What Alistair Darling Said. There’s a considerable amount of uncertainty currently flying around on the internet with regards to Alistair Darling’s comments in an interview with the New Statesman which was published on the magazine’s website yesterday. There seems to be no dispute that the “Better Together” leader compared Alex Salmond to dead North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, adding his name to the illustrious pantheon of Unionist politicians and journalists who’ve likened Scotland’s democratically-elected First Minister to a series of genocidal murderers. There is, however, something of a grey area around whether Mr Darling also accused the entire SNP of promoting “blood-and-soil nationalism” - an extremely offensive term normally used in reference to Nazi Germany, where it translated as “Blut und Boden”.
Well, let us clear that up for you. Yes, he did. “NS: Salmond has successfully redefined the SNP as [representing] a civic nationalism . . .Darling: Which it isn’t . . .NS: But that’s what he says it is. Panic stations. When we started the week with news of the UK government’s statement on debt, we wondered aloud whether it would be a game-changing moment. Judging by the No camp’s reaction since then, shrieking and flailing and lashing out blindly in all directions simultaneously, our question’s been answered. It’s been hard to keep track of it all, but we’ll have a go. The most spectacular outbreak has been in the Telegraph, where complete insanity has taken hold. Today’s paper carries a full-blown tinfoil-hat frothing-at-the-mouth rant from columnist Damian Thompson. At first it looks like it’s going to be another tired run-through of the SNP’s supposedly Nazi history from the 1930s, but in fact turns quickly into something much more demented and sinister, openly claiming the current party – and Alex Salmond in particular – to be fascists.
“If Scotland votes for independence, will its government confiscate the estates of English landowners? Quite the picture, isn’t it? And he’s hardly alone. The ultimate weapon. Unleashing a firestorm. It’s not as if the Financial Times doesn’t have history with dropping great big payloads of high explosive into the middle of the independence debate late on a Sunday night. But a piece coming up in Monday’s edition (and online tonight) is going to choke a few breakfasts in London tomorrow morning. It’s not the information in itself that’s new. Most of it is stuff the likes of this site have been screaming for the last two years. But the starkness of the language, and more pertinently the source of it, is going to rock the boat some and no mistake.
“An independent Scotland could also expect to start with healthier state finances than the rest of the UK”, for example, is not what we tend to hear from the UK media. The article is illustrated with some commendably clear graphics, but the one above in particular is simply dynamite. Based on the current total Scottish budget (Scottish Government and UK government) of around £64bn, that’s somewhere in the vicinity of £7 billion a year. The crushing of a people. The following paragraph closes an article in today’s Observer.
“Kelly Gibson, 36, a homeless Big Issue seller on busy Sauchiehall Street, perhaps summed it up best: ‘I think that maybe we’ve got too much to lose. If they can’t explain to me how Scotland will be richer, how do I know that I will be better off?’” We’re almost lost for words. But not quite. For decades and centuries within the Union, the Scottish people have been belittled as too wee, too poor and too stupid to run their own affairs. Even the No campaign no longer tries – as policy, at least – to claim that Scotland would be an economic basket case. And now so ingrained into Scottish DNA is this cancer of cringing inferiority that even a homeless Big Issue seller, with no detectable sense of irony, will allow himself be quoted saying he has “too much to lose”.
(Like what? We could weep, readers. To a grouse. The bully pulpit. It’s mainly hilarious, if we’re being honest. Today’s hysterical “unmasking” of “cybernats” (in fact a collection of perfectly normal and varied people, using the internet under their real names and mainly with photographs of themselves) by the Scottish Daily Mail as part of its ongoing “Cybernat Watch” smear campaign is like a one-stop beginner’s guide to the paper’s lurid sub-tabloid modus operandi. But much as we chuckle, there are deeply sinister undercurrents to the article. We’ve attached the entire text of the piece in its full deranged glory below as an appendix.
But it’s worth pulling out a few highlights. “HUNCHED in front of the flickering computer screen, Brendan Hynes is hard at work, despite the late hour. A lovely piece of pure fantasy to start us off. “But Hynes – and many like him – are turning Twitter and other online forums into ‘no-go zones’ for those who want to engage in a rational debate on the country’s future.”
This is a weird angle. Intriguing phrasing there. Practice over. Okay. We’re done warming up. Time to go for it properly. Those stats aren’t too shabby, folks. Over the course of 2013, over 700,000 unique readers visited Wings Over Scotland at least once, reading over 16 million articles between them. That’s a pretty serious reach. The burden of providing the Scottish people with the truth about independence has largely fallen on websites and doorknockers. It’s no small task for the tiny handful of people manning a few websites to combat the massed ranks of the mainstream political media – hundreds strong, well-connected and well-funded, and spewing misinformation, distortion and smears right into people’s faces seven days a week. This year we’re going to redouble our efforts, because this is the year that really matters. 700,000 is far too big a number to be sneeringly dismissed as a bunch of internet bampots preaching to the converted.
