Our Masters' Voice

Saturday / Sunday.  94 days of campaigning to go…

Sadly, the BBC is unable to bring viewers in Scotland the big story of the referendum, because it’s them. 

Another head-smacking embarrassment in a series seemingly destined to outlive The Archers emerged as an exclusive in, of all places, the Scotsman, where it scandalised the five people who still buy the paper for reasons other than the crossword.  According to a rogue journalist since placed on pencil-sharpening duty, BBC Scotland had allowed Better Together to use its Pacific Quay recording facilities and production staff to film a nationally-distributed cinema advert. 

“It’s purely a commercial arrangement,” insisted a BT apparatchik, confirming that the Beeb were mercenaries as well as propagandists.  “The guidelines we flouted are designed to safeguard the BBC’s reputation, and since that was already in the gutter further damage was impossible.  Anyway, the SNP recorded a party political broadcast in the same studio in 2012.”  This was true, but he omitted to say that the Labour Party had slipped the BBC a fiver to make Alex Salmond’s voice sound like Donald Duck.

For those obsessives keeping score, it was hard to judge how the advert that all the fuss was about had affected the campaign.  On the one hand, it was brilliant scorched-earth tactics by the No side, provoking audiences to launch such a scornful fusillade of popcorn and Maltesers at the screen that the cinema chains had to ban all indyref adverts - even the staggeringly brilliant ones from Yes – before their cleaning staff all reported sick with stress.  On the other, it was so cosmically lame that spoof merchants had a field day with it, and Yes supporters had much to chuckle about, which really gets on Blair McDougall’s tits.

It’s not that the BBC doesn’t commission surveys into what viewers think, it’s that the results always seem to be communicated to management by Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men.   Further evidence of the corporation’s clunking tone-deafness came with the demise of Radio Scotland’s Headlines, the final edition of which was broadcast on Sunday. 

A programme respected on both sides of the indy debate, where guests with opposing views entertainingly chewed the fat instead of battering each other with frying pans, Headlines was naturally the obvious candidate for the vandals in the boardroom to boot into oblivion.  It will be replaced next week by Crossfire, not exactly an encouraging title for fans of constructive chat.  Of course, it may turn out not to be a game show where Kezia Dugdale talks machine-gun drivel for an hour and the other guests have to figure out a humane way of stopping her.  But, if I were a betting man, I’d be more inclined to place my money on Iain Duncan Smith becoming chairman of Shelter.

Ken Macdonald, an urbane host with an unblemished broadcasting career, save for a record low score of 0% in the Superciliousness module at the Jeremy Paxman School of Interviewing, signed off his last appearance on Headlines with charm and dignity.   If, as he was entitled to do, he harboured true thoughts better expressed in spray paint, he gave little hint of them.  The final edition of Headlines is, at the time of writing, not available on BBC iPlayer.  Please address any complaints to Little Weed, Behind the Potting Shed, Cloud Cuckoo Land.

All told, it wasn’t the best of weekends for the BBC – and I haven’t even mentioned the chilling reappearance on the Andrew Marr Show of zombie politician John Reid, New Labour’s chief foghorn in the days when we all naively believed the UK Government had the slightest interest in a second UN resolution.

Regrettably, John’s grasp of referendum issues proved not fit for purpose, being a knackered old rehash of “currency, EU, pensions” with a dash of “Darien scheme” thrown in to make it really insulting.  But he looks fairly handy with a knuckle-duster, so if you find him canvassing on your doorstep please pretend to be polite.  “Are you Ming Campbell?” is just about an acceptable question.  “Are you Jimmy Reid’s daughter-in-law?” isn’t.

Then lo and behold, we got the organ grinder himself, Peace Envoy Tony Blair, who these days not only looks like Batman’s arch-enemy the Joker, but seems to have a scriptwriter to match.  According to the electrical activity in Tony’s cerebellum, the present-day problems in Iraq stem not from us bombing innocent people there in 2003, but from us failing to bomb innocent people in Syria last year.

Jings, it takes a lot to make me agree with Boris Johnson, but the man’s unhinged. I wonder, does Blair McD have nightmares in which Tony suddenly decides to make a “major intervention” on behalf of the No campaign?    

Anyway, that’s the BBC for you.  You want intelligent reportage, discussion and analysis.  They give you I Love 2003.

If you’ve been affected by the issues in this blog, please consider attending a demonstration outside Pacific Quay at 2.00 pm on 29 June.  Further details on Twitter and all good Cybernat web sites. MI5 officers should refer to their handlers to ascertain procedures for travel expense claims.

So Hillary's A No, Then

Thursday / Friday.  96 days of campaigning to go.

Where were you when you heard Hillary Clinton had come out in favour of the Union?  Personally, I’d just stubbed my toe on the bed-post, so my answer would be “the floor”.  I mention this merely so that the neighbours I disturbed with my cursing won’t assume I’m some sort of abusive Cybernat.

By contrast, I’m sure Jim Naughtie was on Cloud Nine.  Jim is the only radio broadcaster I know whom you can actually hear punching the air with glee, as he does whenever some “authority” with “clout” pronounces doom and gloom upon Scotland.  For two days a week he graces Good Morning Scotland with his presence, bringing a steady hand to the tiller and correcting its worrying drift towards balance. This is much appreciated by local staff, who have lapped up his master-classes in how to do broadcasting properly, and by Gary Robertson, who now has the chance to pursue other career opportunities. 

What Hillary had said to Jeremy Paxman on Thursday’s Newsnight was, “I would hate to have you lose Scotland”.  Perhaps she considered Jeremy the embodiment of the Westminster establishment, or perhaps she’d heard that government ministers had offered Scotland to him as a retirement present if he just stayed schtum about their rampant corruption.  Either way, she wanted us displayed in full view on his mantelpiece and not shoved away in a drawer with all the other crap, at least not without having a clearly marked label attached.

Self-interest may have played a part in Hillary’s stance, since when she’s President she doesn’t want to press the Trident launch button only to find that all the missiles have been chucked in a skip.  Nevertheless, a reverential Douglas Alexander, whom Jim took for walkies on Friday morning’s GMS, considered it a highly significant intervention by, gosh, just the USA’s most knowledgeable person on international affairs ever.  Wee Dougie also squeaked his scorn that Yes Scotland hadn’t put up a representative to be talked over by Jim while trying to debate the matter. To be fair, they had issued a statement that said, “We’ve got better things to do than discuss this sort of pish.”

Like a satanic baggage carousel GMS rolled on, bringing us repeated plays of Hillary’s chinwag with Paxo interspersed with Brian Taylor’s casual dismissal of the Scottish Government’s economic regeneration plans.  Finally Jim introduced us to Dr Pippa Malmgren, an honorary fellow of the Institute of Keeping Everything As It Is, who seemed remarkably unembarrassed about also being a former economic adviser to George W Bush.

