Wings Over Scotland

Alert readers will have noted that last night we took down our story about Scotland In Union‘s spreadsheet of all the various super-wealthy Dukes, Duchesses, Viscounts, Earls, Marquesses, Countesses, Sirs, Lords, Ladies, Colonels and Brigadiers who fund their “grassroots” anti-independence operation. (AGM pictured below.)

We believe we’re entitled under the law to run the article, and hope to have it back up soon, but frankly we don’t even want to think about the cost of calling a top media lawyer on a Sunday that’s also Hogmanay, so that might have to wait a day or two.

And anyway, it’s not even nearly the most interesting aspect of the affair.

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Scottish people are the BEST at compliments

In our latest Panelbase poll, as usual we took the opportunity to ask various social-attitudes questions as well as political ones, and some which span both categories. One of the most controversial posts ever on Wings addressed the subject of Gaelic, and having given everyone two-and-a-bit years to calm the hell down we thought we’d see what the Scottish electorate thought.

That’s a pretty tight call. Let’s have a wee delve in the data depths.

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Not too many surprises here. (Except, perhaps, the 18% of respondents who claimed to be football fans yet also said they had no interest in the World Cup.)

Excluding the disinterested the numbers were:

England 24%
England’s opponents 38%
Others 40%

And for people actually born in Scotland the figures came out at

England 20%
England’s opponents 41%
Others 39%

And that’s pretty much the natural order of things. If you’re a “Rangers” fan and you cheer for Celtic when they play (let’s not say “compete”) in the Champions League, or a Celtic fan who backed “Rangers” in the Petrofac Training Cup, you’re the weirdo.

Readers, have you ever noticed how the letters pages of Scottish newspapers are full every day of the same names, a clutch of a couple of dozen super-hardcore frothing ultra-Yoons tirelessly and reflexively raging against independence, the SNP and pretty much anything without a Union Jack on it?

Have you ever found yourself thinking it must be some sort of co-ordinated group that gets together, plans topics in advance then writes in backing each other up, to create an illusion of speaking for a wide cross-section of society, before dismissing that idea as a daft paranoid conspiracy and getting on with your day?

Because we thought that too, until an alert reader infiltrated it.

Our very favourite bit is “we must not advertise the existence of the group. It can be mentioned verbally, in safe environment, that some people share letters/encourage each other, but anything more risks editors discriminating, nationalists reacting, and this diverse group being portrayed as a monolithic campaign”.

Probably don’t put it in an email, then. But your secret’s safe with us, lads.

So this isn’t true, any more than it was when Labour first promised it 22 years ago.

But the sheer number of ways in which it’s a lie is quite the thing.

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We were having an idle browse on Google Play Books this morning for some bargain holiday reading when we happened upon a startling new cover for Chris Mullin’s 1982 classic A Very British Coup.

We found ourselves thinking “rise to what, exactly?”

And as it happened, we had some new Panelbase polling data on that.

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Scotland’s favourite Scottish movie is still Braveheart, folks.

But the devil, as always, is in the detail.

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Have a great one, readers.

The prissy, easily-upset and extravagantly-funded Lib Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton tweeted this this morning:

Now, we’re not sure “you’ve had the government you’ve voted for about half the time in a two-horse race” would be all that great a selling point in the first place, but shall we see if it’s actually true, readers?

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Our poll story yesterday was a pretty interesting piece of politics news considering it’s the Christmas dead season. We put an interesting new angle on the independence question, and posted all the poll data so that reporters had plenty to get their teeth into. And we released it at lunchtime so they had plenty of time to get it into today’s editions.

Remarkably, though, none of the Scottish media – with the honourable exception of The National, who made it their front page splash – thought that the best numbers for independence in many months merited even a dismissive passing mention. Scotland’s political hacks doggedly ignored it on social media. And then things got weird.

The tweet above appeared briefly – having been posted at 11.44am it was gone by no later than 12.10pm – on the Twitter account of the Herald. The story it linked to cannot be found through the paper’s website, though it’s still hidden away on the servers.

(Its sister paper the Evening Times carried the story, then outright deleted it.)

And the reason why provides a fascinating insight into how the press operates.

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