You’ve done an amazing job of spreading the word. Because this is it. They’re right to be. One day in May. There are now just fewer than nine months to go until the referendum that will decide Scotland’s future. But in those 260 or so days, there will be one that more than any other is likely to shape the outcome, and curiously it’s one in which few people in Scotland will actually be very interested. But the election, which takes place (on 22 May) almost exactly halfway between now and the referendum, will have a huge impact on UK politics, and the corresponding knock-on effect could decide which way Scotland swings in September. It won’t have anything to do with who wins the six Scottish seats, which are currently split two each for the SNP and Labour (despite the SNP getting almost 50% more votes) and one each to the Tories and Lib Dems.
With the elections conducted by PR, massive changes are unlikely. Rather, it’s the results in England that will define the political climate in which the referendum will be held. There are two things worthy of note. Nigel Farage knows this only too well. Vote No or the women and children get it. So, Ruth Davidson’s been digging herself a big hole on Twitter since yesterday. We’ve been trying unsuccessfully since last night to find any of these “cabernats” [sic] who’ve supposedly been “outraged” by Mr Hague’s comments.
As yet we haven’t managed to locate a single tweet complaining about them. But Davidson’s remarks piqued our curiosity about what Hague had actually said, since we hadn’t yet seen the speech he’ll be giving in Scotland today. So we went and tracked it down, and suddenly we found ourselves outraged. “In March last year, I visited a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet some of the 200,000 women and children who are victims of warzone rape in that country.” We’re sure that cheered them right up. “Since then, and after a sustained diplomatic effort, 70% of the member states of the United Nations have endorsed a declaration to end these abhorrent crimes.
All tip-top stuff. Poor old Nelson. Silence? Wait, what? “but our strength lies in our unity. The tumbleweed express. We were expecting the turnout for the No campaign’s Great Train Mobbery to be a lot better for the afternoon session, on account of the fact that nobody would have to get up at 6am to go and leaflet a dark, freezing-cold railway station. The opposite turned out to be true. The above image is of Barrhead station, which our spotter reported completely free of “Better Together” leaflet squads at the allotted 5pm-6pm “event” timeslot.
It wasn’t the only one. Of 39 stations due to be pamphleted by eager No volunteers at various times in the afternoon and evening, we had confirmed no-shows at a whopping 16: Alexandra ParadeAviemoreBarrheadBishopbriggs CuparDalryDingwall Fort MatildaHamilton WestInschInverkeithingKirkcaldyLeuchars LinlithgowPattertonPrestonpans That’s barely over a 50% hit rate, which is pretty grim. (This seems a good moment to thank all our wonderful readers who braved the cold and wind and rain to go out and do the Scottish media’s job for it. The Wings Pantomime 2013: Cindyrella. (Enter Nae Buttons, wearing a pageboy uniform and a tuba.) NB: Hello, small, insignificant people CHILDREN OF SCOTLAND: Boo! Hiss! Gerroff! NB: Oh, I don’t care what you think. (Enter wicked stepmother, Mrs Darling.) MRS D: Have you done what I asked? NB: Yes, I have it right here, Ma’am. (He tips a bag out of the tuba, which is labelled ‘Nat Poison’) MRS D: Excellent. BB: Yes, well, sort of…. MRS D: What’s that? NB: All I could find, Ma’am.
MRS D: Won’t he go limp? NB: I wouldn’t like to say Ma’am; I don’t go in for that sort of thing. MRS D: I meant in the rain, you buffoon! NB: It calls for help. MRS D: Useless! (Cindyrella enters She’s dressed in a ragged, stained saltire and carries a clearly well-worn bucket and broom.) MRS D: Is the kitchen clean? CINDYRELLA: Yes, ma’am. MRS D: That’s good. CINDYRELLA: Please, ma’am – my work is all done. MRS D: Honestly, child what a question! CINDYRELLA: But what about the sizeable inheritance my mother, Northcelia, left me?
MRS D: Don’t be ridiculous! Captainsanta. The reverse apology. We weren’t going to post today, but we couldn’t let this one just sneak past under the cover of Christmas, because the way the story has evolved this week says so much about how the pro-Union media operates and what we’re up against. That’s the delightful Fraser Nelson, unfathomably-accented editor of right-wing commentary magazine The Spectator and the living embodiment of our own Sir Jock Finlay-Urquhart-Duncan in his youth. A couple of days ago Mr Nelson wrote the most extraordinary leader column for the magazine, and then things unfolded. Below is an extract from the article in question. “The SNP haven’t yet said who would qualify for their passport, and for a reason. They want to make out that they’d give it to pretty much anyone who’d passed through Scotland, even those (like me) under suspicion of conservatism.
But to admit so now would mean having to explain why people who’d qualify for Scottish citizenship later are not given a vote now. But that’s not even the interesting bit. Vote No or the women and children get it. The dirty game. “There’ll be nae books or pencils fur Our Lady’s High School if the SNP gets in here.” I heard those words first-hand at a door in Motherwell some years ago. But let me give you some context first. Lots of people reading this in parts of Scotland will have no idea about what I’m about to describe here so I’d better establish my credentials and provide some background. I contested council seats for the SNP in Lanarkshire on four occasions, was SNP PPC (Prospective Parliamentary Candidate) for Hamilton for a period, and I was SNP election agent for Winnie Ewing in 1970 and for Jimmy Wright in Motherwell South as we fought to save Ravenscraig in the 80s.