Pippa’s breezy, snorting contempt for “separatism” was so potent she could bottle it and sell it for big bucks at Bilderberg conferences.  The US, she declared, was lumbered with county-level separatist movements in California and elsewhere, so no current or wannabe President was going to offer general support to separatism, and Scots oughtta think about that.  Even Jim, perhaps worrying about his Union Jack underpants catching fire, felt constrained to point out that Scotland was a tad more significant than a county. Still, he neglected to raise the possibility that on this particular subject Mrs Clinton might simply have opted to shut her cakehole.

Anyway, Pippa asserted, Scotland going it alone would be a “defence issue” for the US, a piece of botheration it didn’t need when Iraq was turning out to be nothing like the slam-dunk envisaged by Donald Rumsfeld back in 2003.  As for our NATO membership, it would be a “transition process full of question marks”, although whether the famous Rumsfeld dictum would categorise these as known unknowns, unknown unknowns, or no-nos (known or unknown), she didn’t know.

As Pippa triumphantly rounded off her diatribe, Jim relaxed into a throaty “Ha ha!”  God was back in his heaven, an “expert” had once again demonstrated independence to be too troublesome to contemplate, and his own memory of Annabelle Ewing running rings round him the previous day had been completely exorcised.   He could look forward to enjoying Land of Hope and Glory blasting away on his iPad in the first-class carriage back to civilisation without being nagged by a feeling of hollowness.

And so, by supplying a trumpet fanfare for another endorsement of the Union from a high-profile figure whose business it isn’t, the No campaign continued with its strategy of doing the same thing over and over again even though it didn’t work the first time.  As if we didn’t get enough of that at First Minister’s Questions.

Where was I when I heard the Pope had come out in favour of the Union?  When that happens, I’ll let you know.

It All Gets Messy

Wednesday.  98 days of campaigning to go…

If you gave 100 people 100 seconds to name as many “bleedin’ obvious Unionists” as possible, the first name they would write down is “J K Rowling”, except for people in Glasgow, who would spell it “Jakey”. Photographs from Eddie Izzard’s Pleeeeease Don’t Go gig clearly show her demonstrating high levels of tolerance for Alistair Darling.  She’s a frequent visitor to the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown for tea, buns and office equipment throwing.  And she’s never once Favorited anything “Muggles for Yes” have posted on Twitter.

Nevertheless, it was a big moment for the campaign when she actually trundled over to the headquarters of Better Together with a wheelbarrow containing £1 million in cash.  Of course, she’s donated a similar sum to the Labour Party in the past, so her bank-rolling of lost causes fronted by charlatans does follow a pattern.  If I ever invented a hair-dryer made of cheese, I’d certainly want her sitting opposite me when I made my pitch on Dragons’ Den.

But, under the rules of campaign donations established by Alex Johnstone MSP in the earlier case of Chris and Colin Weir, shouldn’t we be worried about this very thing?  Is JKR giving the money of her own free will, or is she merely a pitiable dupe who’s been sent ga-ga by the hypnotic snake eyes of Blair McDougall?  Scoff all you like, but let’s face it:  here’s a person who’s immersed in a fantasy universe co-existing with our own, where adolescent wizards ride broomsticks at invisible schools and Ralph Fiennes is the embodiment of all evil.  Before BT snaffles up the dosh, shouldn’t we at least get a social worker involved?

JKR’s a proper writer, who can punctuate and everything, so she was able to explain her decision on her web site in 1,576 expertly crafted words that nakedly paraded every nonsensical Unionist scare you could dream up, but still left you with a warm glow, going “Awww!”  Unfortunately, a malevolent magician must have snuck an evil incantation into the text somewhere, because immediately a hidden chamber seemed to open and a many-headed filth-vomiting abomination was unleashed on the Internet.

It turned out we were witnessing a sudden perfect combination of storms, such as forecasters always manage to explain to you in detail just after it’s happened.  At the very moment JKR’s bank vault was creaking open, the phenomenon known as “Lallygate”, which in most circumstances would by now have been wrapping chips, was taking on a chaotic new lease of life.  

The tweets from both sides of the indyref debate, plus some agents provocateurs and troublemakers along for the ride, were everywhere, with people finding them even in places they weren’t. Questioning, supportive, cynical, sanctimonious, vengeful, rude, sarcastic, hoity-toity, filthy, illegal and downright hateful:  you could have any flavour you liked, although a fair number tasted slightly fishy.

In the search for a Lallygate scapegoat the mainstream media had identified a Gunn, perhaps not smoking but certainly hired. Campbell of that ilk had written a 39-word e-mail that was 50% correct, albeit somewhat snide and unnecessary, and 50% pant-wettingly, embarrassingly wrong. Sadly, this crappy strike rate was achieved on the basis of just two measly facts, although it was still several notches above the output of a mendacious, back-stabbing toad such as Damian McBride.

Gunn apologised for his schoolboy howler, which seemed about right, although if it had been my call I’d also have told him to sit quietly in his playpen until further notice and keep his hands off the crayons. But the lynch mobs, amazed and delighted at temporarily occupying moral ground a baw-hair higher than its surroundings, bayed for more. To them, Gunn was the chief minion of Lord Voldemort (guess who?), transmitting poisonous thought commands to Death-Eating Cybernats from an underground bunker beneath Arthur’s Seat. Oh, and, by the way, all Yes supporters should just shut up shut up SHUT UP until 19 September.

With the spirit of Senator Joe McCarthy stalking the land, the rammy continued all the way up to STV’s Scotland Tonight.  Here the nation was treated to a televisual glimpse of the Rev Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland, a web site whose demonization by the mainstream media is currently entering its final stages.  He was in discussion with Susan Dalgety, a radioactive bay who used to be Jack McConnell’s advisor and is now forging a career as a professional interrupting machine.

Aided by some nifty refereeing from Rona Dougall, Rev Stu maintained his cool through all the “noises off”, and managed to put across his points. In a nutshell, these were that, unless you live in a reality constantly warped by wizards, Campbell Gunn’s e-mail was pretty damn lame, but wasn’t a personal attack, whilst Alistair Darling’s car-crash interview with the New Statesman had undoubtedly been both. 

Annoyingly for his detractors, Rev Stu made these observations without swearing, heckling, trashing the set or instructing his followers to kill everyone without mercy.  He was even remarkably restrained when Ms Dalgety tried to explain to him how the Scottish media worked, in a tone they must have used to tell Galileo the earth was flat.

As a febrile day limped painfully to its close, it was hard to see in what way the cause of democracy and civil discussion had been advanced, and not entirely clear how much longer it might survive.  

But we could all be sure of one thing.  For once, at First Minister’s Questions on Thursday, Alex Neil would be off the hook!

Sorry, What Did You Say?

Tuesday.  99 days of campaigning to go….

