Breaking : Scottish posts allowed on Political Betting again

In the wake of seeming to break his own rule of disallowing off-topic comments on Scottish politics, Mike Smithson now says that the rule was only ever intended to apply to the thread on which he introduced it. Quite why it was utterly intolerable to have Scottish posts on a single Sunday morning thread about Ron Paul, but perfectly OK at all other times, remains something of a mystery. But let's not be churlish about a small outbreak of common sense.

Naturally, I would never dream of encouraging a Nat invasion of PB by way of celebration, but you are certainly free to draw your own conclusions about the best way to proceed.

It's consistency, Jim, but not as we know it

Mike Smithson, proprietor of Political Betting and the man who on Sunday introduced a new rule that comments on Scottish politics are strictly forbidden on PB threads not directly relating to Scotland, has just left this comment on a PB thread about Tony Blair -

"If Scotland was an independent country would Salmond bail Rangers out?"

Don't worry. I'm sure it all makes sense in his head.

Scotland joins the Holocaust as one of only two banned topics as Political Betting's Smithson completely loses the plot

In the early hours of this morning, the popular former SNP blogger and Political Betting poster Stuart Dickson sent me an email alerting me to a 'behind-the-paywall' article, which revealed that Scotland does not receive a net subsidy from the London exchequer. I decided to post a very brief summary of the article on PB. The thread in question concerned Ron Paul, but there was nothing remotely unusual about posting something off-topic - the overwhelming majority of comments on PB are wildly off-topic, and in particular posts about off-topic newspaper articles of interest are extremely common. And it could hardly be claimed that the article I summarised was not of any interest, given that the CEBR's conclusions about Scotland's fiscal balance go to the very heart of one of the most important political debates of our time.

Predictably, several of PB's resident Nat-bashers (including among others Richard Dodd, Moniker of Monza, Chris g00 and "Devo Max", the latter of whom I strongly suspect to be another poster in disguise) started laying into me for having the temerity to suggest that an independent Scotland would be anything other than a basketcase. As I normally do when I have the time, I replied to all their comments and challenged them on some of their bogus arguments (although to be honest the word 'arguments' dignifies the whole thing a bit too much). But then this familiar pattern was brought to a shuddering halt by an extraordinary intervention from the site's owner, right-leaning Liberal Democrat Mike Smithson -

This is not a thread about Scotland and future thread-hopping comments will be deleted.

There will be plenty of threads on Scotland but this is not one of them.

Just to reiterate, the notion that off-topic comments or 'thread-hopping' (whatever that might mean) are not allowed on PB is a completely alien one, as can be demonstrated by the vast number of off-topic comments not relating to Scotland that continued to pass without censure on that very thread. But this absurd ruling was not entirely a bolt from the blue, as a number of the usual suspects from the Tory Herd (who of course delight in boring the rest of us with the off-topic subjects that fascinate them the most) have for the last few weeks been relentlessly whispering in Smithson's ear : "This can't go on, Mike. All this talk about Scotland is killing the site. Something must be done." Which of course is rather ironic, given that some of us have been pointing out to him for years what is really killing the site - the all-pervasive right-wing group-think, and endless fatuous thread-headers about non-topics such as "Edward" Miliband's "name-change". His decision about which of these concerns was more important to take heed of tells its own story.

However, given that Smithson had tried to give his imposition of censorship the semblance of logical justification by referring to "thread-hopping", I decided to take him at his word, and press him on whether a short list of other "thread-hopping" posts I'd noticed on the same thread would in future be subject to deletion -

"This is not a thread about Scotland and future thread-hopping comments will be deleted"

Does that constitute a ruling that this IS a thread about -

a) YouTube videos

b) YouGov polls on the NHS

c) Andrew Lansley

d) Cameroons and Blairites

e) Rugby

f) Tim Montgomerie

g) Formula 1

h) Aero regulation

...and that 'thread-hopping' posts about those topics are all perfectly acceptable?

It seems so. Yet more consistency from the top.

Unsurprisingly, there was no direct response. However, an apologist for Smithson did try to justify the contradiction with the customary non-logic that "it's Mike's site and he can do what he likes". He also pointed out that this was not the first time a specific topic had been singled out for a ban - discussions of the Holocaust had also long been forbidden.

Well, that pretty much says it all, doesn't it? There are now just two banned topics on PB - Scotland and the Holocaust. And they have demonstrably been banned not because they are off-topic or "thread-hopping", but because Smithson and those whispering in his ear don't want to hear about them, for reasons of taste or prejudice.

