OK, so I'm learning from The Hootsmon here. The headline is not a quote but unlike as is often not the case in The Hootsmon, the headline does actually bear some resemblance to the content of the article. Whilst it is not a quote, it is a more than fair inference from the fount of baseless scaremongering that is Better Together's sole contribution to the referendum debate.
Scots as thick as mince? Better Together, its constituent parties and its willing army of Churnalists in the mainstream media unquestioningly churning and regurgitating the ludicrous scare stories must think that we Scots are indeed as thick as mince.
A special loathing for Scots? 63 of the 193 member states of the UN have shaken off rule from Wasteminster. Some, like Ireland even had to fight and kill British soldiers for their independence. However, despite being shareholders in the UK state and the only casualty in the history of the Scottish Independence Movement having been my local pillar box in 1953 (it wisnae me!), the sanctions allegedly to be applied to Scots far outstrip anything in the history of end of the British Empire. Even at the height of its international apartheid opprobrium, the British Government was fighting the rest of the Commonwealth to stop sanctions against and maintain relations with South Africa.
I've developed the Hoots! Factor scale named after The Hootsmon which seems to have developed its own vocabulary and scale of utterly baseless scariness, closely followed by the rest of the Mainstream Media:
Top of the list comes "risk". A search of their site today renders 6,868 articles where the words risk and independence / independent appear together. Anyone gullible with an IQ under about 90 might believe and just be scared by a Hoots! Factor 1 Risk story.
Next down the list, but by far the most popular formulation comes "might" or "could", this appears 73,258 times. Anyone with an IQ under about 70 and chronic anxiety might actually get scared by a Hoots! Factor 2 Might or Could story.
At Hoots! Factor 2.5 we have "warned" with 9,176 results in conjunction with "independence". Warned is generally, but not exclusively, reserved for non-UK politicians (who often said nothing of the sort), foreign diplomats, businesses, consultancies, QUANGOs, thinktanks, charities and folk with a conference, book, film or record to promote and who want to get their name in the papers and have worked out that the easiest way to do it at the moment is to make some dire prediction about independence. Only slightly more believable than Hoots! Factor 3 stories, these can usually be debunked within a day or, indeed, the foreign politician or diplomat usually denies within a day that they had meant any such dire warning. A Hoots! Factor 2.5 Warned story may may cause anyone with an IQ under about 70 and chronic anxiety to become slightly agitated.
At Hoots! Factor 2.5 we have "warned" with 9,176 results in conjunction with "independence". Warned is generally, but not exclusively, reserved for non-UK politicians (who often said nothing of the sort), foreign diplomats, businesses, consultancies, QUANGOs, thinktanks, charities and folk with a conference, book, film or record to promote and who want to get their name in the papers and have worked out that the easiest way to do it at the moment is to make some dire prediction about independence. Only slightly more believable than Hoots! Factor 3 stories, these can usually be debunked within a day or, indeed, the foreign politician or diplomat usually denies within a day that they had meant any such dire warning. A Hoots! Factor 2.5 Warned story may may cause anyone with an IQ under about 70 and chronic anxiety to become slightly agitated.
Surprisingly, despite its apparent definitiveness, next down the list comes "will". It's too common a word to search for meaningfully but this is reserved for direct reporting of scary pronouncements from some Red, Blue or Yellow Tory Unionist Bigwig where said Bigwig has stuck his neck on the line and said Independence will result in [anything from losing a post office to being nuked by North Korea]. Just as intelligence agencies grade intelligence on both the quality of the information itself and the reliability of the source, it is precisely the unreliability of the source that means that we're now down to folk with an IQ under about 60 with chronic anxiety who might be scared by a Hoots! Factor 3 Will story.
Today I had to invent Hoots! Factor 4 as a whole new construction appeared with Scottish independence: UK passport loss indication. "Indication" appears to be reserved for scare stories where even a Hootsmon churnalist so desperate for advancement that he might be known to suck up to Tom Peterkin by comparing his piping favourably to that of Allan MacDonald, but can't bring himself to use a Hoots! Factor 3 formulation because he doesn't even believe the scare story himself. Someone with an IQ well down in the Learning Difficulties area and chronic anxiety might just be mildly perturbed by a Hoots! Factor 4 Indication story long enough till they get a responsible adult to search the UK Border Agency website to find UK Policy on Dual Nationality.
I look forward to this bombardment with the politics of fear backfiring on Better Together as they cry wolf so many times that by September 2014 even the most retarded Scotsman and woman will regard them as they would someone howling at the moon.
See also Wings Over Scotland Nationality for Nationalists, Just Who Hates the English? here on Logic's Rock for disproving some previous baseless scare stories and, of course, Jack Foster's masterly Top Ten Unionist Myths Debunked:
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