As the placards, flags and rent-a-crowds all magically winked out of existence until the next time the TV cameras ventured up the A1, Scotland returned to the real business of the referendum campaign:  getting huffy and petulant with one another on the Internet.

Much of the cyber-stushie centred upon the New Statesman, a publication whose once-unimpeachable integrity has, fittingly, collapsed to the level of Rik Mayall’s iconic creation Alan B’Stard. Under pressure from Blair McDougall’s Black Ops Team, it morphed into an ice-cream parlour of lies, its online version offering four different flavours of what Alistair Darling might have said when he effectively smeared two-fifths of Scottish voters as Nazis.

Sorry, that’s harsh.  Making sense of an inaudible mumble is tricky, and can take a few attempts to get right, particularly when a campaign apparatchik is standing over you with a baseball bat.  Life’s so much easier for the people editing the Chilcott Enquiry Bush/Blair tapes, who can just use a flamethrower and have done with it.  Anyway, here at last is the definitive version of the transcript.

Interviewer:  Blood and soil nationalism?

A plate of cakes is brought into the room.

Darling:  A tart! . . .

There follows a pause, as Darling delightedly scoffs his chosen specimen.  Then he goose-steps around the room like Basil Fawlty, shouting “Don’t mention the war!”  

Jeez, can’t you stuffy Nats take a joke?

Elsewhere in the “Whoops, what have I said?” stakes, there was a spat between Alex Salmond and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who had warned last week of independence leading to the “Balkanisation of Britain”.   A team of New Statesman voice experts was hastily convened to reveal that what Mr Bildt had actually said was “Vulcanisation”, and that he’d meant only that independence would be eyebrow-raising, so everyone would look like Mr Spock. “Nothing to see here,” said David Cameron, who was in Sweden for discussions about how to reduce annoying interference from Europe.

Back in the twilight world of the “social” media, the price of high horses began to soar, as someone portraying herself as an ordinary person was accused of being a political activist.  Or perhaps someone portraying herself as a political activist was accused of being an ordinary person, which to a political activist is a really gross insult.

It seems that this poor lady, perhaps while trying to return a library book or find a decent public loo, kept inadvertently wandering into political conferences.  Here she often bumped into Labour MSPs, with the shock of the impact inevitably triggering their iPhones to take selfies. 

As time went on she became infected with several political viruses, such as absurd views on the viability of the Scottish NHS and the inability to walk past a microphone without speaking into it. Eventually she was persuaded to join the Shadow Cabinet, although, as New Statesman voice experts have pointed out, tapes of the incident clearly show that she thought she was being invited on a shopping trip to MFI.

This simple chain of events, which could happen to anyone, gave us “Lallygate”, an outbreak of online eye-gouging and shrieking whataboutery that threatened to make the Jeremy Kyle Show look like a Church of Scotland Guild meeting.  It soon became clear that everyone needed to apologise, resign, be sacked and sit in a large vat of custard, dressed only in their pants, before honour could be restored.  Meanwhile, an IPSOS Mori poll, drooled over by Professor John Curtice, indicated that the number of Scottish households likely to answer a canvasser’s knock had fallen by 99.999999% overnight.

Astonishingly, things were comparatively peaceful at Westminster, where Michael Gove and Theresa May had finished burning each other’s toys in their prams and were now simply exchanging murderous glances.  Mr Gove pronounced that all schoolchildren must be indoctrinated with “British values”, or possibly “Brutish values” - still waiting for the New Statesman assessment there - and the search immediately began to discover what the hell these were.  “Money talks,” was the suggestion of one William Hill punter, who I hope isn’t a senior officer in MI6 with insider knowledge, as he placed a world-record £400,000 bet on Scotland voting No.

Finally, a tip of the hat to lugubrious Jim Murphy, who flew from Barrhead to Barra on his “100 Corners” tour, which involves standing on two Irn Bru crates and scaring the living daylights out of local passers-by.  So far the consensus is that Jim’s done OK, but the crowds preferred the scraping noise the crates made as he moved them into place.  You can follow Jim on his travels by looking at Met Office forecasts and seeing where they predict deep depressions.

And the game continues…..

The End Of The Beginning

Monday.  100 days of campaigning to go…..

The sun rose to the monstrous crowing of the Unionists’ pet parrot, The Herald, announcing that the three main Westminster parties were really, absolutely for certain, on the brink of getting round to talking about fixing a date to make a pact to consider jointly “guaranteeing” the Scottish Parliament more powers. 

Naturally, they couldn’t tell Scottish voters in advance what these powers would be, though we were welcome to check with any friends who happened to own a Tardis.  Otherwise we’d have to wait for each party’s version of the powers to be a nice surprise in its 2015 UK General Election manifesto, like finding a fluffy Werther’s Original on an otherwise nondescript carpet.  The general message was clear: they think some folk will swallow anything.

Just down the road, Better Together staff were complaining about some tired old busker churning through a limited repertoire and making it impossible for them to concentrate.  Unfortunately, this turned out to be Alistair Darling, plucked from the naughty step to re-launch BT’s "100 Lies in 100 Days" initiative after the original choice, a hotdog salesman made out of Lego, had unexpectedly been forced to cancel. Coincidentally, it was BT’s annual “Bring A Friend To Work, Using Threats Or Blackmail If Necessary” day, so there was a good crowd once the TV companies had sussed where to place their cameras.

Darling may be Horlicks on legs, but no amount of sleepiness could obscure the true message of his speech, which ran along the lines of, “I compared Salmond to Kim Jong Il, for pity’s sake!  What do I have to do to get sacked from this damn campaign?  I could be hoovering up directorships in the City, courtesy of all the complete bastards I forgot to regulate properly, so why do I need this hassle?”

It soon transpired that, in a daring attempt to snaffle the moral high ground, Better Together had adopted the tactic of politeness, replacing their usual gruff “Naw” with a perfectly behaved “No Thanks”, as if you’d offered them one cucumber sandwich too many.  Apparently the Saatchi agency’s original suggestions, “Regrettably Too Wee, Too Poor, Too Stupid” and “I’m Most Awfully Sorry, But Salmond Is A Big Fat Expletive Deleted”, hadn’t fitted on the wee flags they were handing out.

But scarcely had the first flag been waved in the face of a passing TV crew than the whole “No, Thanks” shtick was turned on its head.  Yes supporters on Twitter swiftly observed that a #NoThanks hashtag could equally be applied to the bedroom tax, Trident, biased broadcasters, unelected governments and every other foul whiff emanating from Westminster.  Once their keyboards started clattering, a full-scale Twitter drubbing was inevitable.  Sorry, BT, it’s #NoThanks to negativity, even if you express it like a maiden aunt.

Meanwhile, a sack of potatoes which had previously appeared to be sulking in a corner turned out to be Gordon Brown, who’s treating the referendum debate as some form of Hokey Cokey.  Reliable mathematicians, none of whom worked for the Treasury on his watch, estimate that he’s now on his 49th “decisive entry” into the No campaign.  Since what he says about pensions shows no grasp whatsoever of reality, and he’s so off-message he might as well be speaking in pictograms, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s doing this just to piss off Alistair Darling.

