Dominic Lawson speaks words of love, tolerance and mutual respect

AM2 has helpfully provided a link to the latest hilariously un-self-aware Jock-bashing article from the London media. It's by Dominic Lawson, who finishes in priceless fashion by patting his own countrymen on the back for being so much nicer to us than we are to them. As a Scot, the experience of reading the article is rather like being repeatedly hit over the head with a shovel by a crazed man, and all the time he's screaming at you - "You've brought this on yourself! You're just not grateful enough to me for my tolerance!"

Iain Gray Veracity-watch part 2

Iain Gray said something at First Minister's Questions on Thursday that was factually inaccurate. You might think that a) it's a bit late in the day to be mentioning this and that b) it's nothing out of the ordinary anyway, but what prompts me to point it out is that, in his own take on FMQs, AM2 seems to have unaccountably missed this glaringly obvious untruth (which I'll come to in a minute) and is instead far more exercised by Alex Salmond's statement that his government has already fulfilled 46 of its 94 headline manifesto pledges. That would be fine if AM2 had any solid grounds for believing this statement to be untrue - but he doesn't. It's rather like his attitude to opinion polls - if the numbers don't conform to his intuition, they must be wrong. Hilariously, he even appeals to his readers to send him information on the 46 pledges in question. What's the betting he'll claim in a day or two that because no-one has done so, that constitutes 'proof' Alex Salmond was lying? I'm glad AM2 isn't in charge of our justice system - 'guilty until proven innocent' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Whereas there's no question at all that Iain Gray was telling porkies, and the evidence is there in black and white for all to see. He claimed that not a single poll in history - "not a single one" he repeated for effect in his peculiar 'snarl' voice - had ever shown the people of Scotland wanted independence. Well, what about all the polls that have shown exactly that, Iain? Of course, if someone pointed that out to him his get-out card would be that in polls where the 'Yes' side had a lead, the raw percentage in favour of independence had never reached 51%. (Although there was a poll in 1992 that showed exactly 50% in favour - and that was a multi-option poll!) The point unionists are going to have to wake up to sooner or later is that in a referendum there will be no 'don't know' option on the ballot paper. The people who are currently undecided in the opinion polls would either break one way or the other, or they would abstain. The rules of the game will be exactly the same for the 'yes' and 'no' side - so if the unionists can look at a poll showing a 40-38% lead for the 'no' side as showing a "majority against independence", then it's utterly absurd for them to claim that all the previous polls that showed a similar lead for the 'yes' side constituted anything but a majority in favour of independence.

Independence is winner of 'Which?' Magazine's coveted Flush of the Year Award

I take it all back. AM2's sophistry used to be entertainingly inventive, but it's clear now his heart's gone out of it and he just goes through the motions. He responded on his blog tonight after I challenged him on how he could possibly characterise the SNP's support for local income tax as "anti-British". First of all, he directs me to a typically ill-conceived article by Angus MacLeod of the Times, as if that explained everything. (What's next - Alan Cochrane?) Then, perhaps sensing this wasn't quite good enough even by his own recent standards, he hastily adds that the whole purpose of the SNP's existence is to "break up Britain" (it's known as "Scottish independence" round our way) and they must therefore be anti-British. Is that really the best you can do, AM2? The SNP are against the continued existence of the British state, therefore every single thing they do is anti-British? Is the abolition of bridge tolls 'anti-British'? Is the saving of accident and emergency departments 'anti-British'? Are Kenny MacAskill's efforts to tackle binge drinking 'anti-British'? AM2's response to me was so absolutist that, incredible though it may seem, I can only conclude his answer to those questions would have to be 'yes'.

I then on a separate thread put to him Mike Smithson's second golden rule - ie. that he can't simply dismiss the latest poll on independence as a rogue just because he doesn't agree with the numbers or finds them hard to accept. He responded with a brief set of cryptic observations. I presume the reason he did this is that he knew what he was saying made zero sense, but he wanted to be able to pretend to his readers - as is his way - that the only reason it all seemed like meaningless nonsense is because they simply weren't trying hard enough to understand. Sophistry, but of the more lazy, tedious variety. Firstly he pointed out that in November 2007, System Three had a poll showing 40% support for independence. Then he pointed out that YouGov showed just 27% support two months later. Okay, AM2, this is the bit where you reluctantly accept that System Three has now shown support back up to 38%. But, no, he instead reaches into the faithful AM2 doomsday database and conjures up an out-of-context March 2008 quote from Alex Salmond, in which the First Minister supposedly conceded only a quarter supported independence. Why would he say that, asks AM2 knowingly, before abruptly disappearing into the night. Well, just off the top of my head - maybe, just maybe, it's because that's what the most recent poll happened to show at the time?