But in truth, this is not really about Scotland in general. No, we can rest assured that the traditional excited posts from Aberdeenshire or Easter Ross about the forever imminent renaissance of the Scottish Tory party will remain very much welcome in PB World. This is about Smithson's dislike of SNP posters, and nothing else. We saw it today when his ruling was 'implemented' in the form of comments from the SNP's MalcolmG being deleted, but comments from those goading the Nat posters being left untouched. We saw it two years ago when two of the leading SNP posters, the aforementioned Mr Dickson and our very own Ezio, were banned seemingly for no reason whatsoever. When we tried to pin Smithson down on the reason for Stuart's ban, he just couldn't seem to get his story straight. First it was because Stuart frequently wrote about 'misleading' Scottish subsamples - but unfortunately it was easy enough to point out that Smithson had done exactly the same thing. Then it was because Stuart had repeatedly misunderstood "Smarkets" - really? "Misunderstanding" something is cause for a lifetime ban? No, clearly that didn't make sense either, so the next explanation was that Stuart wasn't contactable by email. Unfortunately, though, I had access to their email correspondence, and was able to demonstrate that Smithson's charge was a piece of nonsense. Last but not least, he fell back on the trusty old option of "the matter is closed".

Of course, it should also be pointed out that Smithson's own tendency to lash out angrily about the SNP on threads relating to other topics would firmly fall foul of today's ruling - if it was being implemented consistently. But it won't be. What we've seen today is nothing less than a selective 'constructive ban' on all pro-SNP posts, leaving Smithson's claim that his site is a cross-party forum utterly bereft of credibility. Oh, and in case you're wondering, his suggestion that there'll be plenty of dedicated Scottish threads which we can still comment on is meaningless - in normal times, you'd be lucky to get one Scottish thread every three months.

Which only leaves the question of how best to react to this indefensible near-blanket ban. It's sorely tempting to test the boundaries of it by seeing what would happen if I tried posting off-topic material about, for example, Plaid Cymru or Mebyon Kernow. But perhaps Ezio had it right all along - if PB can't be saved as an ecumenical forum, it's arguably better if the small number of us who don't subscribe to the site's group-think get as far away from it as possible, and stop giving it any unwarranted 'cross-party' credibility.

However, I do have one last post about PB up my sleeve - an eye-opening exchange from yesterday about the Welsh language. Stay tuned...

Poll : does Trump branding Alex Salmond "insane" represent progress on "amazing"?

As far as I can remember, the one and only time I've found myself arguing in favour of something I don't really believe in was on the subject of "Trumpton". The (now former) Labour MP Nick Palmer was laying into the SNP for backing the development, so the partisan instinct kicked in and I defended the decision without really thinking. To be fair to myself, though, I had spent the previous few months writing umpteen comments under my Scotsman pseudonym saying what I really thought. I can't deny that I feel considerably more comfortable now that Trump seems to hate Alex Salmond's guts, particularly given that he feels that way for the silliest and most transparently self-interested reasons imaginable.

So that's the question for today's poll : are you happier when this nincompoop (© Alex Massie) calls Alex Salmond an "amazing man", or when he calls him "insane"? The voting form is in the sidebar.

I for one won't be shedding any tears if the golf course is shelved, although of course a fair bit of the damage is already done. And if it goes ahead, well...where would "the world's greatest golf course" be without a view of some lovely windmills? This is the 21st Century, after all.

Six Nations 2012 prediction

Obviously a week late, but this is, hand on heart, what I put in the sweepstake form that I always end up filling in for my sister's work. Actually, it shouldn't be too hard to believe that this was my genuine prediction, given that I've already got the Ireland v Wales result wrong!

Weekend 1 :

France to beat Italy by 20 or more
England to beat Scotland by 1-9
Ireland to beat Wales by 1-9

Weekend 2 :

England to beat Italy by 10-19
France to beat Ireland by 1-9
Wales to beat Scotland by 10-19

Weekend 3 :

Ireland to beat Italy by 10-19
England to beat Wales by 1-9
France to beat Scotland by 1-9

Weekend 4 :

Wales to beat Italy by 10-19
Ireland to beat Scotland by 10-19
France to beat England by 1-9

Weekend 5 :

Scotland to beat Italy by 1-9
Wales to beat France by 1-9
England to beat Ireland by 1-9

FINAL TABLE :

France 4 Wins
England 4 Wins
Wales 3 Wins
Ireland 3 Wins
Scotland 1 Win
Italy 0 Wins

Believe it or not, we actually finished fourth in the Rugby World Cup sweepstake back in the autumn, and won the princely sum of £10, which just about covered the cost of the entrance fee. I later discovered that there's an ironic £5 prize for finishing last, which sounds like a lot less effort somehow.

Can Sheridan save rugby from the 'separatists'?

Labour MP Jim Sheridan in full holier-than-thou mode on the Alex Salmond Six Nations row -

"Putting aside the offensive and deeply inappropriate language, I believe that Alex Salmond should not be using sporting events and sports personalities to further himself and his party’s separatist agenda...I believe it far more appropriate that Alex Salmond stick to the job the people of Scotland have elected him to do rather than moonlighting as a TV personality. As a member of the UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, I intend to write to the BBC expressing my support for the view that politics should be kept out of sport and that sporting events and sports personalities should not be used in such a crass way."