The journalist chosen as the conduit for Gordon’s world-view was Sky’s Eamonn Holmes, who duly questioned him with all the rigour of a fuzzy-felt cannon firing cotton wool balls.  You don’t want to annoy Gordon, who is fairly handy with a Blackberry from ten yards, but it turned out that Alex Salmond had earned his wrath by unfurling a Saltire to celebrate Andy Murray’s win at Wimbledon.  It made Scotland seem small, reckoned Mr Brown.  Goodness knows what he thinks when he sees the BBC weather map.  Or, indeed, the shockingly low life expectancy in parts of Glasgow after 13 years of farting about by the Blair and Brown administrations.

However, the conversation became juicier when Gordy turned his thunderous glare on the Better Together campaign, which he lambasted  -  just as normal people might!  -  for being negative, patronising and bullying.  Coming from him, that’s sufficient provocation to send the Darling blood pressure skywards until the poor man erupts in a shower of phlegm and rivets.  

Finally, having left muddy footprints all over the hearthrug, Gordy proceeded to piss on the Sunday roast by suggesting that David Cameron should debate with Alex Salmond.  Number 10 instantly dismissed the idea with casual loftiness, making it obvious that in secret the PM and his advisers were chewing the carpet.  Meanwhile, a high-pitched squeal reported in the Blythswood Square area was identified as air escaping from Better Together’s news management strategy.  Or Blair McDougall having a tantrum.  Or both.

What can it all mean?  Has Mr Brown, in his own eyes something of a super-hero, now concluded that the lesser beings can’t cope with the referendum, so he must take on the mantle of The Man Who Saved The Union?  If so, the campaign could become very interesting.  For, before he can save something, he must first destroy it….  

Vote No Scruples - Latest Newsletter

Greetings, anonymous donors! 

Thank you for supporting Vote No Scruples, the campaign that stops at nothing to preserve the Scotland you want to see! 

The various unmarked envelopes you sent us, each containing exactly £7,499.99, have allowed us to trawl the Internet for “concerned citizens” to whom we can give a Stars In Their Eyes moment spouting fact-free pish.  Who can forget Jack from Castlemillock, who worries about being hunted down by dogs for daring to smuggle Irn Bru to his son in Carlisle?  Or Gary from Drumchapple, who positively enjoys living 30 miles from a nuclear base and thinks the SNP’s control-freakery will interfere with his right to stick a fork in his toaster?

Meanwhile, our cutting-edge cinema adverts, featuring pathological liars re-branded as “actors”, have consistently made Blair McDougall look, by comparison, as if he’s been injected with a truth serum.  By breaking all known records in the niche area of “most spectacular collective outbreak of projectile vomiting”, they’ve ensured that even legitimate indyref cinema advertising has been comprehensively kneed in the groin. Give yourself a pat on the back, Home Counties!

It’s not all been plain sailing, of course, with meddlesome NHS bureaucrats getting snotty about our perfectly reasonable point that sick Scottish children would be chased away from London hospitals with pitchforks.  Rest assured that their concerns were appropriately addressed.  We got one of our 15-year-old interns to craft a snarky passive-aggressive press release, and the film will be back up on YouTube shortly, just as soon as we’ve re-dubbed it to replace the term ‘Great Ormond Street’ with ‘St Poopy-Pants’.

All told, in just over a month Vote No Scruples has come a long way from that initial recording session at a secret location near Edinburgh, observed only by a salivating Gavin Esler, a BBC News film crew and 22 Conservative Central Office SPADs hiding in a broom cupboard.   But our handlers at MI5 tell us that you expect much more from us, so it’s time for us to unveil our cunning plans for the rest of the campaign.

Our delightful teenage musicians, the Blooms of Blighty, at present remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ordnance4U plc, the highly respected arms consultancy.  However, our next publicity coup will be to sell off the shares as soon as we find investors of sufficient gullibility.  Currently, following their unquestioning embrace of the Tories’ “devo-max” proposals, we have high hopes of flogging the lot to lily-livered TV journalists.

Creatively speaking, the Blooms of Blighty are still filled with angst about this stupid referendum and practising hard to make it all go away.  Their debut CD, Vote No Or We’ll Keep Singing, has already achieved a staggering 1.5 billion online pre-orders, thanks to a software glitch in Whitehall’s central requisitioning system.  The group is also hard at work on a series of annoying jingles that Kezia Dugdale will use to drown out opposing views on her new Radio Scotland show.

Your generous financial support has also allowed us to outbid Nando’s for the continuing services of our two fantastic actors.  We’ve given them starring roles in an exciting new venture, Luxury Coach Party 2014, where they’ll be filmed travelling in a big swanky bus round Guildford, burning £20 notes in front of cheering Scottish crowds which we’ll Photoshop in later.  They’ll also shortly be donning Gordon Brown masks to make a spine-chilling video about pensions, which will be shown in the communal TV lounges of retirement homes throughout Scotland, just before the nice young man from the council comes round to help the residents fill in their postal ballots.

And, of course, we’ll be continuing our fruitful co-operation with the consultancy AhCannae.  For those of you who have been asking, it’s a strictly non-aligned organisation, apart from its unswerving loyalty to Satan, that has worked in several countries where the citizens are getting above themselves and, frankly, need a slap.  It specialises in taking the delicate buds of hope and optimism and crushing them with a huge mallet. It pitilessly shreds people’s delusions that the government gives a rat’s arse what they think and shoves the pieces down their throats till they choke.  It’s been helping us mostly with photocopying.

So, as you can see, there’s lots going on, and we haven’t even mentioned the wheelbarrows of cash we’ll be taking round to the Electoral Commission to stop them moaning. 

Keep sending in those untraceable donations, and let’s make this summer a Festerval of Dependence!  

Yours self-servingly,

'Malky' 

Arithmetricks

The BBC dealt a further blow to Alex Salmond’s referendum hopes last Sunday night by revealing that conventional arithmetic no longer applies in Scotland.

“Fourth is the new first,” smirked David Dimbleby. “That makes UKIP the European election winners for North Britain, and if Alex doesn’t like it, he can complain to BBC Glasgow.  Care to join me in a celebratory titter, Professor Curtice?” 

As dancing erupted in the streets of Kensington, pasty-faced Danny Alexander emerged from hiding to confirm, “This is a shattering development for the separatists.  Alex Salmond arrogantly assumes that the traditional system of counting is his personal property.  But the truth is that, by daring to take its future into its own hands, Scotland is walking away from sensible sums and into a world where numbers mean only what Westminster says they mean.”

