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For many of us in Scotland this is nothing new. The coverage and reporting leading up to the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum was pretty appalling, with th

For many of us in Scotland this is nothing new. The coverage and reporting leading up to the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum was pretty appalling, with the BBC operating in full "Defence of the Union" mode. Both TV and print media ran scare story after scare story repetitively despite most being debunked.

thu2111 7y ago
Which scare stories are you thinking of? My memory of that time is that the nationalists were making a lot of claims during the campaign that they'd not laid any groundwork for, and which didn't hold water. Mostly of the form "after leaving the UK we'll still have access to X" or "Y won't change" but they hadn't actually asked anyone in the British government, so there was a lot of public back and forth over that, in particular, what it'd mean for Scotland to keep using the pound. Because they talked about future hypotheticals it is hard to say whether they were 'debunked' or not. One claim I remember very clearly was that post-independence Scotland would be able to keep funding its much higher levels of government spending because of high oil prices. The media did question this claim, and it turned out rightly so: oil prices collapsed just months after the vote and never recovered rendering the SNP's financial plans irrelevant. Independence would certainly have meant rapid and dire cuts in spending. However nothing I saw would have risen to the level of "disinformation", whatever that means. It was just people disagreeing on the relative merits and probabilities of things.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  I'll just point you here: https://wingsoverscotland.com/reference/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/reference/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/weebluebook/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/weebluebook/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-wee-black-book/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-wee-black-book/ Fully sourced and referenced. Stu Campbell isn't everyone's cuppa, but his writings on the shite, filth and corruption that went on during the Scottish Indyref in 2014 are reasonably bulletproof. I'll happily admit that the one thing the SNP messed up on was the currency question and that they should have had the balls to say they'd launch their own currency and central bank, or create a Scottish Pound tied to the UK pound (at least for the first few years - and is not unusual, there are many dollar currencies tied to the value of the US$). I can also answer questions on the balance of media exposure between pro-Union parties and the Yes parties (SNP and the Scottish Greens). Professor John Robertson (an academic who's work was to analyse media bias all around the world) of the West of Scotland University performed an analysis of this and when he presented his findings there were calls for him to be fired from his job - by BBC executives. https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/30/i-was-bullied-bbc-over-academic-report-indyref-bias-scottish-media-blackout-must https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/30/i-was-bullied-bbc... https://newsnet.scot/tag/prof-john-robertson/ https://newsnet.scot/tag/prof-john-robertson/ http://www.parliament.scot/S4_EducationandCultureCommittee/BBC%20charter/BBCProfJohnRobertson.pdf http://www.parliament.scot/S4_EducationandCultureCommittee/B...
  - thu2111 7y ago
    I took a brief look at the Wee Blue Book but it seems to be old pro-independence campaign material, rather than specifically about "shite, filth and corruption"? If Campbell wanted to criticise bad electioneering he would need to get his own house in order first. I don't think re-litigating the old campaign is necessarily a good use of time but the first page of his Blue Book has several exceptionally dodgy claims in it, really, claims I'd consider to both completely false and some are extremely offensive. How can he criticise his opponents for relying on "scare stories" when his own positions are on such thin ice? e.g. the only reason terrorists might attack us is because we’re part of the UK. It's staggering to me nationalists really made this argument. Did Campbell miss the terrorists killing people in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia and many other places that aren't the UK? This claim can only be rooted in delusional racism and hatred of the English, to believe that somehow Scotland wouldn't have the same problems as everywhere else in the world or that terrorism is a specifically English problem. Many of the other claims don't make sense (e.g. "We don’t affect the outcome of UK elections"), are self contradictory (e.g. "Scotland is a country" but the point of the campaign is to make Scotland a country), or have been proven wrong by subsequent events (e.g. the oil wealth related claims). They're very far from bulletproof and remind me of why I soured on the SNP's campaign despite being a natural supporter of devolution and local government. There certainly are good arguments for Scottish independence, but the material in the Blue Book is a good example of mendacious and manipulative campaigning.

thu2111 7y ago

Which scare stories are you thinking of? My memory of that time is that the nationalists were making a lot of claims during the campaign that they'd not laid any groundwork for, and which didn't hold water. Mostly of the form "after leaving the UK we'll still have access to X" or "Y won't change" but they hadn't actually asked anyone in the British government, so there was a lot of public back and forth over that, in particular, what it'd mean for Scotland to keep using the pound. Because they talked about future hypotheticals it is hard to say whether they were 'debunked' or not. One claim I remember very clearly was that post-independence Scotland would be able to keep funding its much higher levels of government spending because of high oil prices. The media did question this claim, and it turned out rightly so: oil prices collapsed just months after the vote and never recovered rendering the SNP's financial plans irrelevant. Independence would certainly have meant rapid and dire cuts in spending. However nothing I saw would have risen to the level of "disinformation", whatever that means. It was just people disagreeing on the relative merits and probabilities of things.

teh_klev 7y ago
I'll just point you here: https://wingsoverscotland.com/reference/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/reference/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/weebluebook/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/weebluebook/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-wee-black-book/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-wee-black-book/ Fully sourced and referenced. Stu Campbell isn't everyone's cuppa, but his writings on the shite, filth and corruption that went on during the Scottish Indyref in 2014 are reasonably bulletproof. I'll happily admit that the one thing the SNP messed up on was the currency question and that they should have had the balls to say they'd launch their own currency and central bank, or create a Scottish Pound tied to the UK pound (at least for the first few years - and is not unusual, there are many dollar currencies tied to the value of the US$). I can also answer questions on the balance of media exposure between pro-Union parties and the Yes parties (SNP and the Scottish Greens). Professor John Robertson (an academic who's work was to analyse media bias all around the world) of the West of Scotland University performed an analysis of this and when he presented his findings there were calls for him to be fired from his job - by BBC executives. https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/30/i-was-bullied-bbc-over-academic-report-indyref-bias-scottish-media-blackout-must https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2014/06/30/i-was-bullied-bbc... https://newsnet.scot/tag/prof-john-robertson/ https://newsnet.scot/tag/prof-john-robertson/ http://www.parliament.scot/S4_EducationandCultureCommittee/BBC%20charter/BBCProfJohnRobertson.pdf http://www.parliament.scot/S4_EducationandCultureCommittee/B...
- thu2111 7y ago
  I took a brief look at the Wee Blue Book but it seems to be old pro-independence campaign material, rather than specifically about "shite, filth and corruption"? If Campbell wanted to criticise bad electioneering he would need to get his own house in order first. I don't think re-litigating the old campaign is necessarily a good use of time but the first page of his Blue Book has several exceptionally dodgy claims in it, really, claims I'd consider to both completely false and some are extremely offensive. How can he criticise his opponents for relying on "scare stories" when his own positions are on such thin ice? e.g. the only reason terrorists might attack us is because we’re part of the UK. It's staggering to me nationalists really made this argument. Did Campbell miss the terrorists killing people in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia and many other places that aren't the UK? This claim can only be rooted in delusional racism and hatred of the English, to believe that somehow Scotland wouldn't have the same problems as everywhere else in the world or that terrorism is a specifically English problem. Many of the other claims don't make sense (e.g. "We don’t affect the outcome of UK elections"), are self contradictory (e.g. "Scotland is a country" but the point of the campaign is to make Scotland a country), or have been proven wrong by subsequent events (e.g. the oil wealth related claims). They're very far from bulletproof and remind me of why I soured on the SNP's campaign despite being a natural supporter of devolution and local government. There certainly are good arguments for Scottish independence, but the material in the Blue Book is a good example of mendacious and manipulative campaigning.