Positive v Negative
Kevin McKenna writes regularly for the Observer newspaper and he's not always my cup of tea - I have to admit.
But in a comment piece last week - to give credit where it's due - Kevin took a stick to the ridiculous scare tactics favoured by the Better Together campaign in the long run in to next year's referendum on Scottish independence.
Whether Scotland votes Yes or No in September 2014 remains to be seen - but once thing seems certain to me even this far out - and that is that the SNP will continue to dominate Scottish politics once the referendum is over.
Because labour and the other opposition parties have almost nothing positive to offer - and that's where Kevin McKenna hits the nail squarely on the head.
Scottish Nationalists can rest easy, given the opposition
The Better Together campaign uses the sort of propaganda you normally only see when a country is gearing up to invade
By Kevin McKenna
Alistair Darling, leader of the Better Together campaign. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Wearied frustration usually follows when another civic panjandrum takes on a company directorship paying a six-figure sum for two days a month. Then you remember that Willie Rennie MSP is paid £75,000 a year, plus expenses, to lead the Scottish Liberal Democrats, a party of hidden shallows. There can be fewer more irrelevant jobs in Scotland. This is why, presumably, the referendum on Scottish independence has been embraced by Mr Rennie. It has given him a release from his otherwise pointless political existence. Only rarely does he fail to return a call when the pro-union press are seeking to give the independence campaign another kicking.
One of these opportunities presented itself last week with the Observer's revelation that the SNP was considering asking a towering Scottish literary figure, such as Willie McIlvanney, to provide a bit of literary finery to its white paper on Scottish independence, due to be published in November. As political tales go, it wasn't what some might call a "game-changer", nor was it even overtly political in itself. It was simply an imaginative attempt to inject a bit of colour and drama into a document that would otherwise be laden with economic theory and legal ephemera and framed in the dismal argot of the Scottish civil service. Predictably, Rennie and a couple of Labour backwoodsmen talked of fiction.
Such a word, though, might more accurately be deemed to be more characteristic of the unionists, whose recent efforts have grown increasingly more shrill and unhinged. The following day, Paul Sinclair, the chief spin doctor of Labour leader, Johann Lamont, described the first minister of Scotland an "arse" in response to him being photographed with Phil Mickelson, the winner of the Scottish Open golf championship.
Perhaps Mr Sinclair, an otherwise honest chap, was simply bored twiddling his thumbs as his boss was told to take a wee rest by London Labour as it sought to ensure no wretched socialist would represent the party of the people in Falkirk.
A few days later, Mr Salmond was being ridiculed in the Daily Record for his serious error of judgment in writing to several Scottish sporting figures, including Andy Murray, congratulating them on their recent successes. Apparently, the fact that replies from said superstars came there none made the first minister look like a fool. A real issue would have arisen, though, if Mr Salmond hadn't written to them.
And such was the cry over his saltire incident at Wimbledon that anyone else might think Scotland had been placed under martial law that banned the waving of the national flag in public places. For centuries, though, England has existed in a constant of febrile jingoism conducted through endless royal celebrations and displays of military strength as a means of achieving the almost universal deference that is required to underpin the most elitist society in Europe.
Over the last two weeks, the narrative of the Better Together campaign suggests that Scotland will revert to the days when we were painting our faces and living in forests if we opt for independence. Roaming mobile phone charges will be greater, despite the European Union signalling its intention to scrap them. The cost of decommissioning Trident will cost so many billions that Scotland's economy will be reduced to the size of Haiti's. (An independent report a few days later revealed that the true cost of decommissioning will be a fraction of this.) Anyway, if that were to happen, the MoD suggested it would get together over brandies at White's and simply annex Faslane. I very much doubt that, though, for by then Britain's armed forces will be stretched to the limit fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the Falkland Islands and possibly Rockall.
Another favourite phantom from the Better Together camp is that there will be border controls between Scotland and England, secured, presumably, by mustachioed men with peaked caps wearing mirrored shades and smoking Henri Wintermans. That was somewhat undermined last week when it emerged that the UK and Irish governments plan to strengthen the common travel area, which enables Irish and UK citizens to travel freely between both jurisdictions.
We were also told that the SNP's predictions of an oil-rich future for Scotland were a cruel confidence trick. Such is the downward spiral of projected North Sea oil revenues over the next 50 years that an independent Scotland could be left looking into an economic black hole of gigantic proportions – anywhere between £11bn and £20bn if the Office for Budget Responsibility is to be believed.
We'll leave aside the fact that anyone who feels they can predict the price or even the pricing patterns of oil at any time over the next 30-odd years probably also can predict when the Martians are coming back to reclaim Atlantis. Presumably, also, the Office for Budget Responsibility is still having a right good word with itself for failing to predict the global credit crisis and the consequences of our biggest banks playing Russian roulette with the country's money.
