Misquotes

It's taken a while for me to mull it over and be sure of my suspicions but I am now adamant that Alex Salmond has been misquoted and severely misrepresented in the media over the past week.

There has been a lot of comment surrounding Alex Salmond's supposed suggestion that an independent Scotland would have released £100bn of funds in order to save HBOS. Indeed, as it was included in The Guardian and other leading broadsheets, I assumed in good faith that that suggestion had been made by the First Minister.

As far I can see, this is as close as Alex got to making such a claim:

The First Minister: The case for hard-pressed taxpayers' cash might have been better made in respect of Northern Rock. The £100 billion to which Wendy Alexander referred is a liquidity availability—the £100 billion that the Bank of England made available on Friday. Would that it had been made available a week earlier—we might not be in the situation that we are now in.

There we have it. No mention of an independent Scotland. Indeed the mention of the Bank of England surely scuppers the suggestion that it's a solely Scottish solution being proferred.

The First Minister was merely putting forward the valid suggestion that Central Bank credit could have been extended to ease HBOS' through a troubling period, not dissimilar to action taken by Governments around the world. By all means disagree with the suggestion but do not populate a myth by putting words in Salmond's mouth.

Perhaps this shows that Labour is competing in the media battle or perhaps it shows that newspapers need to employ a higher calibre of scribe, but when you can no longer believe what is printed in the supposedly independent press you have to think we have reached a worrying low.