OK, so I take it Jim has been a model of consistency on this topic, and threw a brick at the TV when he saw his own leader Gordon Brown on the field after the 2007 Rugby World Cup final, trying to (incongruously) cash in on England's success in getting there? Or what about Jack McConnell's lengthy interview during the TV coverage of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne? Or the countless thousands of other examples of politicians of all parties commenting on sport?

I must say I don't really give a monkey's whether Alex Salmond appears during the coverage of a rugby match or not - the issue is whether he's being treated differently simply because he is, in Sheridan's words, a "separatist" politician. And if he is being treated differently on that basis, that in itself constitutes a fundamental breach of the principle of impartiality. The idea that it would have been abnormal for a political leader to appear on such a programme simply doesn't stack up given the endless precedents - what is abnormal is for an invitation to be issued and them withdrawn. You would think in such circumstances that the justification given would be watertight, but it was anything but - the reference to the local elections just added to the impression that they were scrabbling around for any spurious reason they could think of, because we're way, way outside the statutory campaigning period.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Ric Bailey subscribes to the grotesque Paxman worldview that Alex Salmond is not a "normal" politician (he's instead in the Mugabe or pre-ceasefire Sinn Féin category), and that completely different rules of engagement should therefore apply in relation to him. If so, the prospects for anything approaching even-handed coverage of the independence referendum look distinctly grim at this stage.

Turning around the Telegraph supertanker

If you've ever wanted to know what cognitive dissonance sounds like, look no further than the Telegraph's reporting of George Osborne's latest wizard idea of heading off Scottish independence by getting Tory MPs to campaign against it in England (yes, really!). As the article explains the reasoning behind the initiative, namely that English resentment of Scotland is making independence more rather than less likely, you can almost hear the penny drop with the writer that the Telegraph themselves have been fuelling that very resentment day after day after day, and thus undermining their own stated objective. And yet he can't quite bring himself to let go of the idea that their beloved 'subsidy junkie' propaganda is entirely justified, a belief which is obviously going to make it a touch difficult to convince the English of the "benefits" to them of Scotland remaining in the union. The effort to reconcile this hopeless contradiction is encapsulated in the following heart-rending sentences -

"Opinion polls have consistently shown that support for Scottish independence is higher in England than north of the Border, fed by anger that public spending is around £1,600 higher per head in Scotland than the UK average.

The First Minister’s decision to introduce a series of free universal benefits, including prescription charges and university tuition fees, has increased cross-Border tensions.

Although many English Tory politicians share their constituents’ frustrations over this, they remain committed to keeping the United Kingdom together."

So can the Telegraph turn the supertanker around, and stop routinely producing counter-productive headlines about "English patience with Scotland wearing thin"? Pondering their dilemma reminded me of Denis MacShane's rather amusing plea for a "different journalism" to report on the topic of prostitution in future, after being humiliatingly caught out by journalism in its current form for trotting out statistics with no basis whatever in fact. I think that the Telegraph do genuinely have an affection for Scotland and its place within the UK - but that Scotland is a different Scotland. One that knows its place, is damned grateful for what it's given, and votes Tory just like normal people do.

If Alex Salmond is merely one of Sir Peter Housden's "two masters", who is supposed to be the other one?

From the Telegraph -

"The Daily Telegraph has learned that the permanent secretaries from all the Whitehall departments no longer discuss Scotland if Sir Peter Housden, the Scottish Executive’s permanent secretary, is present.

Their strategy for the forthcoming independence referendum would usually be discussed by all the permanent secretaries at their weekly meeting on Wednesday morning in Whitehall...

“Concerns have been expressed at the highest level about this individual. People cannot serve two masters ultimately and he has been put in a very difficult position by Salmond,” said one senior Whitehall source.""

All of which begs a series of questions. Precisely what "strategy" would it be legitimate for the UK civil service to have in relation to the independence referendum? Unless that strategy is inappropriately partisan in nature, it's hard to see what possible harm there could be in Sir Peter Housden overhearing it, regardless of whether the paranoia about him "going native" has any truth to it. Secondly, isn't Alex Salmond supposed to be Sir Peter's "master", in the sense that he sets the policy direction that his permanent secretary is obliged to follow? And last but not least, if Salmond is merely one of Sir Peter's "two" masters at present, who in heaven's name is meant to be the other one? David Cameron?

The irony is that unionists actually have a rare opportunity here to point out that the British state is working the way it should be working under devolution - that technically being a member of the UK civil service, and indeed originating from another part of the UK, hasn't stopped Sir Peter scrupulously and conscientiously helping the elected government he works for to pursue its policy agenda. But, no, the likes of the Telegraph would much rather encourage an absurd situation whereby civil servants working for Alex Salmond operate as a kind of institutionalised "enemy within", and thus make the case for a separate Scottish civil service utterly irresistible.