After running Labour to 16 votes at one council election I was approached by a deputation and asked to stand for the party at the next council election (they were annual in those days) – a probable shoo-in. But I’ve never had any burning desire to be a local councillor so I resisted the offer. But here’s the point. But I digress. Information retrieval. Someone asked us yesterday for some facts and figures to help them with a debate, and it got us remembering one that we never see being brought up, perhaps because it’s buried in the archives of the Herald under Sport > SPL > Aberdeen (no, really). It’s a piece that pre-dates the Scottish Parliament (and is written in a style that makes it seem older still), but it’s a complete mess of broken formatting, clearly the victim of numerous website redesigns, and painfully hard to read even when rescued from behind the paper’s paywall.
So we’re going to preserve it for posterity here in a cleaned-up, more user-friendly presentation, because it’s pretty much dynamite. (Right-click to enlarge these images, or left-click to go to the Hansard page.) As you can see, and as mentioned in the article, the chart lists Scotland’s allocated share of the UK deficit as 17.9% for every year. The chart below is the corrected set of figures released by Waldegrave in March 1997. (Prof. It’s just a bit of fun. As we’ve been poring over old opinion polls today, we thought we may as well share this with you. We make no suggestions that it proves anything about anything, it’s just fascinating. (It is to us, anyway, because the alternative is Strictly Come Dancing.) It’s hopefully pretty self-explanatory. It charts the SNP’s lead (or, for much of the time, otherwise) in Holyrood opinion polling in the 16 months leading up to the 2011 Scottish election. And it’s interesting to ponder the timing of some of its peaks and troughs.
The first thing to note is that there was, as far as we can gather, no polling conducted at all between 26 March and 9 August in 2010, yet in that time the SNP plunged from a 3-point lead to a 14-point deficit. We can’t think of any other major political events of that summer to explain the dramatic 17-point collapse in support – the controversial release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, for example, had taken place in August 2009. That’s not a rhetorical question, incidentally. The picture spin quiz. When an alert reader pointed us to a story yesterday in the comments, we were too busy to get round to covering it and now all the mainstream media has picked it up and we’re behind the times. But having looked at the media’s reporting of it, we couldn’t help noticing something strange. Can anyone spot the word that’s curiously missing from all these headlines, straplines and opening paragraphs? Got it yet? When oil is volatile and running out, it’s in Scotland.
When it’s the source of a £200bn “bonanza”, hey, look what country it belongs to again all of a sudden. £200bn over 20 years is £10bn a year. Allocating the appropriate geographic share would, very roughly speaking, double the average annual revenue coming in to an independent Scottish Treasury from the North Sea, comfortably plugging Scotland’s entire deficit of £3.4bn with billions left over. King of the palefaces. Burning the lifeboats. The Ballad Of Naughty Jim. Stalling for time. A gun to Govan’s head. Scorched Ayrth. The in-betweeners. Then they come to fight you. Filling in the blanks. Quoted for irony. The power of six. The silenced socialists. Taking the plunge. The keepers of the gate. The morality of Madland. Poll-tergeists. Woman confused about location.
Deserving of pity. The war of the worlds. In, out, and shaking it all about. Poll-tergeists. What they left out. Unclouding the truth. Talent borrows, genius steals. Smoke without fire. Vote No, close Holyrood. The fifth column. The pride of Britain. The curse of volatility. Just for the record. 60 seconds into the future. One nation under a jaikit. Without frontiers. Knockout stages extended. Word and picture association. Why austerity is forever. We paid for this. Time for reflection. Legal correspondence. Just checking. Labour devolution plans explained. Czechs in the post. Arbroath smokies and mirrors. The Abstainers. Would you like to know more?
The grass roots of independence. The clean slate. The Giga-Lie. An open question to the Scottish media. Pretending to see the future. Klingons on the starboard bow. A letter to Tony Benn. A little less conversation. A letter to a Unionist. Why Labour doesn’t need Scotland. The Scotsman backs Al-Qaeda. Why only independence can save our NHS. How soon is now? Captain Darling sounds a retreat. Labour’s great victory. Putting the boot in.
Meltdown man. The great backpedal. Ian Davidson calls for second question. Those vile cybernats. The great betrayal. Have the Unionists finally gone mad? Why Labour doesn’t need Scotland. Weekend essay: “Skintland”, Darien and the mythology of the BritNats. Johann Lamont does not speak for us. Here are 42 people who do. Revealed at last: the positive case. How to win independence with one picture. Storm weathered, minor damage. Labour’s solidarity narrative. Scotland’s other shame. An open letter to Johann Lamont. Alex Salmond Dictator-Comparison Bingo! Under the bridge. Labour fury as Salmond endorses Hitler.