Entirely by coincidence, the UK Treasury backed up Mr Alexander’s view by releasing the latest cataclysmic figures on the costs of independence for him to stand in front of.  These conclusively proved, through a lot of squiggles and arrows you wouldn’t understand, that upon separation the Scottish Government would need to create 17.8 entirely new public bodies for each man, woman and child in Scotland, and that this would make the whole silly project cost more money than there was in the entire universe.

Speaking for Labour, Johann Lamont, chief paper-clip organiser at the Scottish branch, didn’t know what to think, since no-one had given her a script and, anyway, there hadn’t been a debate yet.  Her motor-mouth deputy Anas Sore-Ear was somewhat less reticent, telling slavering reporters, “Abandoning proper adding up is a move Labour have been advocating for years.  It allows us to pool and share resources without drawing attention to there being bugger-all to dish out in the first place.  Now boom and bust, far from being abolished, can co-exist simultaneously, depending on which dangerous ideologue is massaging the figures.”

Turning to the referendum before anyone could stop him, Mr Sore-Ear commented, “According to the new maths, 68% of Scottish electors now support anti-indy parties.  Some of those parties have repugnant views, of course, and if they don’t shape up by 19 September we’ll be the first to condemn them.  But basically independence is now down to just Alex, Nicola, that specky guy and a ragtag mob of abusive online scumbag tosser ne’er-do-wells.  It’s all over bar the shouting, which fortunately is my speciality.”

The Tories issued a statement saying, “We don’t normally comment on arithmetical issues, since our personal assets tend to be weighed rather than counted, and we have staff to do that.   As for UKIP, they are undoubtedly a squalid bunch of chancers, and there is 0% chance of us agreeing an electoral pact with them until it becomes greasily expedient.  However, as far as the referendum goes, we like the parts of their name that say “UK” and “dependence Party”, and dislike only the part that says “In”.  So we’re 89.473684% in agreement with them, which definitely warrants a few congratulatory tweets and, weather permitting, al fresco naked dancing round a burning sporran.”

In a Good Morning Scotland interview with Gary Robertson, who had spent the night poring over Ladybird books trying to find questions easy enough to answer, victorious UKIP MEP David Coburn asserted that 70% of our laws were made in Europe, although he couldn’t specify any, had only the haziest appreciation of the concept of “laws” and wasn’t entirely sure where Europe actually was. His appearance did, however, confirm a 33% increase in UKIP candidate categories, to include not just “racists, homophobes and fruitcakes” but also “grimacing buffoons”.

From a heavily guarded bunker in Little England, a UKIP spokesthing confirmed that the party’s 24 MEPs would be drawing 100% of their expenses and the bars of Brussels had better be prepared for some “roistering, rogering and regurgitating.”  Turning up at the European Parliament every so often to hurl abuse at Herman van Rompuy would operate on a rota system, assuming at least a twenty-fourth of them remained sober enough to organise it.

There are sixteen weeks to go until the independence referendum.  Under the old numerical system, that’s 112 days.  Under the new one, eternity.

I'm Sorry, They Haven't A Clue

Dog-walkers in the vicinity of BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay stronghold are feverishly speculating about the source of the high-pitched whine they keep hearing.  Is it Lord Reith approaching escape velocity as he rotates in his crypt?  Is it fire alarms constantly going off as Better Together commentators’ underpants spontaneously combust?  Or is it simply the squeak of air escaping from the saggy, patched-up hot-air balloon of the BBC’s credibility?

“We’re not biased, it’s just a series of unfortunate events,” insists the corporation’s spokesman Lemony Snicket, emerging gingerly from the front door on the end of a cattle prod. “We can’t explain why every regrettable blip in our referendum coverage seems to favour the No side, unless of course the rumours that God hates Alex Salmond are true.  But we’ve consulted Professor Brian Cox, who knows all about string theory, and he says there must be at least one parallel universe where our output accidentally favours Yes, so we’re legally watertight on the impartiality front.”

What about the CBI debacle?  “Yes, that was terrible, wasn’t it?  Fortunately, James Cook outed himself as the whistle-blower and was put on five months’ toilet-cleaning duty before he could do any further damage.  To console him in his exile, his desk’s been covered in gifts from well-wishers - flowers, whisky, tablet and Wings Over Scotland badges from vicious Cybernats, and what appears to be a carefully-wrapped alarm clock from Blair McDougall.”

But is the BBC actually going to resign CBI membership, like other organisations still in possession of a moral compass? “That’s an issue for senior management in London, whose in-trays you probably don’t realise are crammed with important stuff.  Currently they’re busy in a farting-about workshop, then next week they’ve got their regular indoctrination session at MI5, followed by a group shopping excursion to “Tories-R-Us” to select a new chairman for the BBC Trust.

“In the meantime, we’ve mobilised a squad of unpaid interns to find out which other organisations we’re involved in without knowing. Fortunately, it seems that many of them don’t officially exist, so we don’t have to tell you about them, although you’re welcome to submit a Freedom of Information request countersigned by five grandparents.  As for the others, please note that SAS isn't an airline or a crack military unit - it's Sad Absurd Sycophants, of which royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell is Life President.  I'm also reliably informed that the terrorist organisations Blue Peter inadvertently funded during the 1970s have now promised to return our milk bottle tops to us.”

How is all this affecting the morale of staff as they rehearse for becoming unbiased during the formal campaign period?  “Oh, it’s a nightmare.  We were already struggling to train Kirsty Wark to interview Alex Salmond without sounding like a hysterical macaque.  Then we had a crisis with Jackie Bird, whose face became stuck when she tried to say the words “Sunday Herald”.  Glenn Campbell is forever complaining about the load of compromisin’ on the road to his horizon.  Only Gary Robertson keeps smiling throughout, but we suspect that it’s because he doesn’t actually have the faintest idea what’s going on.”

The chaos gradually taking hold has, says Snicket, spurred the BBC to a momentous decision.  “We’ve decided the only option is to take our referendum coverage entirely out of the hands of the newsroom, and move it into the area of comedy.”

This opens up tremendous opportunities for the BBC’s team of teenage animators, who did such a great job ridiculing an independent Scotland’s ability to defend itself on Sunday Politics Scotland a few weeks back.  “They’ll be getting a regular slot on a new show called Alistair Carmichael’s Cartoon Cavalcade,” explains Snicket, “where they’ll produce hilarious animations in which Alex Salmond, dressed as Captain Pugwash, will patrol the coast in an old bathtub, his frustration mounting as Scotland is destroyed by death rays from outer space.”

The animators will also play a large part in the opening titles of 2014, a side-splitting sitcom about organising the Commonwealth Games.  “Suffice it to say that the demolition of the Red Road flats is back on the agenda.  Not to mention the Forth Bridge, the Wallace Monument and of course the Scottish Parliament.”

