Alex Salmond will be laid to rest in the green turf of Aberdeenshire today in a quiet and dignified private ceremony. (A public celebration of his life will take place next month.)
Most of Scotland’s press and commentariat beclowned itself shamefully after his death just as it did during his life, but below is a (regrettably short) collection of those who did otherwise and who deserve to be noted honourably beside the man himself.
Redaction is a tricky business, and comes with numerous pitfalls even if you’re being careful, which not everyone is. If you’re involved in creating a document you know will have to be redacted, there are a variety of safeguarding approaches you can adopt.
When I worked on a videogames magazine called Amiga Power in the 1990s, we ran a fun comedy feature about censorship. But because the company that published the magazine had had some unfortunate mishaps in the field, we took extra care by typing all the “offensive” words as random-length strings of Xs when we wrote the article.
And it was lucky that we did, because as you can see in the feature’s strapline, the art department misaligned the red redaction bar on some of them, and if there’d been a sweary in there it would have been easily identified.
Wherever you find giants, you also find parasites, bottom-feeders and carrion. When a mighty lion dies in the jungle, tiny creeping crawling maggots and insects and bacteria feast gleefully on its corpse for many days.
Which naturally brings us to the Scottish media.
The above paragraphs of cowardly innuendo and baseless speculative smearing were penned by Severin Carrell and Libby Brooks in the Guardian on Monday. (They’re not from the ironically-headed “Appreciation” that the same two hacks wrote for Sunday’s Observer, in which they audaciously claimed that Salmond’s success was down to Nicola Sturgeon).
They sneakily imply that Salmond was guilty not only of the sexual assaults of which he was cleared in court, but also of an unspecified number of unnamed others, and make assertions of “disturbing evidence about his personal conduct” without specifying what that evidence or conduct might have been.
Everyone even remotely connected to Scottish politics has known for months that the below is the case. It’s an open secret.
But what’s playing out right now is something much bigger than the fate of one or two or three individuals. It’s the entire future of the credibility of Scotland’s justice system.
Just a quick bit of housekeeping here with regard to the new Wings comments section, which offers far more functionality but has also attracted a few complaints because it’s no longer a straight chronology of oldest-to-newest tweets.
(We could actually change that back, but the cost would be losing the ability to reply directly to individual comments, which is a big loss, so we’re leaving it as it is for now.)
To those beefing because that means you can’t now immediately tell which comments are new, a couple of helpful pointers. The easiest way to fix the problem is a simple one: keep the tab open.
If you keep the most recent page open in a tab on your browser, the Comment Bubble (visible at the bottom left of that pic) will keep track of all new comments – it refreshes every 30 seconds – and highlight them for you in yellow until you’ve read them.
(The little orange circle should take you to the first unread one if you click it.)
Sadly the Bubble stops working if you close the tab or navigate to a new page from it, but since most people have scores of tabs open at a time that shouldn’t be a problem. So there you go.
When times are quiet in Scottish politics, as they currently are, our favourite genre of story is “mainstream press belatedly catches up with Wings Over Scotland”. And so to this morning’s front page splash in the Sunday Mail.
The rumour mill has been grinding about Operation Branchform developments again in the last few days, although we’ve seen too many false dawns now to get overly excited about that. But the Mail’s story sounded awfully familiar.
While we get on with some tinkering behind the scenes in the absence of any Scottish political news – we have an exciting new comment system and the Contact form finally works again! – readers may wish to enjoy the full marathon three-and-a-quarter hours of last month’s fun indyref anniversary event at the Glasgow Science Centre.