Now here's your own starter for ten - what does the most recent poll show now?

Independence is a fully-operational flush

As a follow-on from my last post, I see AM2's latest offering is to mock Alex Salmond's claim that independence is now within "touching distance". Is that not actually quite an apt choice of words, given that the latest poll (which is naturally a blip, a rogue, or quite possibly rigged if all else fails) shows just a two-point deficit for the 'yes' side? "Touching distance" would seem to sum up the current position quite nicely.

AM2 - inconvenient poll is 'a blip'

And I was so relishing the prospect of some entertainingly inventive sophistry in response to my challenge to AM2/Scottish Unionist - he's delivered so reliably on other occasions, but perhaps the poor chap is tired. (Understandable, he doesn't half get around.) Having finally let my comment through moderation, his response was indeed to update his table, but with the figures miraculously rearranged in a completely different order so that the most recent poll features in the middle rather than at the end! His justification? The latest poll looks like a 'blip' to him. Fair enough, let's dispense with all the hard statistical analysis, AM2's intuition is far more reliable.

I think AM2/Scottish Unionist urgently needs to acquaint himself with Mike Smithson's 'second golden rule' - "a rogue poll is one where you don't agree with the numbers".

To illustrate this point, let me ask another question of AM2 - do you think you would you have written a post full of shameless innuendo attempting to smear TNS System 3 and undermine its credibility if by any chance the latest poll had shown 20% in favour of independence and 60% against? Do you not think in those circumstances your post would have been rather more to do with the contents of what you'd have taken as read as being a rigorous, scientifically-conducted survey? A simple yes or no will suffice.

My question has been answered

I wondered aloud in an earlier post how AM2/Scottish Unionist would deal with the unacceptable reality of increasing support for independence in the latest TNS System Three poll, and now I have my answer. He hasn't ignored it, he simply doesn't feel the mere results of the poll are terribly important or worthy of comment - apparently it's the SNP's reaction to the poll that is far more newsworthy! He's got a versatile range of moves, I'll give him that.

Anyway I've now gone straight to the horse's mouth with my challenge to him to simply update his earlier table of poll results, so if he lets my comment past moderation we'll see how he talks his way out of this one. I suspect it might involve some entertainingly inventive sophistry.

UPDATE : I actually completely misread AM2's post. Incredibly, he's not complaining about the SNP's own reaction to the poll, but rather that of TNS System Three's managing director Chris Eynon. Apparently by pointing out the blindingly obvious fact that his company's polls are somewhat positive for independence, this means that he's somehow outed himself as a Nationalist. Therefore his company's polls have no credibility whatsoever and the rather inconvenient figures they contain can be safely discounted. So in that case why did you include the earlier TNS System Three polls in your 'busted flush' table, AM2?

Support for independence up 3%

A new TNS/System Three poll for the Sunday Herald has shown that support for independence has risen to 38%, up from 35% in October, while there has been a concurrent fall of 3% in support for the status quo, which now stands at 40%.

First thought that entered my head - how on earth will AM2/Scottish Unionist cope with the reality of this poll? After all, it's only a matter of days since he ran the hysterical headline "Independence is a busted flush". I fear he may ignore it, but perhaps I'm being too cynical. I'll set him a challenge - why doesn't he simply update this table he used in his post to illustrate the 'collapse' in support for independence :

10 Apr 2008: Progressive Scottish Opinion/Daily Mail – 41%
13 Apr 2008: TNS System Three/Herald – 41%
07 July 2008: TNS System Three/Herald – 39%
11 July 2008: YouGov/Telegraph – 36%
08 Sep 2008: YouGov/Sunday Times – 34%
26 Oct 2008: YouGov/Sunday Times – 31%
30 Jan 2009: YouGov/Sunday Times – 29%

Of course, anyone who has closely followed the polling on independence will know that this table was always grossly misleading, because Progressive Scottish Opinion and TNS System Three have typically - for whatever reason - shown a much higher level of support for independence than YouGov. But fair's fair - if that's the method of comparison he likes, support for independence has just rocketed by an astonishing 9% since the last YouGov poll.

Prejudice cuts both ways

So yet another feature on Newsnight Scotland about anti-English prejudice in Scotland. It was music to my ears when the academic behind the research being discussed mentioned in passing that he was planning a similar study to see if Scots living in England face similar problems. I'll give you a sneak preview of what that research will uncover - yes, they do, and if anything it's probably even worse.