Meanwhile, Gavin Esler, whose film on the Vote No Borders group was widely hailed as “comedy genius” after saturation coverage on BBC News 24, has agreed to bombard viewers with similar masterpieces.  “It’s an exciting moment for the debate,” comments Snicket, “with so many grass-roots campaigns being organised by Conservative Central Office.”  Esler, who has renounced all aspirations to be Jeremy Paxman in favour of making people pee themselves with laughter, is hard at work on his follow-up, No Shit Sherlock, about a group who believes that Scotland should jack in independence and just let itself be governed by Benedict Cumberbatch.

“We’ve also got big plans for panel shows,” drools Snicket. “Queue? Aye! will feature Stephen Fry and some of his clever pals making hilarious jokes about how long it will take Scotland to join the EU.  Then there’s Have I Got Trews For You, where teams led by Alan Cochrane and Susan Calman will discuss the ridiculous costs of the First Minister’s wardrobe.”

It’s not all good news, though.  Snicket still shudders at the memory of the pilot recording of the new, revamped Just A Minute.  “It was all going fine until we asked the panel to give the positive case for the Union without hesitation, deviation or repetition.  I think it was eleven hours before the emergency services broke in and rescued the audience.”

So the BBC is all set for the final straight, it would appear.  Not that things are ever straight with the Beeb.  Isn’t this still, er, a wee bit biased?  “Oh, yes, of course.  But it’s only the Electoral Commission we have to worry about, and if they get stroppy our smartarse lawyers will soon have them tied in more knots than Spaghetti Junction.  Anyway, just in case we need something to redress the balance, we’ve got Blair McDougall and Alistair Darling on standby to be filmed trying to deliver a piano up a long flight of steps.”

What if, despite the Beeb’s valiant efforts, the people of Scotland still vote Yes?  “We’ll have a group hug, collect our P45s, sprint to a fleet of waiting limousines, watch Pacific Quay being blown sky-high with dynamite, then do a 100 mph dash with police escort to Carter Bar, where Rory Stewart and a group of hand-holding acolytes will be waiting to welcome us to our new lives.”

And if Scotland votes No?  “Ha ha, you’ll get exactly what you deserve.  Wall-to-wall Jeremy Clarkson until the end of time."

Confederation Of Blithering Idiots

“It’s really very simple,” explained CBI director-general Sir John Cringeland.  “We only meant to put our left leg in to the referendum debate, shake it about a bit and take it out again.  Unfortunately, an over-enthusiastic tea boy, in the grip of a sugar rush from too many Viennese Whirls, faxed an application form to the Electoral Commission asking if we could put our whole selves in.

“Well, it’s only bloody Scotland, we thought, so we decided to let it go.  We’d no reason to believe that “Donald Duck” wasn’t an authorised signatory, and anyway a junior clerk had shredded the only copy of our signatory list to make bedding for his hamster.  It looked as if registration would help us to comply with campaign spending rules, since we’d lined up Alistair Darling to speak at our annual fund-raising dinner, and he generally charges £20,000 just to fart the National Anthem.

“Of course, consulting our members has been a grey area ever since our last IT upgrade, during which our former preferred supplier accidentally translated our records into Japanese.  But I sounded out some decent chaps at my club, and they were all in favour of registration, not to mention giving that upstart Salmond a damn good thrashing.  So we thought our Scottish members, whoever they might turn out to be, would meekly fall into line.

“Imagine our surprise when some of them resigned because they wanted to stay neutral!  I mean, how can you stay neutral when, each time someone is persuaded to vote Yes, a kitten dies?  And who’d have thought that Scotland had so many universities?  Anyway, we consulted Professor John Curtice via his coin-operated interface, and he repeatedly advised us that, despite mounting evidence, nothing had really changed.  That was fine until last night, when I inadvertently turned into a dark alleyway and found myself confronted with the Prime Minister and the Director General of the BBC, both carrying baseball bats.

“As a result of that discussion, the CBI would like to retract its registration with the Electoral Commission.  We will do so by invoking the “Old Boy Network Get Out Of Jail Free” scheme, which allows us to carry on as if nothing has happened and vilify anyone who objects as a frothing Cybernat.  We remain committed to total bias in the referendum debate, but now intend to pursue this in an underhand fashion, in line with the values of the most successful union the galaxy has ever known.

“Mistakes have been made, but the good news is that I am not responsible for any of them.  For the benefit of the House of Lords wardrobe department, my size is ‘medium’ and I look forward to making your acquaintance shortly.”

A cat-burglar with a rucksack full of Tipp-Ex was later found in a crumpled heap outside the offices of the Electoral Commission.  "Bloody anti-climb paint," he was heard to moan while being wheeled away.

In response to Sir John’s statement, the Institute of Stable Door Manufacturers issued guidance stating that its products are best used when the horse is inside the stable, and less effective when it has already completed a season in pantomime and entered itself in the Cheltenham Festival.

Meanwhile, the BBC announced an exciting new venture with the CBI, which will result in all of its Scottish referendum coverage being broadcast on a jointly-owned channel aimed specifically at the gullible.  This will be called CBeebies. 

A Cataclysmic Aberration

The Scottish referendum debate took another lurch into Bizarro World this week, as Labour's campaign co-ordinator Anas Sarwar revealed the first of his “Dad’s Army” group of clapped-out zombie politicians from the Blair era to try to stick a fork in the toaster of the Yes campaign.

This turned out to be Lord George Robertson, a small brain in a big head whose utter mediocrity somehow hasn’t prevented him scuttling up the ladder of success, where in a just world he would have landed painfully on the part of his anatomy he reserves for talking.  You wouldn’t normally trust George to run a bath, far less an organisation possessing 45% of the world’s nuclear weapons, but it so happened that in 1999 Tony Blair, itching to get started on making poverty history by bombing the poor, urgently needed a glove puppet as Secretary-General of NATO.

Already the recipient of several “Useless Lickspittle of the Month” awards during his tenure as Defence Secretary, wee George was the obvious candidate.  His five carnage-strewn years in the role made him the man he is today:  patrolling the outer reaches of sanity, ever vigilant for threats to Western security, US hegemony or job offers from companies specialising in ways of blowing people up.

So it was that the other night George found himself being trundled on stage, with a short fuse fizzing fiercely, in Washington DC.  By complete coincidence, a gilt-edged invitation from prestigious think tank the Brookings Institution had come fluttering through the letter box of his fallout shelter asking him to speak at the very time Alex Salmond would be at “Tartan Week” in New York.  Alex, ever the showman, was working hard for Scottish interests, or, as Johann Lamont would put it, “wasting taxpayers’ money staying in hotels when, if it was me, I’d be sleeping in ditches and living off the kindness of strangers.” 

In the interests of balance, it was only fair that someone should be given the opportunity to trash Scotland’s reputation.  Rising to the challenge, George, who’s rubbed shoulders with the elite, albeit mostly against their midriffs, decided he’d do so in true Presidential style.  Unfortunately, the tools he chose were Nixon’s paranoia, Reagan’s reality deficit and Dubya’s all-round dumbness.  The resulting speech was the equivalent of screaming at the top of his voice for forty-five minutes before being led away in a straitjacket.