Hatey McHateface on The Long Walk To Freedom: “So, factchecker, how are you getting on with your crash course in tribalism? Penny dropped yet? Ask James to explain…” Dec 8, 08:10
Hatey McHateface on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Maybe they’re all channeling their inner Trump. Why should they act on behalf of a people, nation, culture, etc that…” Dec 8, 08:04
Hatey McHateface on The Long Walk To Freedom: ““the weakest are just the start” Since when have pensioners been the weakest demographic? They’re far more likely than youngsters…” Dec 8, 07:59
Willie on The Long Walk To Freedom: “And for all the senior pensioners reading Wings today they can uplift their spirits recognising that as a group of…” Dec 8, 06:15
Willie on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Information delayed is information denied is an apt line. But as we can see that is only one of the…” Dec 8, 01:37
Mark Beggan on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Where did you get your professorship? Tehran. An academic versed in colonial studys would know all the aspects good and…” Dec 8, 00:31
BLMac on The Long Walk To Freedom: “It’s about time someone in another country, eg Australia or USA revealed the names of the perjuring Alpha-Betties.” Dec 8, 00:06
Alf Baird on The Long Walk To Freedom: ““the truth is not just being delayed. It is being denied.” Should we really expect anything different in a colony?” Dec 7, 21:55
James on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Baiy and switch? Vote Yoon, because, you know, reasons. Nice try.” Dec 7, 21:12
Confused on The Long Walk To Freedom: “just asking. I thought I had “seen this before” somewhere and was wondering if it was new. All keep up…” Dec 7, 20:31
GM on The Long Walk To Freedom: “John Smythe, the people assisting him and Benjamin Harrop are all on the same path but aye, what do you…” Dec 7, 20:19
Confused on The Long Walk To Freedom: “How does this relate to https://johnsmytheinvestigations.wordpress.com/2025/10/03/foi-202500456798-selective-redactions-on-james-hamilton-correspondence/ and are you the same GM?” Dec 7, 19:00
Dan on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Stated this a few years back, but probably need an updated version of this old article, and it would likely…” Dec 7, 18:56
factchecker on The Long Walk To Freedom: “David, to use your image, we’re getting our faces hit with a broken bottle right now. They’ll keep getting hit…” Dec 7, 18:42
factchecker on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Dan, I agree with you about Labour’s record in the past. I’m just suggesting the only scenario I can see…” Dec 7, 18:30
Hatey McHateface on The Long Walk To Freedom: “There you go, factchecker, Dan says no. I’m afraid things still have to get a lot worse in Scotland before…” Dec 7, 18:18
David Holden on The Long Walk To Freedom: “An epic article in both length and breadth. A few reads will be required but after one pass I was…” Dec 7, 18:17
Dan on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Lolz, you maybe laid that voting initiative on jist a wee bitty too heavy. Aye, coz previously Labour in Scotland…” Dec 7, 17:39
factchecker on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Not a fact, this time – a personal thought. NUSNP has shown itself unworthy to govern the Scottish people consistently…” Dec 7, 17:08
Effijy on The Long Walk To Freedom: “I can’t digest such beating about the bushes, trees, and gorse. My conclusion, the SNP is rife with corruption and…” Dec 7, 16:16
James Cheyne on The cost of failure: “Also forgot to mention the destruction of infrastructure like roads, trains, water supplies, localised businesses, NHS, and other public services.…” Dec 7, 16:13
James Cheyne on The cost of failure: “Charles ( not the 3C one) Forgot to respond regards your comment Who will be the members of the new…” Dec 7, 16:04
James Cheyne on The cost of failure: “Charles ( not the RC one). If there was a Scottish parliament in reality, there would be no Parliamentary union…” Dec 7, 15:51
Morag on The Long Walk To Freedom: “We can only be grateful for people like yourself who are prepared to do this, and dogged and persistent enough…” Dec 7, 15:01
James Cheyne on The cost of failure: “Confirmation can be found in records that it was “The Great Seal of England ” that was used on the…” Dec 7, 14:04
GM on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Thanks Benjamin. I’ll look forward to your next post.” Dec 7, 13:46
GM on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Good work. I look forward to further information being released, eventually.” Dec 7, 13:36
duncanio on The Long Walk To Freedom: “The process is indeed the punishment. Much kudos goes to Benjamin Harrop for his tenacity and diligence in trying to…” Dec 7, 13:12