I don't want to minimise the distress caused to English people in this country by low-level harassment on account of their accent, but from the way the media (on both sides of the border) typically deal with this issue you'd think it was a strictly one-way phenomenon. It seems Scots supporting 'anyone but England' at football (for perfectly understandable reasons - a subject I may return to at some point) is tantamount to racism, but somehow the relentless 'Jock'-bashing that goes on in southern England is always just a bit of friendly banter. Additionally, it always strikes me that the innocent people who genuinely suffer from anti-English prejudice are never the ones we hear from - it invariably seems to be the loudmouths with a not-very-subtle political agenda. I recall many years ago seeing an Englishman on TV telling a shocking tale of how he had his car smashed up "just for being English". But then he casually mentioned that he just happened to be a sort of "shock-jock" on a Highlands radio station, and that one of his favourite talking-points was the fact that everyone knows Gaelic is a pointless language and that ridiculous amounts of money are wasted on Gaelic-medium broadcasting. Of course that revelation didn't remotely justify a mindless act of vandalism, but it did put a slightly different complexion on his claim that it happened "just because he was English". Similarly, on tonight's programme, one of the anonymous comments from an English person who claimed to be a victim of prejudice was quite telling - it was something like "they think they're really welcoming, but they're much more insular than we are". Who exactly is exhibiting the prejudice and the resort to stereotypes here?

Also, the contribution from the former editor of the Scottish Mirror was utterly laughable. Typical unionist propaganda, lazily conflating things that have no automatic connection - ie. Scots feeling more Scottish and less British on the one hand, and anti-English sentiment on the other. He also appears to be labouring under the delusion that this decline in Britishness is a recent phenomenon, in some way connected to the ascent to office of the Machiavellian genius Alex Salmond. Where has this guy been for the last thirty years? Actually, he should have a word with AM2, who has utterly convinced himself that Britishness has been making a comeback of late!

And just to prove my point...

I promise not to make a habit of this, but AM2/Scottish Unionist has helpfully provided another textbook example of precisely what I was talking about in my earlier post. You're quite right, AM2, this chap Nevsky - don't know who he is but it sounds like he must be terribly important - has "dropped his guard". Yes, he's shown his views to be utterly repugnant. You've comprehensively exposed the blighter, old chap, wiped the floor with him, job done, sorted. Congrats.

But as Columbo would say "there's just one small thing that's confusing me here, Mr AM2" - what has any of this got to do with the SNP leadership? More fundamentally, how does it bolster your case that the Union with England is a good thing and that independence would be a bad thing? In any way? At all?

Small hint - it doesn't.

AM2. Discuss and explain.

If anyone ever wants to carry out an academic study into the origins of irrational obsession, they could do far worse than to try to track down that most enigmatic frequenter of Scottish political message-boards (and now the blogosphere), the one, the only Mr AM2. Although he now blogs under the moniker 'Scottish Unionist', I find it impossible to think of him by any other name than the one he used in his days as an almost impossibly relentless one-man anti-SNP propaganda machine on the Scotsman and Herald boards. And proof of his enduring legend is that almost everyone else who encountered him in those days has the same problem - virtually every comment on his blog is something along the lines of "AM2 is George Foulkes", "AM2 is deluded" or "AM2, you are a fool".

Well, he's not a fool but he is fixated, and in an utterly incomprehensible way. For although his mission in life is to undermine the SNP, his preferred method of doing this is not to take on the SNP leadership directly, or even known party activists. Instead he sets out to relentlessly question the credibility, integrity and good character of the so-called 'Cybernats', the legions of internet scribes who support the SNP - who may or may not be party members, but even if they are would be highly unlikely to hold any position of importance or influence in the party. Take his latest offering tonight - he quotes a Cybernat as saying "the problem for the Welsh is that so many of their population nowadays are English and they want the status quo" and demands to know if other Cybernats would take the same view about English people living in Scotland. Well, some wouldn't, but perhaps some would - because those who are motivated to contribute to blogs or message-boards (regardless of political complexion) are disproportionately likely to express their views in a trenchant, colourful, provocative, outrageous manner. In much the same way you wouldn't have to search very far to find the odd utterly irrelevant Tory supporter on the internet who unwisely expresses patronising or discriminatory views about women or ethnic minorities. But what does this really amount to? You can almost sense AM2's virtually orgasmic satisfaction every time he catches a Cybernat out on a point like this, and so off he scurries to do some more close textual analysis of yet more Cybernat scribblings to get his next 'hit', to the point he seems more than content to devote a large part of his life to this singularly odd and superfluous endeavour. Each to his own I suppose, but I do fear for him - isn't he going to wake up one morning and think "yes I caught out Wardog and Subrosa and...so what?" Now catching out Alex Salmond would have been impressive!