If there haven’t been as many posts on this site as people might expect at a time of such incredible political turmoil, it’s because Wings isn’t at heart a commentary blog. We don’t do a lot of flat-out opinion pieces, tending to concern ourselves more with measurable, empirical facts, and since nobody knows anything about anything at the moment, we haven’t had all that much useful to say.
But the closest thing there is right now to a certainty is that sometime quite soon, Unionist politicians in Scotland are going to have to grow up and deal with this:
And their problem is that there’s no possible way to.
So the official Westminster line is that Scotland will HAVE to become independent if it wants to remain in the EU. We’re sure the FM will be absolutely gutted to hear that.
Some of you will have missed this over the weekend:
Yes – Michelle Mone, of all the people on Earth, really did just go on TV and accuse Nicola Sturgeon of being all about ego. We’ll leave you to absorb that for a bit.
Earlier today we were moved to tweet our scepticism regarding a claim made by the Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale, as reported in the Guardian.
Even on the most casual glance, the numbers just didn’t seem to add up. If 62% of Scots voted to stay in the EU and 55% voted to stay in the UK, with no correlation between the two things, then the Venn-diagram intersection between those two groups seems pretty unlikely to add up to more than 50%, let alone a “vast” majority.
The short version is “Everything Tony Blair said was a lie”. The full report can be read in 58 sections at the inquiry’s website here, but in the quite likely event that it gets swamped today we’ve uploaded the entire thing as a single convenient RAR file here.
[EDIT: individual sections now compiled into the print version’s 12 volumes.]
We’re not naturally disposed to sympathy for Tories, but it must be hellish being poor Ruth Davidson at the moment. The poor woman doesn’t know which way she’s facing from one minute to the next. Here she is less than a year ago:
Angela Eagle isn’t happy in the Labour Party and the Tories need a new leader. STV News Edinburgh may have jumped the gun slightly this evening, but this alternative career path makes a lot of sense.
Despite having an even number of participants, the panel is split 3:1 in favour of Remain and 3:1 against independence (surely the biggest specifically Scottish issue likely to arise from the Brexit vote, and which several polls in the last couple of weeks now show is backed by a majority of voters).
Half of the debaters are also Labour politicians, which means that the third-placed party which got 22% of the vote in this May’s election has as much representation as two parties who got 69% between them.
We’ve been racking our brains for a couple of hours trying to work out a way in which such a multiply-skewed line-up could be justified (other than flat-out trolling), and we’ve got nothing. Does anyone have any ideas?
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: ““R” observers – lol, tell us more. The SNP did not stand on an IndyRef 2 ticket in 2015 though…” Apr 23, 11:20
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Lol Geri – to be called thick by someone like you, just wow! The idea that you can’t make “new…” Apr 23, 11:07
Nicky T Naquetti on How To Get Away With Crimes: ““Spitfire Cannon”, huh… Does this dude/dudette even have his cannon anymore, never its spitting function?” Apr 23, 10:51
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Pit Of Vipers: “The opening paragraphs of G.A. PONSONBY’s book: « Chapter 1 – TURNING YES INTO NO « The 2014 independence referendum…” Apr 23, 10:39
Geri on The Pit Of Vipers: “Jeez you’re as thick as pigs shit. It doesn’t allow you to introduce new offers. Devo Max & the vow…” Apr 23, 10:30
robertkknight on How To Get Away With Crimes: ““It is possible to bring a private prosecution for harassment in England and Wales under Section 6(1) of the Prosecution…” Apr 23, 10:26
Geri on The Pit Of Vipers: “Scotland was so pro Union do you know what they did? They returned 56 Nationalist MPs for the 1st time…” Apr 23, 10:25
Alf Baird on The Pit Of Vipers: “Aye, if only we had nationalists instead of colonialists leading the national party, we wad be hame and dry lang…” Apr 23, 09:53
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Pit Of Vipers: “And fulsome tribute still to G.A. PONSONBY for his watershed achievement in meticulously compiling irrefutable evidence of the BBC’s default…” Apr 23, 09:49
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Purdah rules restrict the use of official government functions like official communications channels or the civil service to announce major…” Apr 23, 09:40
TURABDIN on The Pit Of Vipers: “«SCOTTISH NATIONALISM» the love that dare not speak its name without a paroxysm of cringe.” Apr 23, 09:27
100%Yes on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Seats projection for Holyrood election in latest poll. SNP 59 down Greens 23 up Reform UK 17 up Liberal Democrats…” Apr 23, 09:21
Geri on The Pit Of Vipers: “The broke the rules, continually. The broke rules on Purdah. They continually abused the state mafia TV who were not…” Apr 23, 09:07
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “See there we differ CC, I actually think Geri and “James” do live somewhere in the UK, likely in a…” Apr 23, 07:59
Captain Caveman on The Pit Of Vipers: ““Of course in this dystopian dictatorships Geri sings the praises of none of those things would be possible, the ballot…” Apr 23, 07:31
Aidan on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Eventually his time will come, he has and is continuing to commit offences which go beyond the summary only offence…” Apr 23, 07:06
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Geri’s latest rant is that: – the No campaign was allowed to campaign – people were allowed to donate to…” Apr 23, 06:35
Angus on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Today’s Scotland, legacy of the biggest betrayer in Scottish history, has become the worst banana state in the world. Rotten…” Apr 23, 00:47
Geri on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Bilbo It was shown to be a nonsense by the tragic case of David Reimer decades ago. Accidentally castrated by…” Apr 23, 00:08
Captain Caveman on The Pit Of Vipers: “Ah, the cringeworthy late night meltdowns are in progress once again I see; another day, another dollar eh. Most amusing.…” Apr 22, 22:40
Bilbo on How To Get Away With Crimes: “With AI translation, people from non-English speaking countries can now access English western social media content and from the below…” Apr 22, 22:30
Bilbo on How To Get Away With Crimes: “There was a YouTube video that had come into my feed about Norah Vincent, a female journalist who had lived…” Apr 22, 22:22
Geri on The Pit Of Vipers: “You’ve proven no one wrong AI Dan. UK elections & referendums don’t have open franchises. They forbid it for the…” Apr 22, 22:02
Geri on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Jeez! All that harassment would’ve driven me round the bend! I guess that’s the intention tho. Sucked into their crazy…” Apr 22, 21:14
Confused on How To Get Away With Crimes: “you can’t do much with crazy; you need to give it a wide berth, which is hard on twitter, if…” Apr 22, 21:13
Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “A lonely AI Dun holding the fort for the probity of all things concerning “THE UNION”.. 🙂” Apr 22, 21:08
Lorncal on How To Get Away With Crimes: “The chaos these barstewards have caused is beyond calculation. Two huge mistakes were made early on: 1) in thinking that…” Apr 22, 20:48
Effijy on How To Get Away With Crimes: “The Police have long become a complete and utter farce. In recent times they have been found to be institutionally…” Apr 22, 20:26
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “@James the reason why you aren’t able to defend any of the absurd statements you make is because you are…” Apr 22, 20:08
sarah on How To Get Away With Crimes: “When did the police cease to be competent? And is it only the police or is it every public authority?…” Apr 22, 20:06
