Euro Elections 2014 in pictures for the hard of thinking

Wag the Nob

If you've never seen Wag the Dog, do use all the guile of the interweb to see it. It's even worth buying the DVD if you're a traditionalist.

Vote Nob Orders don't seem to realize that the film was satirical comedy at its best. For them it is a training manual. However, they lost something in the translation as their productions are truly cringeworthy. Heralded by the BBC as a "spontaneous", "grassroots" response to the dire efforts of Better Together, VNB is in fact the brainchild of Malcolm Offord, Tory-donor (your peerage is in the post) and wealthy banker in concert with Acanchi Ltd, a London-based astroturfing agency whose previous crowning achievement had been "rebranding" Israel by the convenient means of airbrushing those pesky Palestinians from history and the present day.

Acanchi was in dire financial straits in 2011, but its fortunes turned round dramatically in 2012. In 2011 they made a loss of £197,003. In 2012 they made a profit of £103,292. The income from sales went from £25,631 in 2011 to £348,835 in 2012. This dramatic turnaround was explained by a director in the financial report for 2012 as follows:

“The nature of Acanchi’s business is that the award of government contracts is subject to external delays beyond the Company’s control. As stated in last year’s financial statement, the Directors’ forecast that there would be a significant improvement in these financial statements. This was achieved as the result of the company being awarded contracts in the current period which had been the subject of long on-going discussions in the past.”

We know that Acanchi started work on the independence referendum in 2012 because an intern had it on her CV, which has since disappeared from cyberspace. So it appears that as well as the generous Mr Offord, Acanchi has been getting Government money to Wag The Nob of the Scottish people for Vote Nob Orders and U KOK (what is it with all the phallic imagery in Better Together?).

Thankfully, whereas VNB has mair money than sense and certainly mair money than wit, the cack-handed VNB advertising campaign, greeted with derision in cinemas across Scotland has now spawned some real wit from the Yes side:

The VNB Original "Fantastic".

The Fantastic Spoof.

The VNB Original "Passport"

The Spoof Passport

What of the staged and scripted Vox Pops done by a Cambridge photographer? You'll only appreciate the quality of this excellent satire by Ayr teenager Mark Thorburn if you've waded through some of the Cringetastic VNB originals. Quite a few on Twitter and YouTube were taken in and thought it was an actual VNB Video.

If you find any more, tweet me at @logicsrock with the #WagTheNob hashtag.

David Cameron Puts the Boot into Better Together

It's almost worthy of Flashman. Even the keenest Yes supporter might hesitate to put the boot into Better Together this week, but David Cameron has no such qualms. Let's see, in the latest of a long run of disastrous weeks for the No Campaign, this week:

• Their leader Alistair Darling has been "sidelined" (Toryspeak for sacked).
• He has been replaced by Douglas Alexander, mastermind of the 2010 Labour defeat, David Milliband's Labour leadership defeat and the strategy which has Labour currently behind the Tories in the UK polls. True to form, Alexander promptly went on Sunday Politics and got into a fankle lying about VAT.
• The £46,500 "secret" Ipsos-Mori poll which prompted the sacking is discovered in Cabinet Office accounts, resulting in the Twitter hashtag #PublishThePoll trending UK-wide and across the US.
  
• Gordon "Curse of Jonah" Brown has yet again threatened that he is going to be a big beast in the debate. How many times is that he's been re-launched in the campaign?
• The Vote No Borders "Spontaneous", "Grassroots" No Campaign allegedly set up in response to the dismal performance and negativity of Better Together has been well and truly exposed as an astroturf campaign by government contract spin doctors Acanchi that has been in the pipeline for 2 years. Likewise it has no qualms dealing in fear mongering.
• The Sun started an alleged love bombing campaign, getting fruitcakes like John McCririck to pen patronizing articles that would have even Mason Boyne reaching for a Yes vote.
• The Orange Order announced it is to parade "up to 25,000" sectarian bigots with big drums through Edinburgh a few days before the Referendum. That should have even the doucest of blue-rinsed, Morningside Matrons at least considering a Yes.

So what does the non-debating Defender of the Union David Cameron do? As if his coming to Scotland wasn't bad enough for Better Together, he resurrects the memory of the late John Smith! 

20 years after the death of the last Labour leader before the party was taken over by closet Tories like Blair and Brown and nonentities like Milliband, Lamont and Alexander, Cameron underlines why Labour voters are defecting from the hijacked Labour party line in droves. 

Perhaps Cameron thought it would be easier to use a dead Labour leader as a Tory sock puppet than Ed Milliband, Alistair Darling, Douglas Alexander, Johann Lamont. Oh, hang on, wait a minute ...

Alternatively, you might wonder which side Cameron is really on? You might think that he secretly wants a Yes vote. He's coming up to put some boot about, but into Better Together. You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment.

Yes Scotland should welcome his visit. May there be many more like it.