So this morning, four days after our entire YouTube channel was deleted at the behest of the BBC, and after days of wrestling with YouTube’s shambolic robot-staffed admin maze, we finally managed to get an email out of them with the full list of what the BBC had complained about.
(If you should ever find yourself in a similar situation, we can recommend contacting @TeamYouTube on Twitter, who appear to be actual human people and can eventually prod the robots into action.)
The signatory was a London-based BBC lawyer, who’d plucked 13 videos apparently at random from the hundreds on our channel and decided to whine about them (citing US copyright law, rather than UK) up to four and a half years later.
And that’s all fair enough – it’s a legitimate news story. But what’s really odd about it is that both of the articles leave out what you might imagine would be a rather crucial piece of information.
As we’re writing this, our YouTube channel remains dead. We’re still trying to navigate through YouTube’s awful maze of robotic guards to reach a human being, and while at least two newspapers – The National and the Scotsman – have asked the BBC for a comment, none has been forthcoming.
The mainstream media’s attacks on this site in the last couple of years have included getting our Twitter account shut down in 2016, getting me arrested, having all of Wings’ electronic equipment confiscated by the police and now killing our YouTube channel full of crucial documentary evidence, most of which isn’t available anywhere else. (On top of an endless catalogue of smear stories and hatchet jobs, of course.)
Now, we’re not planning on going anywhere, but in the face of such a concerted and increasingly sinister assault aimed at silencing us, we also can’t make any guarantees that Wings itself will continue to survive. WordPress may prove as fragile in the face of malice as Twitter and YouTube have.
So in case we fall victim to another unexpected technical/censorship catastrophe, or suddenly commit “suicide”, you might want to strengthen the rest of the team.
We happened to be looking at a couple of old articles this morning, and noticed that some of them had blank spaces where videos should be.
We didn’t think much of it at first, because people do sometimes delete old videos or shut down their accounts, but when we checked one of them we discovered it was hosted on the Wings Over Scotland channel.
An alert reader sent us a piece of interesting follow-up info to yesterday’s piece on NHS Scotland costs. Because comparable figures for NHS England are available too, and they make for surprising reading.
These are the Scottish figures for medicine costs at list price, ie before any negotiated discounts that the health service is able to obtain:
The population of England, at 55 million, is just over 10 times that of Scotland (5.4m). So one would imagine that its like-for-like costs would come in at around £12 billion.
The BBC front page headline for this is actually just the alarming-sounding “Scottish prescription costs rise by 25%”, without even the qualifier about the timespan.
It’s probably overdue that we start collecting these together. So here’s Sir John Major on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, explaining why a “once in a lifetime” referendum should in fact be held again because its outcome was determined by something that turned out to be untrue.
Which is, of course, totally different to Scotland being told to vote No in 2014 in order to stay in the European Union, because [REASONS TO FOLLOW AT SOME POINT]
GM on Just Good Friends: “It has been 40/50 years in development and in my opinion is still developing/degenerating but I agree with your assessment.” Jul 10, 14:56
sarah on Just Good Friends: “The guillotines would be operated by the abusers. What we need is direct democracy where the people have direct and…” Jul 10, 14:28
Corrado Mella on Just Good Friends: “I will repeat this until y’all get it. The modern western structures of power are the perfect environment for the…” Jul 10, 14:09
robertkknight on Just Good Friends: “Can’t argue with a single word, Lorn.” Jul 10, 13:55
Mark Beggan on Just Good Friends: “Those who slip justice in this life are first in line for justice in the next.” Jul 10, 13:49
Mark Beggan on Just Good Friends: “Well said. It has failed. The backlash is yet to come.” Jul 10, 13:45
Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “In always looking to punish non-conformists and other non-believers, woke-ism seems another form of fascism which divides the working class…” Jul 10, 13:36
Sven on Just Good Friends: ““If you choose bad companions, no one will believe that you are anything but bad yourself.” Aesop’s Fables.” Jul 10, 13:10
Mark Beggan on Just Good Friends: “The Myra Hindley of Politics.” Jul 10, 12:58
Liz on Just Good Friends: “I was at one of those Burns suppers back in the day. I’m sure one of the guest comedians was…” Jul 10, 12:56
TURABDIN on Just Good Friends: “WE, THE PROGRESSIVES’ — runs the argument — ‘are the wise and good; we know what reforms the world needs;…” Jul 10, 12:35
Casper1066 on Just Good Friends: “Birds of a feather…….” Jul 10, 12:23
Rev. Stuart Campbell on Just Good Friends: “Oh my word that’s extraordinary. Just grabbing it before it vanishes, will edit it in when I’ve got it.” Jul 10, 12:22
Confused on Too Tight To Mention: “the anglos always were pirates, it’s in their DNA “wherever wood floats, you will find an englishman, stealing all he…” Jul 10, 12:09
Confused on Just Good Friends: “I would love to get the full story on Leeza Lawrence demise; total radio silence. I am thinking … chemsex…” Jul 10, 12:09
Confused on Too Tight To Mention: “We have a lot of formorian sea devils on this forum. Have you guys not worked it out yet? -…” Jul 10, 12:07
Brotyboy on Just Good Friends: “If you’d seen the 2 trannies on the plane yesterday you’d not be saying TWAW. No self respecting woman would…” Jul 10, 11:59
sarah on Just Good Friends: “Well analysed and informative, Lorn. Thank you.” Jul 10, 11:58
Lorn on Just Good Friends: “For starters, we do not know that Iain Robertson is actually guilty of anything. Innocent men have been arrested and…” Jul 10, 11:42
sarah on Just Good Friends: “Haha! Excellent, robertknight!” Jul 10, 11:39
robertkknight on Just Good Friends: “In a remarkable coincidence, Sturgeon (acipenseridae) are also bottom feeders. Fancy that!” Jul 10, 11:36
Anon A Mouse on Just Good Friends: “Of course, Iain famously laid on a Burns Supper for the SNP in Glasgow where Nicola was the guest of…” Jul 10, 11:23
sarah on Just Good Friends: ““same face grinning in the background…”. “Foreground”, surely, Rev?” Jul 10, 11:14
James Cheyne on Too Tight To Mention: “It has been argued that the old members of the old Scottish parliament joined the new parliament of Great Britain,…” Jul 10, 10:48
Shug on Just Good Friends: “You can understand why the Swinney’s of this world did not speak up. She must have beed an absolute bitch…” Jul 10, 10:38
Southernbystander on Too Tight To Mention: “The British and Anglo-Saxon are not synonymous. I am sure you know this. But you often use the term Anglo-Saxon…” Jul 10, 10:20
duncanio on Just Good Friends: “Surely not another case of hiding in plain sight. “Think about it”.” Jul 10, 10:17
James Cheyne on Too Tight To Mention: “The devolved Scottish parliament can only be referred to as a subsidiary parliament of England and Wales under the introduced…” Jul 10, 10:07
James Cheyne on Too Tight To Mention: “Worthless Treaties. Un-democratic voting for Scots. The other half of the treaty of union down south after much discussion decided…” Jul 10, 09:51