The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘stats’


The Longest Lie 130

Posted on January 05, 2024 by

BBC Reporting Scotland last night:

Truly, this is the bullshit that just won’t die.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Safest People On Earth 218

Posted on November 21, 2023 by

Yesterday was “Transgender Day Of Remembrance”, which was the 41st “special” day of 2023 so far for trans people.

(Including but not limited to International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia; International Pronouns Day; International Transgender Day Of Visibility; Transgender Awareness Week and of course the whole of “Pride Month”, which is now an almost entirely trans-focused event).

Citizens of Scotland and the UK were solemnly instructed to “remember the many trans people whose lives have been tragically cut short by violence”, although weirdly none of the politicians issuing the orders actually named any.

However, since we’re endlessly being told that trans people are the most marginalised, oppressed and vulnerable members of our society, and that an actual “trans genocide” is currently in progress, we expect there have been loads.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Infinite Idiot 291

Posted on May 24, 2023 by

He just can’t grasp anything, can he?

Because no, they don’t.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Hollow Crown 197

Posted on March 27, 2023 by

Today is the last day of Nicola Sturgeon’s record-breaking reign as First Minister of Scotland. In a few hours we’ll know who is to succeed her in the role. She was only the second SNP occupant of Bute House, and the legacy she bequeaths compared to the one she inherited from Alex Salmond is a matter of measureable record.

So let’s see the final scores on the doors.

Read the rest of this entry →

Astronomical numbers of boots 131

Posted on March 19, 2023 by

The SNP having a fondness for lying about their membership wouldn’t have come as quite such a shock to the Scottish press if they paid a little more attention to this website. Because we were pointing it out two and a half years ago.

It was in October 2020 that we told you how the SNP’s 2019 accounts revealed the party’s true membership figures weren’t the claimed 126,000 but more like 87,000.

Read the rest of this entry →

The truth will come out 230

Posted on March 16, 2023 by

How it started, just one month ago:

And how it’s going:

But it’s quite a lot worse than it looks.

Read the rest of this entry →

The feather-light touch 132

Posted on February 22, 2023 by

Yesterday, readers, we warned you that “online newspaper polls are self-selecting and vulnerable to manipulation”. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Let’s crunch some numbers.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Normal Person’s Political Dictionary 165

Posted on February 13, 2023 by

There are terms beloved of politics activists and commonly used on social media which are a baffling mystery to the general public. We’ve spoken several times of the word “gaslighting”, which is understandably used as shorthand for quite a complex thing that’s difficult to describe concisely, but nevertheless acts as a barrier to understanding for anyone not overly political.

Today’s lesson is the term “DARVO”, and stars the Scottish Greens’ favourite rapist.

Let’s quickly see how it works.

Read the rest of this entry →

Bear Toilet Update 183

Posted on January 31, 2023 by

In a SHOCKING REVELATION that NOBODY COULD HAVE PREDICTED, it turns out that the people of Britain think that putting criminals with penises into women’s prisons maybe isn’t the absolutely best idea.

Just 24% of respondents supported the idea of intact males who’d committed even non-violent and non-sexual crimes being housed alongside women, while a mere 15% – all of them red-flag danger cases in urgent need of having their hard drives checked – thought that rapists and sexual assaulters with their dingle-dangles still swinging in the wind had any business being incarcerated with the vulnerable and traumatised females who make up most of the female prison population.

Four times as many wanted them locked up with their fellow male offenders, while it would appear that approximately a quarter of Britons are whimpering custard-witted doughbrains who didn’t understand the question.

We’ll leave you to digest this startling and unexpected news, readers.

The Rorschach Test 81

Posted on January 10, 2023 by

The release of some early 2021 census statistics relating to gender was greeted with glee and elation by Nancy Kelley, CEO of Stonewall in the UK. Vindication at last!

(Kelley declined to mention that her figure of 262,000 was substantially less than half the number of trans and non-binary individuals – 600,000 – that her organisation has habitually claimed for years.)

The census suggested that England and Wales are home to 48,000 transwomen (and 48,000 transmen), from the total who’d answered No to the voluntary question asking if their gender identity aligned with their sex at birth.

(The largest number that said No, around 118,000, didn’t tick the boxes of transwoman, transman or non-binary, nor wrote in their own. An unknown number of these may have been rejecting “gender” altogether. 30,000 ticked “non-binary” and 18,000 wrote in a gender because they were REALLY special.)

But, as we’ve been told time out of number, we must accept what people say about themselves. So 48,000 transwomen it is. So few. So vulnerable. And that number got me thinking.

Read the rest of this entry →

Nobody does it better 111

Posted on December 08, 2022 by

There has of course been a lot of chat since last night about the latest Ipsos Mori poll putting independence on 56%, with the usual suspects getting over-excited.

It remains to be seen whether the figures represent a short blip of anger over the Supreme Court decision, a more sustained but still temporary period of Yes support like that of summer 2020 – spring 2021, or a permanent shift in public opinion.

So as such they’re actually relatively uninteresting, although the SNP’s plan to do absolutely nothing to take advantage of any momentum that might exist, and to wait several months before even having a strategy conference, remains disturbing.

But what actually caught our eye about the poll were a couple of questions nobody else has reported on.

Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Read the rest of this entry →



↑ Top