Newspaper sales in April mostly edged up a mite (0.31% overall) on March's ABC returns. The coming of spring or the more distant approach of European and domestic elections? A flicker of democratic interest? Perhaps. But not where the issues are most momentous: the worst year-on-year faller in red-top land was Scotland's Daily Record, down 11.76% (compared with its English Mirror sister's 6.56%). Its weekend sibling, the Sunday Mail, has plunged 12.68%; DC Thomson's Sunday Post 11.19%. And no London-based paper circulating in Scotland has anything to crow about either. They've seen thousands of copies flake away north of the border.

But surely Scotland is one of the toughest, most competitive markets in the world, you say? What about the Scotsman and the Herald? What about the Sunday Herald, which voted yes to independence last Sunday? Statistics here don't arrive in the national ABC bundle, but the Scotsman, in particular, has long been a bit of a disaster – and, while a Herald sale in the upper 30,000s is still a force, there's no disguising the fact that fighting for freedom doesn't help circulation one jot: absolutely the reverse.

You may say digital editions are taking over. You may lament too much foreign (ie US or English) ownership. You can construct theories about why politics, even at its most vital, is a turn-off. But the baseline still looks at coins pushed across counters, and quakes a little. Yes, no, don't know… and don't much care?

■ Maybe the deepest independence question of the lot arose naturally late on Saturday night, in the time-honoured Balkan/Scandi voting-bloc way of these things. if Scotland votes yes, will it also vote for the residual Brit runner in next year's Eurovision?