Blair MacDougall, Moral Contortionist.

Oh go on then, who is he.

There he is. He's the director of the pro-union Better Together campaign, his opposite on the Yes campaign is Blair Jenkins.

Blair MacD doesn't have a wiki page which is a bit odd for public figure. He's a typical political animal though, ex-SpAd to James Purnell (Labour) and a former member of Labour Students which says about as much as any Wikipedia page needs to say.

Currently Blair can be heard wittering on about Yes Scotland paying an academic to write an opinion piece for The Herald newspaper. He said:

"Who else received payment? Who knew that this kind of payment was being authorised by the campaign's chief executive?" 

"What other supposedly independent voices are being paid bungs to say what the nationalists want? What else are they willing to do to deceive the people of Scotland?"

To give some background, a Yes Scotland email account was hacked and from it, details of the payment made to a Dr Elliot Bulmer where obtained. Currently, the Scottish press and of course himself above are attacking the Yes Scotland Campaign.

I'll just say that again; Currently - the Scottish press and Blair MacDougall are attacking Yes Scotland using information illegally hacked from a Yes Scotland email account.

Better Together doesn't have to pay for column inches, you only have to cast an eye over headlines on the newspaper stand or BBC Scotland news online to see - the pro-union side doesn't want for attention. For example, I've already written here about The Scotland Institute - a pro-union 'think tank'. At that time Blair said of it:

"It's not our vehicle, we are not owners of it, but it's helpful to the cause."

Political campaigns pay academics and professionals for opinion all the time, MacDougall is moaning because Dr Elliot Bulmer is known to be sympathetic toward independence and was paid. It seems though, opinion from pro-union sources given freely and reported widely is perfectly fine.

Add to that, Blair MacDougall is attempting to score a dubious moral point with information potentially gained from the illegal hacking of an email account.

Its a subtle situation and one which can only be appreciated if you accept the Scottish main stream media are shit at their job. Ironically - that the press are attacking the target of an illegal hacking instead of those using the information allegedly hacked, and that the story itself is entirely without scandal - if you still think the Scottish press have an atom of integrity or balance (and by extension the opportunistic and morally wobbly Blair MacDougall) then I think we might be living in different realities.

Meanwhile, that bastion of the Scottish printed press The Herald has published Elliot Bulmer's article but is doing nothing to defend the accusations from Better Together that it is a paid Yes Scotland mouth-piece - that's taking one for the team right there...

And the hell of it is, with the hacking (and no one is saying it was instigated by Better Together) and the subsequent bleatings of Blair MacDougall - a pretty decent, well balanced and informed piece of writing in The Herald has been eclipsed almost entirely.

I wonder why?

Fearful of the democratising potential of a constitution that would protect our rights and hold rulers to a higher law, the British establishment has preferred to rely on the untrammelled power of a sovereign (but well-whipped) Parliament, a motley collection of statutes cobbled together over the centuries, some hallowed traditions made up on the fly, and a set of unwritten conventions that can be rehashed, recycled, and twisted beyond recognition to suit the needs of the Government of the day.

Oh aye, its critical of the status quo.