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Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘debunks’


There are no ships 127

Posted on January 05, 2023 by

The response to our post of last night has been astonishing.

(Although we’re not sure how “new followers” is being calculated there. We actually have more than 500 extra followers since 8pm – we can only assume that it’s only counting those who right-clicked and followed from that specific tweet.)

And part of the reason is that it’s plain that almost nobody knew about the report, even though it came out three months ago (when Wings was still in retirement). We had to dig deep to find any media coverage of it at all, and what there was was cursory at best, and sometimes a lot worse.

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The short walk to stupid 129

Posted on December 28, 2022 by

It was already quite bold/crass to equate “letting rapists change their legal sex so their victim has to refer to them as ‘she’ in court” with the life’s work of Nelson Mandela.

But the punchline was still a chef’s kiss to treasure.

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True faith 151

Posted on December 18, 2022 by

This is a quite extraordinary thing for a grown adult to say.

When a reader quoted it in a comment earlier today we were reluctant to believe it. Googling the words produced only a broken Facebook link and a Scottish Daily Express story (and the Wings reader’s comment), which obviously did little to disperse the scepticism.

Facebook is essentially unsearchable (which in itself is a pretty good reason not to trust anyone who does the majority of their work on it), and even when we went to the Believe In Scotland page and scrolled down and down and down and down for an eternity, it was impossible to find.

But eventually we had a brainwave and searched the site’s pictures for the one used in the Express and found the post. He really said it. And it needs some examination.

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Lies without end 136

Posted on December 18, 2022 by

The SNP is now almost entirely incapable of telling the truth.

Let’s just check the above by way of example.

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But not yet, Lord 131

Posted on November 27, 2022 by

The SNP have been all over the place since Wednesday’s judgement of the Supreme Court. Astonishingly, the party hadn’t prepared an agreed line in the event of the Court ruling against it, with the result that various party figures had popped up with all sorts of different versions of what a supposed plebiscite election would mean.

The closest things to an “official” position were when the SNP’s Policy Development Convener Toni Giugliano, and former Glasgow city councillor and Nicola Sturgeon’s mouthpiece Mhairi Hunter (who’d dismissed the whole idea of a plebiscite election as “impossible” earlier this year), both suggested that a victory in a plebiscite general election would simply amount to another mandate to demand a Section 30 order.

The party’s Depute Leader Keith Brown, on the other hand, had claimed that winning such an election would produce independence by itself. But lest any Yes supporters get over-excited, on TV this afternoon Brown declared that the matter would have to wait at least a couple of years.

Why? Because apparently the SNP can’t be bothered with the paperwork.

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Where there isn’t a will 138

Posted on November 25, 2022 by

Let’s get straight to the point: this is a straight-up categorical lie.

Since Wednesday’s events there’s been a lot of chatter and confusion on social media about whether the Scottish Government has the ability to trigger a snap Holyrood election and use it as a de facto plebiscite on independence.

The short answer, as we told you yesterday, is “officially no, in practice yes”. But that needs a bit of further explanation, so as usual let’s do the job of actual journalism that nobody else in Scotland can apparently be bothered to.

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Challenge accepted 260

Posted on November 12, 2022 by

As a rule I try not to respond to the literally dozens of deranged attacks on this site that are posted by James Kelly of Scot Goes Pop, but I really dislike being called a liar so I’m going to take a moment for this one.

James appears to have taken extraordinary offence to a two-paragraph stats post I put up to mark Wings’ 11th birthday this week, and has written two purple-faced rants about it. So for the record’s sake I’m going to comply with his demand as best I can.

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Squealing for fame 451

Posted on October 15, 2022 by

The National has an “EXCLUSIVE” story today.

We think you’re meant to be outraged.

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Cursed By Stupidity 364

Posted on October 06, 2022 by

Honestly, readers, swear to God, all joking and sarcasm aside, when we saw this tweet yesterday we were wondering how on Earth some clever satirist had managed to hack Anas Sarwar’s account to insert the screenshot into it.

Because we didn’t believe that even Scottish Labour’s low-watt-bulb of a branch manager would willingly post something that made him look so much of an imbecile.

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Cracking the code 529

Posted on July 31, 2022 by

First of all, congratulations to the Herald for only being eight days behind a retired website on this story. Unusually fast work, lads.

Now let’s deal with the spin.

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Catch 2022 529

Posted on July 02, 2022 by

A few days have now passed since Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement of the supposed routemap to an independence referendum, and we’ve had time to analyse it properly.

You’re not going to like it much.

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Beware of liars 337

Posted on June 15, 2022 by

Even when you’re retired, some things are too journalistically offensive to let pass, such as this piece of absolute garbage we just saw from The National today.

The paper’s anonymous reporter set off all our red warning lights at once.

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