Better Together’s translation service remarked, “Lord Robertson’s masterful address, carrying echoes of Dr Martin Luther King, merely pointed out how Scotland’s pig-headed insistence on breaking away from the UK will result in the destruction of all life on earth.  With NATO torn apart because no-one wants to take Trident, a Russian-Chinese alliance will conquer the world and, as a result, Starfleet will never be formed.  The Klingon Empire will consequently meet no opposition when they come to vaporise the planet in the year 2156.  These are facts that the Yes campaign has never denied, and Scottish voters need to take account of them.”

In their heart of hearts, Better Together probably wished that the forces of darkness would kidnap George and haul him off to a dungeon in Mordor, never to be seen again.  Even the Unionist press was struggling to report the speech without using the words “complete diddy”.  The Herald called it “powerful”, possibly referring to its stench rather than its vigour.  And the pain continued, as George manifested himself again on Newsnight Scotland, assuring startled hedgehog Gordon Brewer that his speech made perfect sense because he’d looked up “cataclysmic” in the dictionary.

But, even as they eat their socks with embarrassment, Unionists need not be entirely downhearted.  Comedy gold it may have been, but the debacle did achieve three interesting goals:

• Completely upstaging Alex Salmond.  Finally broadcasters had a good excuse to ignore any statesmanlike remarks he made about constitutions, enlightened self-interest and other dangerous rabble-rousing topics.  Previously this week Scotland Tonight’s justification for not presenting the Yes case had been reduced to “Ooh look, a rat’s just chewed through this cable.”

• Advancing an argument so mind-bendingly stupid that it’s impossible to counter it without sounding dismissive and insulting.  Nicola Sturgeon has to be commended for not yelling, “Aw, come on, do you expect me to take this pish seriously?” but wee George was still able to accuse her of playing the man, not the ball.  This will have gone down a storm in the Better Together tactics truck.

• Making Alistair Darling, who flew out to Washington at taxpayer expense on Tuesday to deliver the usual cliché-encrusted claptrap to selected audiences, seem like the voice of reason.  Anyone who watched his hag-ridden performance on last Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show would have considered that beyond the scope of human endeavour.  Of course, it may not be of long-term benefit to his public speaking career, where his remuneration depends on how much his audience is prepared to pay for him to shut up.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Barack Obama commented, “Yeah, the Scotch can pretty much do what they like in their vote.  Remind me, are they the ones with castles, monsters and leprechauns?”

Cybernats Ate My Hamster

Should No campaigners venture out into the streets without body armour?  That’s the question currently being posed by self-styled influential commentators after a study by IBM (Incredibly Biased Media) revealed that Cybernat rudeness is reaching epidemic proportions.

“It was bad enough when Cybernats were confined to their bedrooms,” said one political figure, wearing a paper bag over his head for anonymity.  “Having the word PISH tweeted at you isn’t very agreeable when your Scottish cringe is normally greeted with nods of approval in the House of Lords.  But at least they used to be out of sight, unless one of them accidentally managed to Skype you, so you didn’t have to gaze with horror upon their sweaty countenances and grubby semmits.

“Now we’ve let them get hold of iPhones, so they’re able to go outdoors, meet up in huge gangs and go on…. on…. sticker rampages.”  The last two words came out in a scarcely audible whisper, and he needed a nice cup of camomile tea before he could continue.

“Did you read about what they did to Ian Murray’s constituency office?” he sobbed. “Ian takes great pride in its appearance, taking pains to ensure it projects just the right amount of soul-sucking negativity.  And those… those vandals…. came along and allegedly stuck at least one and possibly more Yes stickers on the window, in full view of his core vote! 

“We all know how dangerous Yes stickers are.  With the light blocked out and the office in darkness, a staff member banged his knee against the corner of a desk, and unleashed a volley of swearing that sent two colleagues home in tears.  So the job of removing the stickers fell to the not-very-bright intern, who accidentally swallowed the sponge he was using and had to be rushed to hospital.  Meanwhile, several people walked under his ladder and will have bad luck for the next seven years.”

I asked Police Scotland about this vile hooliganism, but unfortunately they didn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about.  However, journalists who had been amongst the first emergency services on the scene were happy to provide corroboration, although their emotions were understandably too raw for them to agree on all, or indeed any, of the facts.

Meanwhile, inevitably in a country as dreich as ours, indoor Cybernattery continues unabated.  I was contacted by “Bill”, founder and patriarch of the holiday company Bawheid Travel, who explained how devastating an impact it can have on businesses innocently trying to railroad staff.

“All I did was e-mail my employees saying that after independence the firm would be buggered, because European law would immediately impose a 500-year ban on us offering anything more than weekend breaks in Millport.  I told the staff it was basically up to them, but if they voted Yes I would have them fed to giant mutant cockroaches while I sprayed them with tomato sauce.

“Well, you should have seen the abuse I got!  And that was before the e-mail even went public.  After that, we started trending on Twitter, and not in a good way, as Cybernats piled in saying that they’d rather hack out their spleen with a potato-peeler than do business with us.  Not that it really mattered by then, because most of the staff had gone off in the huff and I’d had to sack the rest for insubordination.”

Was it possible, I enquired, that people weren’t doing business with Bill’s company not because of his pro-Union views, but because it was run by a complete idiot?  His rejoinder, an unoriginal but forceful combination of sex and travel, suggested a possible future for him in the 18-30 holiday market.

I had to know more.  Fortunately, in an entirely unlikely scenario I’ve just made up, one of The Scotsman’s senior journalists agreed to speak to me, with the proviso that he could keep his face hidden behind a large yucca plant.  His diagnosis was stark.

“This ‘independence’ notion may seem a clever idea to Alex Salmond as he sits in a champagne bath in his luxurious American hotel suite, but it’s incredibly divisive.  Look at the places in the world that have recently experienced civil war, and you’ll see they’re all independent countries.  What does that tell you?

“This toxic debate will ruin friendships, tear apart families and have people smashing mirrors in an attempt to throttle their own reflections.  It’s like the worst excesses of Nazism, Communism and the French Revolution rolled into one.  Someone may even get hurt before long, which would be a blessing in disguise because then we’d have a reason to call the whole silly thing off.”

Blimey!  Was this the official view of Better Together, I wondered?  I dialled their 666 hotline number and, after 45 minutes on hold listening to Land Of Hope and Glory over and over again, I became so irritable that I was easily able to convince them that I was Alistair Darling.  A senior manager, “Blair”, agreed to meet me at a local coffee shop on condition that I bought him several doughnuts.

“Cybernats have got no respect,” he whined. “You wouldn’t believe their potty mouths when they’re online!  Half a dozen of the GCHQ listening staff had to be referred to trauma counsellors, and most of the rest don’t understand the meaning of the words used.  Although it is fair to say that Alistair Carmichael resembles some of the body parts quoted, if observed in a slightly dim light.

