Wings Over Scotland

…they say, is timing. Alert readers may have noticed that Scottish Labour have spent all day on a cheap smear attempt against SNP Cowdenbeath by-election candidate Natalie McGarry, based on a couple of personal Twitter comments she made two years ago that were mildly critical of teachers, and which Labour had evidently rather creepily kept on file for all that time just in case she was ever selected to fight a seat.

“How DARE she attack our heroic, flawless and infinitely mighty educators?” had been the line since early this morning, issued alongside the uncompromisingly righteous hashtag #ContemptForTeachers. (Although all Ms McGarry had actually said was that teachers do a good job but liked to moan a bit, which isn’t terribly contemptuous.)

So there was a certain inevitability that the hapless, bumbling D-listers of Labour’s northern branch office would be swiftly humiliated by their UK masters yet again.

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What a week it’s been for respect. Here’s today’s Telegraph:

Maybe when you’re on holiday it doesn’t count or something.

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We don’t normally set a lot of store by them, but this one’s a peach:

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We’ve rather neglected the Crybaby Nation meme for a while. But as it approaches a year since the last time we wrote about it, perhaps it’s due for a revival.

Because it’s extra-specially dismal to see grown adults whimpering and whining like primary-school children in a playground when the Scottish press has spent most of the preceding weeks excitably hyping them as belligerent, aggressive “bruisers”.

Because in what appears to be part of a co-ordinated campaign of petted-lip clyping to teacher from the No camp, the latest middle-aged professional politician boo-hooing about “bullies” all over our newspapers and screens about people being mean to him is the new Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael.

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We forget who, but someone we read this week – in the Herald, we think – referenced a line spoken by Jennifer Aniston’s character in an old episode of Friends (which we’ve managed to identify as S02E01, “The One With Ross’s New Girlfriend”):

“When I saw him get off that plane with her, I really thought I just hit rock bottom. But today, it’s like there’s rock bottom, then 50 feet of crap, then me.”

We were put in mind of it by something in this afternoon’s Guardian.

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Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond on independence in the Mail on Sunday:

“It is a real dagger poised at the heart of Scotland’s industrial infrastructure.”

And here’s our old pal Adolf “One Nation” Hitler in 1938, before his first invasion:

“Czechoslovakia is a dagger pointed at the heart of Germany.”

It’s looking increasingly as if someone at “Better Together” got a copy of “Speak Like A Nazi” for their birthday. We await their increased abrasiveness with some concern.

In a piece entitled “Scottish Labour leader says nationalism is a virus”, the Courier yesterday reported that Johann Lamont’s speech to the Labour conference “appeared to allude to the European 20th century fascist movement”.

And it did, although perhaps not in the way the Courier probably meant.

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Well, it’s been quite a week, readers. Over the course of the last seven days, Wings Over Scotland – and in particular myself, as its editor – has been subjected to an unprecedented series of smear attacks from several groups of alarmingly angry people, from “Better Together” activists (sometimes in unholy alliance with a small handful of confused, naive young SNP student sorts) to senior Scottish journalists, failed Tory election candidates, psychopathic stalkers and Rangers supporters.

I’ve personally been called – in the space of just that single week – homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, racist, disablist, ageist, fascist, sectarian, a rape apologist, anti-English, anti-Welsh and a hate-preaching bigot. All are entirely untrue, of course.

(Just about the only people I’m apparently NOT prejudiced against are left-handed unicycling vegan budgie-owners from Fermanagh. Which is doubly ironic, because I really loathe those smug, cack-fisted carrot-munchers.)

If you want to know why, look below.

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We’ve recently been documenting the No campaign’s increasingly-panicked attempts to avoid, or entirely shut down, the Scottish independence debate by various means.

We were on the sharp end of it again last night, as the usual small group of frothing extremist BritNats and psychopathic stalkers (accompanied this time by a tiny handful of “useful idiots” from the SNP’s youth wing) tried to smear and discredit this site by crudely misrepresenting things I’ve said in a personal capacity over a number of years.

But it’s not just us the anti-independence camp is trying to muzzle.

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This site spends much of its time highlighting major outbreaks of misrepresentation, spin, distortion and outright lying in the Scottish and UK media. Readers will be aware that we very rarely find ourselves short of material.

Which means that we don’t often have time to report the small stuff.

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We were struck by a curious vision when watching Thursday’s edition of Scotland Tonight. The show bizarrely chose to focus its attention on the manufactured outrage about Elliot Bulmer’s article for the Herald, with the alleged serious criminal offence which led to the “revelation” reduced to a minor incidental footnote.

And we found ourselves wondering what would have happened if the producers had gotten their scripts mixed up, and treated the other big news story of the day – the conviction of MSP Bill Walker for a string of domestic assaults on family members between 1967 and 1995 – the way it handled the Yes Scotland hacking story.

We think it might have gone a bit like this.

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We had an interesting discussion on Twitter this afternoon with the Guardian’s Severin Carrell. As a result, we decided to check something out that we hadn’t seen anyone be clear about, and the upshot is that we can now confirm, from what we’ll call “an extremely well-placed source”, that the Herald was fully aware, every step of the way, that Elliot Bulmer’s piece had been commissioned by Yes Scotland, and that it was submitted to the Herald through Yes Scotland.

It was, therefore, solely and exclusively the Herald’s responsibility to disclose, or not disclose, anything and everything to do with the article’s provenance that it considered pertinent. The Herald chose to publish the piece (having no obligation to do so). The Herald knew precisely where it came from and by what route. The Herald chose not to mention the Yes Scotland connection (which it was also under no obligation to do). Yes Scotland, and Elliot Bulmer, hid nothing from anyone.

Them’s the facts. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying. That is all.