Wings Over Scotland

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.

Dr Malcolm Kerr joined the SNP in 1967, has contested local council and Scottish Parliament elections and is currently an activist in Cunninghame North constituency.

I’ve been a member of the SNP for long enough to recall the days when the party was capable of generating killer slogans. “It’s Scotland’s Oil”. “Independence – Nothing Less”. Those were the days!

Nothing describes the SNP’s descent towards being the new New Labour better than its choice of slogans in recent years. “Stronger for Scotland” serves only to flag up just how powerless the party’s large contingent at Westminster is. “Progress” is entirely meaningless.

And fellow activists and members may recall just how depressing it was to attend the most recent in-person spring Conference, when the leadership felt that the slogan “Hope” was going to be inspiring. When you’ve been in power for 14 years you’re supposed to DO things, not just hope for them.

We’re getting to the point where we should soon be Blairite enough to invade Iraq. Fortunately, we lack the means.

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Yes Pete, we did check.

What happened was that there wasn’t a second indyref. And that’s how we know that leaving it to the SNP alone doesn’t work.

Please vote Alba, readers, or we’ll see you here again in another five years.

Wings Over Scotland pageviews, March 2020-Feb 2021.

No wonder only dogs can hear Pete Wishart’s screeching now.

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It’s the second sunny day in Bath since last September, readers, so we’re going to go out and feed the wildlife, but we thought you’d enjoy a quick roundup of some of the distractions the Sturgeonite elements of the Scottish media are punting today in a desperate attempt to avoid dealing with the devastating contents of Alex Salmond’s epic evidence session at the Fabiani inquiry on Friday.

We’ll make this quick.

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It’s difficult to know where to even start on the absolutely extraordinary reaction to our post about yesterday’s meeting of the SNP National Executive Committee. Our traffic exploded to levels not seen since 2014, racking up tens of thousands of pageviews an hour, and social media was aflame with argument into the small hours of the morning.

A whole raft of issues arose from our exclusive revelations, but the one we want to talk about now is the one that was buried at the bottom of what a panicked SNP hastily and laughably produced as the “minutes” of the meeting, and we didn’t even notice it until a couple of hours after the original post.

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Ulster-bred (specifically the ultra-Loyalist stronghold of Antrim) columnist Neil Mackay, a man who’s been systematically undermining and dividing the Yes movement since at least 2015 while claiming to be part of it, has an opinion piece in the Herald today.

In its own way it’s an exemplar of the infiltrator’s craft. Let’s take a look.

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In a surprise development, we made Pete Wishart happy today.

And not just him.

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There’s still a day and a half of January 2021 to go, but it’s already been the busiest month for traffic on Wings Over Scotland in several years, despite endless claims from detractors (both Unionists and Pete Wishart types) that we’re in tragic decline.

And since Saturday afternoons are the one quiet moment we get these days – and it’s not like we can go out for a nice walk in the sunshine or have a potter round the shops – we thought we’d take a deeper look into the stats.

They were quite surprising.

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All we can say is that the other nine points better be amazing.

Because this, readers, is ZZZ-grade donkey fodder.

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Tonight’s poll data from Survation is really quite remarkable.

We can’t wait to hear what “Pension Pete” Wishart makes of it.

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When we have a rare spare moment, readers, there’s nothing we enjoy more for a bit of fun and relaxation than to fire off a few Freedom Of Information requests.

And just for some variety, last month we sent a couple to the UK Parliament – mainly on behalf of our Number One fan, Pete Wishart MP.

The answers came in this week.

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