MSP Mark McDonald, presenter Kaye Adams and Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald. There are a couple of noteworthy moments.

A caller named “George” had rung in concerned that the SNP might be giving up on their goal of independence, and Adams invited Mark McDonald to set his mind at rest. Here’s what happened in the next three minutes.

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We’re still supposed to be on a skeleton service for the festive period, but we couldn’t just let this one slide. The cashflow problems at the Labour Party must be more severe than previously thought, because the entire organisation seems to be sharing a single email account. We got yet another begging letter today, from the same address previously named as “Iain McNicol” and “Ed Miliband”, but today’s one was credited to shadow women’s minister Gloria De Piero.

Alert readers will recognise the appeal as one we’ve been watching for 11 days now. It’s an attempt by the UK party to raise some cash to employ 10 campaign assistants specifically for Scottish Labour. The jobs are still openly listed as such on the Labour website’s situations-vacant page. Yet the party seems oddly reluctant to say so.

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We missed this on Sunday, because it was 17 minutes into on the short-lived and unlamented “Crossfire” (now binned for a Sunday edition of “Good Morning Scotland”) and therefore pretty much everyone in Scotland missed it. It’s former Labour minister Helen Liddell, or as we should properly address her, Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke.

We’ve spared you her subsequent painful bleating about a general election 35 years ago that she doesn’t seem to have quite gotten over, but we couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at her curious assessment of the referendum result, which we suspect fellow guest Andrew “Lallands Peat Worrier” Tickell was simply too stunned to react to.

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Libby Brooks in today’s Guardian:

“The recently elected leader of Scottish Labour, Jim Murphy, faces a daunting challenge to lift his party’s fortunes before next May’s general election as a poll shows support for Labour in Scotland is now half of that for the SNP.

A Survation poll for Monday’s Daily Record, the first to be released since Murphy’s election on 13 December, found that 48% of Scottish voters plan to support the SNP in May, and 24% Labour.

The swing implied by the figures suggests that as many 10 Labour seats [sic] could fall to the SNP.”

But that’s not what the figures suggest at all.

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By now readers will probably be familiar with STV News reporter Stephen Daisley’s superbly withering review of Alan Cochrane’s referendum diaries. One quote from the book aroused particular interest:

“There are one or two interesting tidbits. He shares a story that Bank of England governor Mark Carney fired a warning shot at Alex Salmond when he came to Edinburgh for their landmark meeting. 

According to Cochrane, the Canadian economist told the First Minister: ‘I’m only here for one day, Alex, but don’t f— with me or I’ll be up here a lot more often.’“

But did that really happen?

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Political etiquette is a funny thing. Should some of the more vocal supporters of a Yes vote dare to express any degree of satisfaction at a couple of dozen journalists’ jobs being lost on a Unionist newspaper, social media is suddenly aflame with pious, angry lectures about the poor taste of rejoicing in others’ unemployment – regardless of whether it might perhaps have been caused by the paper’s own unethical actions.

But when tens of thousands of blameless oil workers face unemployment just before Christmas, it’s proving all but impossible for Unionists to keep a lid on their glee.

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This is a headline from Thursday’s Guardian:

You all know how it works by now, right?

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It’s still Jim Murphy Day here at Wings (did you all get nice presents?), but we’re as sick as you are of hearing him avoid questions about devolution, so instead we’re going to take a look at something else he said this afternoon.

“Mr Murphy said that, under his leadership, ‘Scottish Labour would introduce a 50% tax rate for people in Scotland earning more than £150,000 per year’.

‘We believe that those who can afford it should pay a little more. There are 16,000 people in Scotland earning more than £150,000 and increasing the highest rate of tax from 45% to 50% would raise around £250m.'”

£250 million? We’re sure it used to be rather less than that.

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