My socialist tendencies are still deep-rooted and the humane imperative of each of us to fight for a justice and peace for those who are denied them all over the world still sits uncomfortably with the concept of going it alone to achieve these things in an independent Scotland. But the endless narrative of Scots in the unionist camp that Scotland without England is a barely functioning economic husk is driving me and many others into the Scottish Nationalist camp.
It's the sort of propaganda that you would normally expect to see when one country is gearing up to declare war on another or perhaps invade them. Yet is it being mouthed by Scots who purport to love their own country.
We are still 14 months away from the referendum on Scottish independence. At this rate, the No campaigners will be claiming that the deaths of our first born will occur in an independent Scotland. Not long after the plagues of frogs, boils and locusts.
One of these opportunities presented itself last week with the Observer's revelation that the SNP was considering asking a towering Scottish literary figure, such as Willie McIlvanney, to provide a bit of literary finery to its white paper on Scottish independence, due to be published in November. As political tales go, it wasn't what some might call a "game-changer", nor was it even overtly political in itself. It was simply an imaginative attempt to inject a bit of colour and drama into a document that would otherwise be laden with economic theory and legal ephemera and framed in the dismal argot of the Scottish civil service. Predictably, Rennie and a couple of Labour backwoodsmen talked of fiction.
Such a word, though, might more accurately be deemed to be more characteristic of the unionists, whose recent efforts have grown increasingly more shrill and unhinged. The following day, Paul Sinclair, the chief spin doctor of Labour leader, Johann Lamont, described the first minister of Scotland an "arse" in response to him being photographed with Phil Mickelson, the winner of the Scottish Open golf championship.
Perhaps Mr Sinclair, an otherwise honest chap, was simply bored twiddling his thumbs as his boss was told to take a wee rest by London Labour as it sought to ensure no wretched socialist would represent the party of the people in Falkirk.
A few days later, Mr Salmond was being ridiculed in the Daily Record for his serious error of judgment in writing to several Scottish sporting figures, including Andy Murray, congratulating them on their recent successes. Apparently, the fact that replies from said superstars came there none made the first minister look like a fool. A real issue would have arisen, though, if Mr Salmond hadn't written to them.
And such was the cry over his saltire incident at Wimbledon that anyone else might think Scotland had been placed under martial law that banned the waving of the national flag in public places. For centuries, though, England has existed in a constant of febrile jingoism conducted through endless royal celebrations and displays of military strength as a means of achieving the almost universal deference that is required to underpin the most elitist society in Europe.
Over the last two weeks, the narrative of the Better Together campaign suggests that Scotland will revert to the days when we were painting our faces and living in forests if we opt for independence. Roaming mobile phone charges will be greater, despite the European Union signalling its intention to scrap them. The cost of decommissioning Trident will cost so many billions that Scotland's economy will be reduced to the size of Haiti's. (An independent report a few days later revealed that the true cost of decommissioning will be a fraction of this.) Anyway, if that were to happen, the MoD suggested it would get together over brandies at White's and simply annex Faslane. I very much doubt that, though, for by then Britain's armed forces will be stretched to the limit fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the Falkland Islands and possibly Rockall.
Another favourite phantom from the Better Together camp is that there will be border controls between Scotland and England, secured, presumably, by mustachioed men with peaked caps wearing mirrored shades and smoking Henri Wintermans. That was somewhat undermined last week when it emerged that the UK and Irish governments plan to strengthen the common travel area, which enables Irish and UK citizens to travel freely between both jurisdictions.
We were also told that the SNP's predictions of an oil-rich future for Scotland were a cruel confidence trick. Such is the downward spiral of projected North Sea oil revenues over the next 50 years that an independent Scotland could be left looking into an economic black hole of gigantic proportions – anywhere between £11bn and £20bn if the Office for Budget Responsibility is to be believed.
We'll leave aside the fact that anyone who feels they can predict the price or even the pricing patterns of oil at any time over the next 30-odd years probably also can predict when the Martians are coming back to reclaim Atlantis. Presumably, also, the Office for Budget Responsibility is still having a right good word with itself for failing to predict the global credit crisis and the consequences of our biggest banks playing Russian roulette with the country's money.
My socialist tendencies are still deep-rooted and the humane imperative of each of us to fight for a justice and peace for those who are denied them all over the world still sits uncomfortably with the concept of going it alone to achieve these things in an independent Scotland. But the endless narrative of Scots in the unionist camp that Scotland without England is a barely functioning economic husk is driving me and many others into the Scottish Nationalist camp.
It's the sort of propaganda that you would normally expect to see when one country is gearing up to declare war on another or perhaps invade them. Yet is it being mouthed by Scots who purport to love their own country.
We are still 14 months away from the referendum on Scottish independence. At this rate, the No campaigners will be claiming that the deaths of our first born will occur in an independent Scotland. Not long after the plagues of frogs, boils and locusts.
