Wings Over Scotland

So that’s it, then. That’s the grand plan.

We’re sorry, but we’d say the game’s a bogey, gang.

Read the rest of this entry →

We’re not experts in the field, but we think this is what an actual feminist looks like.

Read the rest of this entry →

Because this one’s pretty tired.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s funny how things suddenly become journalism, isn’t it?

We wonder what the secret is.

Read the rest of this entry →

Until a few weeks ago Calum Steele was the chief of the Scottish Police Federation, so as due-credits go we particularly appreciate this one.

So let’s remind ourselves of a few things.

Read the rest of this entry →

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 →

Firstly, some of you owe us money.

But much more importantly, why now?

Nicola Sturgeon told Scotland’s press this morning that despite her weariness, she could have managed a few more months or even a year as First Minister, which would at least have got her halfway to keeping her promise to serve a full term if she was elected in 2021.

Which just makes her timing all the harder to explain.

Read the rest of this entry →

The SNP love to indignantly tell everyone how healthy the party’s finances are these days, especially in response to impertinent queries about the infamous “ring-fenced” £600,000 for a second indyref that everyone now knows isn’t going to happen.

(We still await an update from Police Scotland on what has now been an 18-month formal investigation into the matter, on top of the 18 months that had already elapsed since Wings first broke the story. We imagine they’re very busy investigating the runaway epidemic of misgenderings and feminists putting ribbons on stuff.)

It rakes in £2.5m a year from membership fees as well as millions from the UK government, and only has to pay for about 20 staff and a modest office in Edinburgh. So why is it having to borrow almost £108,000 from its own chief executive?

(Click pic to enlarge.)

Read the rest of this entry →

So it’s official – Scotland is not a partner in the UK, but a prisoner. Supposedly equal signatories to a treaty, we were in fact captured in 1707, with no hope of release other than at the whim of our jailer. It is an outrage, but a wholly predictable one.

Nicola Sturgeon could have put the matter of Holyrood’s legislative authority to the Supreme Court at any point since she became First Minister in November 2014. More particularly, she could have done so in July 2016, after the UK voted to leave the EU, thereby triggering a clear and explicit condition of the manifesto on which the SNP were re-elected as the Scottish Government just weeks earlier.

Instead, she’s wasted a decade of your time and probably sold Scotland’s future.

Read the rest of this entry →

Wings has been informed this morning by a reliable source that Police Scotland have now progressed their inquiry into the SNP’s “missing” £600,000 fundraiser money from an “assessment” to a formal criminal investigation into the matter, which was first revealed on this site in January 2020. We understand that an official statement to that effect will be forthcoming shortly.

[EDIT 12.27pm: the statement is below.]

”Police Scotland has now received seven complaints in relation to donations that were made to the Scottish National Party.

“After assessment and consultation with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, we will now carry out an investigation.

“Enquiries are continuing and anyone who has any information which may assist with this investigation is asked to contact police.”

We look forward to the eventual outcome and continue our retirement in the meantime. Those still loyal to the party leadership wishing to be reassured that everything is fine and above board and the whole thing is a mad conspiracy theory and a total non-story are directed to Wee Ginger Dug and to the Twitter accounts of Pete Wishart, Mhairi Hunter, Tom Arthur, Stewart McDonald, Tom Gordon and David Leask, as usual.

Ten years ago this month I was in a pub called The Porter in Bath with my girlfriend and her family, buying everyone whiskies and gabbling deliriously (I’d been up for over 40 hours at that point) about the significance of what had just happened.

Alex Salmond’s SNP had just broken the Scottish electoral system, winning an absolute majority of seats in a Parliament designed expressly to stop that from ever happening. A total of 72 pro-independence MSPs had been elected, and it was already clear that an independence referendum was going to happen despite the Labour Party’s best efforts. It was impossibly exciting.

This month I sat and watched 72 ostensibly pro-indy MSPs be elected again, but this time with my heart breaking, knowing that they would achieve nothing and indeed had no real intention to even try.

And I’ve had enough of feeling that way.

Read the rest of this entry →

It really is deeply dispiriting the see the level of utter burning contempt in which Nicola Sturgeon holds the independence movement, if this is the sort of ludicrously insulting garbage she thinks it’ll swallow.

Who told us it’s garbage? Nicola Sturgeon did.

Read the rest of this entry →