* * *

At the risk of incurring the wrath of Craig Gallagher, there are some gems from Political Betting that just cry out to be reposted, again and again. Exhibit W : these two irate reactions from 'Hooks Law' when I simply point out to him the irrefutable fact that the Single Transferable Vote system is a form of proportional representation -

"Don't be daft - PR, as in directly proportional number of seats to votes, is not STV which is what was in the LD manifesto. This fact undermines tim's argument.

With STV the LDs said they would reduce the number of seats by 150. Its going to be only 50 but with FPTP.

I don't think there is a massive difference there."

"'proportional system' = PS

PR = 'proportional representation' is a PS

STV and AV = preferential voting

Tim suggested the LDs wanted proportional representation, ie 20% of vote =20% of seats. Their manifesto says different and the difference between their pledge of STV and 150 less seats is not much different to FPTP and 50 less seats.

AND on top of that they got their referendum on AV.

So yet another tim smear holds no water.

I was clear enough in the last post and am clear enough in this one. Grow up."

Crikey. I'll have to brace myself before breaking the news to him that the Earth isn't flat.

Herald loses the plot in its reporting of TNS-BMRB poll

First things first, here are the results of the latest TNS-BMRB poll on independence -

Do you agree that the Scottish Government should negotiate with the UK so that Scotland becomes an independent state?

Yes 35% (-4)
No 44% (+6)

Now you'll notice straight away that this poll isn't directly comparable with many recent polls conducted by other companies, because it doesn't use the actual referendum question that has been proposed. Perfectly reasonably, the Herald notes that it wasn't possible to use the proposed question because it hadn't been published at the time fieldwork started, but instead of conceding that this renders the poll somewhat inferior to others, they risibly hint that asking a question that won't actually be asked in the referendum makes their poll superior, and even more incredibly that the results of the poll somehow cast doubt on the legitimacy of the real question! As a final flourish to this rather fantastical line of reasoning, they loftily note that -

"The question has already been criticised by opponents and by many polling experts as both leading and loaded."

Really? Was that before or after they welcomed it as fair, simple and clear? Here is the Scotsman's useful summary of the reaction to the question the day after it was published -

"Mr Salmond’s single question on independence was supported by constitutional experts last night. The UK government also welcomed the clarity of the question he proposes."

I think what irritates me most about this little turn of sophistry from the Herald is that they use it as thin cover to do what they've done many times before without any excuses - take a single (often rather questionable) poll they've commissioned themselves and report it as if it exists in a total vacuum. Remember those absurd MRUK polls during the 2007 election campaign which allowed the Herald to earnestly report on "Labour sailing towards a third term", as if the solid SNP leads being reported by the more credible polling companies were just a figment of our collective imagination?

And so we're breathlessly informed today that this poll is cast-iron proof that the pro-independence side has "lost" the first skirmish of the referendum battle - in spite of the fact that pretty much every other recent poll, regardless of whether it used the SNP's preferred question or not, has shown an increase in support for independence.

A note on TNS itself. If you look at the percentage change figures for this poll, you'll notice something rather important - that independence was actually in the lead in the last poll. And yet we've been informed by the London media and British nationalist politicians alike that "all polls" have shown a clear rejection of independence. In other words, TNS have so little credibility in their eyes that the last poll simply didn't register - it barely even existed. So I wonder if we'll see a consistency of approach this time - or will TNS miraculously be rehabilitated as a credible pollster now that their figures are suddenly 'on-message'?

The Brit Nats had better be careful here. A nine-point lead for No is pretty slender compared to the leads in the Cochrane-esque worded polls about "separation" that they're more used to crowing about.

Panelbase poll : independence trails by just six points

Thanks once again to Marcia for alerting me to the latest highly encouraging poll on voting intentions for the independence referendum, which shows the No side in a slender six-point lead...

Yes 47%
No 53%

The poll also confirms the SNP's current commanding position in respect of Holyrood voting intentions - the party leads Labour by 50% to 29%. For a point of reference, a survey by the same company just a month before the SNP landslide last spring had the nationalists at 37%, tied with Labour on the constituency vote.

As we know, Nick Clegg is an expert in "extremism", so perhaps he'll want to reflect at some leisure on which two party leaders find themselves on the respective extremes of popularity and unpopularity in this poll.

I'll give you three guesses.

* * *

I suggested two or three weeks ago that the broadcasters would need to urgently rethink their whole approach in the run-up to the independence referendum. Well, if the Alex Salmond/Calcutta Cup incident is anything to go by, it appears they've done just that - and come to the intriguing conclusion that there are simply far too many pro-independence voices on TV.

The mind boggles. Try again, chaps.