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Here’s the laughable headline from the Express yesterday:

‘Independence referendum will cause break-up of SCOTLAND not UK, warns top professor’

The ‘top’ professor returning to the fray is 73-year-old retired expert on Nazi Germany, Jill Stephenson. She’s predicting that even if we win Indyref2 we’ll trigger the further fragmentation of Scotland as Orkney and Shetland will elect to stay in Britain, like a northern Gibraltar. Here’s some of what she said:

‘It is clear that Scotland is a deeply divided country. This is the result of a long and bitter referendum campaign in 2012-14. There is palpable hatred on both sides of the divide that will take years, or perhaps decades, to heal.’

She should know about any bitterness after her comments about MP Mhairi black in 2015. I wrote about the prof at the time in Newsnet.scot. To avoid repeating myself, here’s and extract from what I said about the then only 71-year-old retired English professor who has only ever researched and written about Nazi Germany:

“If electors vote for a foul-mouthed slut like M Black, it says a lot about them and none of it is good.”

A wee Twitter storm developed, ending up with the good professor herself tweeting that she didn’t “give a flying fuck” and a respondent suggesting that as unionist she supported paedophiles!

Professor Stephenson’s [former?] expertise is Nazi Germany so you can see where’s she’s going with the ‘charisma’ comment. She has written on ‘German Christians in the Thuringian Protestant Church (1927-1945)’ so that must have been useful in looking at Scottish 21st Century politics. What about her, ‘Hitler’s priests, Catholic clergy and National Socialism?’

Oh come on, we’ve got Catholic clergy. She’s a professor. They know about all sorts of stuff, don’t they? She clearly has researched German history but has published nothing at all on Scottish politics and so is less authoritative on that than a researcher currently working on it.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/806716/scottish-independence-referendum-indyref2-scotland-uk-break-up

http://newsnet.scot/commentary/when-is-a-professor-an-expert-the-answer-may-be-academic/