“They’re everywhere now, handing out saltires in the street, fixing us with quizzical stares and meeting in groups of more than one.  You can’t trust any of them:  the old women have unexpectedly pointy elbows and can do you a real mischief with a shopping trolley, the pensioners can fire their false teeth with deadly accuracy at any target within twenty-five paces, and even the uninterested-looking youngsters can unleash sarcasm on you at the slightest provocation.  Some of the younger ones are even able to deliver inspiring speeches! What's the point of infiltrating the teachers’ unions if that’s going to happen?

“It’s just the problem you get when you’re dealing with a mass movement of people.  We don’t have any human beings in Better Together, so we’ve gone with politicians instead.  We’re convinced it will come right eventually, since no-one will believe the depths of depravity to which our mouthpieces are actually prepared to stoop.”

I’d heard enough.  “I don’t agree with you, since I still have some moral fibre,” I said, “but thank you for your honesty.”

I shook his hand, and he immediately grasped his head and went down like a footballer in the penalty box.  “Help, police!” he yelled.  “Cybernat attack!”

As I was led away by an uncomfortably swift gathering of officers, two thoughts forced themselves to the front of my brain.

Firstly, would there be a PC in the prison library to enable me to continue blogging?

Secondly, would they let me wear my one and only, slightly grubby semmit, as long as I promised not to use Skype?


*********************************************************************************

I was halfway through writing today's blog post when I heard about the death of Margo MacDonald.  It was sad to hear of the passing of one of the greatest influences in Scottish politics in the last 40 years and more. Whatever the shape of the new Scotland after September, Margo will have played a major part in bringing it about.  It's a great shame that she will not live to see the results of her life's work.

Like those of many people today, my thoughts are with Jim Sillars, Margo's husband, and with her family.

Cuckoos In The Nest

Pundits last night described themselves as “flabbergasted” by the latest unexpected turn in the Scottish referendum debate, as the No campaign sensationally re-branded itself as Better Together for Independence.

“It was the focus groups,” declared Alistair Darling to a slack-jawed press conference.  “When we showed them our campaign literature, those who weren’t too traumatised to speak insisted it was far too negative.  We’d been hearing the same from Charles Kennedy and David Steel, but we’d ignored them, because that’s just what you do with Liberal Democrats.

“So we sat down with the stakeholders and asked ourselves, well, what sort of idea is it that’s really resonating in a positive way with voters?  And, when we looked at the momentum in the polls, we could see that it was obviously independence.”

The thrust of the campaign will change immediately, as multi-million pound efforts are thrown into getting the White Paper out to a wider audience.  “The Scottish Government has really dropped the ball on this,” said Darling. “They simply haven’t put enough money into distribution, and with only five months left we’re going to have to ramp things up fast.” 

BTI, as the organisation will henceforth be known, has commandeered a fleet of ice-cream vans, and is currently fitting them with miniature cannons which will fire the document at households.  “We’re hoping the jolly music will cause people to open their windows,” remarked Darling, “but, just in case, we’re advising Edinburgh investment firms to buy shares in glazing companies.”  As a sideline, a loyalty scheme will entitle purchasers of 10 ice cream wafers to an autographed copy of the McCrone Report.

The organisation will now start accepting invitations to referendum debates, where it intends to criticise pro-independence campaigners for not being ambitious enough.  It has also introduced its own range of “Yes” badges, bigger and shinier than everyone else’s, and will ask employers to circulate e-mails threatening their staff with the sack if they don’t wear at least five.  “It’s a clear business opportunity,” maintained Darling, who himself has a sports version with a built-in camera for taking selfies on people’s doorsteps.  The burgeoning collectors’ market is already identifying favourites, such as the Star Trek (“Affirmative”), the Vicky Pollard (“Yehbutnobutyehbut”) and the Ann Summers (“Yes Yes Oh YESSSS!”). 

BTI now acknowledges that Westminster is “too big, too rich and too clever by half” to be in partnership with Scotland, but the organisation’s position on post-independence negotiations is rock-solid.  “If George Osborne doesn’t agree to currency union,” asserted Darling, “I’m going down to London to give him a piece of my mind.  I used to live in his house, so I know all the hiding places.”

On the question of Europe, with Mr Barroso now the subject of an arrest warrant on the grounds of his being a “complete tosser”, things are looking fairly rosy.  Just in case, however, BTI has arranged for Spanish fishermen to hold a candlelit vigil outside the European Parliament until Scotland’s position is resolved.  “If that doesn’t work,” said Darling, “Alastair Carmichael has had a quiet word, and, if called upon, Mr Putin is prepared to annexe Orkney and Shetland.  That should make fast-track EU membership for the rest of Scotland a formality.”

Spin-off organisations are already beginning to proliferate.  Bastards for Scotland, a cartel of several big banks, has announced that its members will shortly be moving their head offices to Scotland and paying huge bonuses to randomly selected psychopaths.  Meanwhile, National Corrective, a grass-roots movement of people who mistakenly believe they can write, paint and sing, is planning a series of concerts at which the erroneous views of members of the audience will be mercilessly ridiculed in rhyming couplets.

Wings Over Scotland, the enfant terrible of the independence movement, will be purchased by the BBC in a multi-million pound deal and, in Darling’s words, “we’ll get some proper journalists in to write it”.  Its founder, Rev Stuart Campbell, will be promoted to Lifetime President, but will have a less hands-on role as more and more of his time is mysteriously taken up by issues such as rodent control.  “We have no shortage of rats in our organisation,” commented Darling. 

The centrepiece of the revamped Wings will be its serialisation of Alan Cochrane’s six-part biography of Alex Salmond, titled I Admit It, He’s A Genius.  “It’s been hell for Alan all these years,” said Darling, “writing poisonous drivel about Alex every week in the Daily Telegraph, when all he really wanted to do was give him a big hug.”  A huge promotional campaign is planned for Glasgow Underground, where any advertisements not supporting independence have now been banned.

At Holyrood, it’s been confirmed that Johann Lamont’s opening question on Thursday will be, “What is the First Minister’s favourite colour?”  Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie are reported to have asked Presiding Officer Tricia Marwick if it’s all right not to ask a question, but instead to scatter rose petals in Mr Salmond’s path and lead the chamber in a chorus of For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.  Darling, meanwhile, described rumours that SNP members will continue to pose questions about hospitals and the dualling of the A9 as “not helpful”.

Professor John Curtice, who attended last night’s press conference by virtue of his general omnipresence, was asked about the impact of the evening’s announcements on the public’s voting intentions.  He examined his tea-leaves carefully for a few moments, then pronounced, “Good heavens, quite astonishing! The No campaign has suddenly shot ahead by fifty points!”

“Mission accomplished,” murmured Darling.