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A sudden change of fortune 88

Posted on February 10, 2015 by

The Telegraph, 13 September 2014:

Scotland heading for a ‘Great Depression’ after a Yes vote

A study by Deutsche Bank said a Yes vote for Scottish independence would ‘go down in history as a political and economic mistake’ on a par with Winston Churchill’s decision in 1925 to return the pound to the Gold Standard or the failures by the Federal Reserve in America that triggered the Great Depression in the 1930s.

It warned that Scotland risked a similar depression if voters backed the Yes campaign on Thursday, and described the desire for independence as an ‘incomprehensible’ one which could have negative consequences ‘far beyond’ what people had imagined.

Gordon Brown said the Deutsche Bank report showed that Scotland was ‘in danger of falling through an economic trapdoor’.”

We can only assume something pretty amazing must have happened since then.

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Winning ticket remains unclaimed 80

Posted on February 10, 2015 by

A number of readers last night sent us copies of the response to complaints they’d made to the Independent Press Standards Organisation about the Daily Record’s infamous “The Vow” front cover. We attach the full judgement at the bottom of this article, and as far as we’re concerned it’s fair and accurate. The Vow was a deliberate deception, but it didn’t break any rules – it merely relied on readers misinterpreting it.

vowipso

The bit we’re still interested in is the paragraph above.

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Questions To Which The Answer Is No 97

Posted on February 09, 2015 by

We know we were all traumatised at the time, but how on Earth did we miss this?

rogiepoll

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Last on the bandwagon 151

Posted on February 09, 2015 by

It gets clearer with every passing day that Scottish Labour’s chief election strategy is to assume that Scottish voters are goldfish. There’s no other explanation for a piece in yesterday’s Courier on the SNP’s Jamie Hepburn’s call for the implementation of a 2009 report into which sporting events should be protected from pay-TV broadcasters.

The article concluded with some comments from Labour.

“It was reported last month that Labour will include a commitment in its general election manifesto to ensure major sporting such as the Open Championship are shown on terrestrial TV.

Scottish leader Jim Murphy told the Scotland and Sunday events like the Open and international football “shouldn’t be a minority sport for only those who can afford satellite television subscriptions”.

A party spokesman said today: “We’re happy to send the SNP Government links to all the announcements Jim Murphy and Kez Dugdale have made so that it is easier for them to adopt our policies.”

Which is, y’know, bold.

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The other kind of money 259

Posted on February 08, 2015 by

Still confused about the difference between an “oil fund” and a “resilience fund”, folks?

bailliefund1

So were we, but no longer. We’ve had a breakthrough.

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Fetch more hammers 146

Posted on February 08, 2015 by

Posted this morning, after a week in which it was so comprehensively proven to be a complete lie that even Torcuil Crichton of the Daily Record was forced to concede it.

labourlie

You almost have to grudgingly admire the sheer bull-headed tenacity of their dogged determination to prove once and for all to the people of Scotland that Labour think they’re dribbling gullible morons.

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Soapbox: Happy hours 371

Posted on February 07, 2015 by

So, an experiment. Here on Wings we don’t tend to deal very much in specific political issues, other than independence. We’re not aligned to any party, and our primary goal is to see Scotland become a national democracy in which all voices can be heard. We happen to be on the left of the political spectrum, but that’s neither here nor there while Scotland’s politics are at the mercy of the whims of voters elsewhere.

But just for a change of pace at the weekends, when there tends not to be much happening, we thought we might try having a space where broader ideas can be debated outwith the framework of the constitutional debate or party politics. If there’s something you’d like to talk about in front of a sizeable audience, drop us a line.

soapbox1

To give you an idea of what we mean, we’re going to start off by outlining a personal pet idea we’ve had for years, and which is an attempt to tackle one of Scotland’s most toxic problems – alcohol abuse. It’s a simple concept, it’s cheap to implement, it doesn’t punish the innocent and it seems like it’d work. See what you think.

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The enemy of their enemy 243

Posted on February 06, 2015 by

A quick rhetorical question, readers: if, as Labour endlessly claim, the Tories want the SNP to win seats in Scotland in order to stop Ed Miliband being PM, why are most of the Scottish columnists in the right-wing press calling on Scots to vote Labour?

tactical

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The new line 84

Posted on February 05, 2015 by

The letter below is extraordinary, readers. See if it fits with what you remember.

asimplefact

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The forgetful ones 188

Posted on February 05, 2015 by

Only a few diehards in the press are still clinging this morning to the Labour fiction we exposed yesterday, namely the flat-out empirical falsehood that “the biggest party gets to form a government” in the event of a hung Parliament.

hunglie

The Daily Record’s hapless political editor Torcuil Crichton desperately fought against the proven facts on Good Morning Scotland as an incredulous Iain Macwhirter looked on, and a few of the party’s more unhinged supporters battle on on social media, but after some diligent battering away with evidence it looks like we’ve finally managed to get the message through to most of a reluctant media.

But why was it ever in doubt?

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A thousand miles of stupid 233

Posted on February 04, 2015 by

Even we can’t quite believe this one, readers.

Good grief, where do we even start?

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Panic on the streets of London 212

Posted on February 04, 2015 by

As that’s where Scottish Labour is led from, of course. The Ashcroft polls leaked late last night have, it’s fair to say, caused a certain degree of furore among politics types.

hotherballs1

Contrary to some expectations, the figures could scarcely have been worse. Of 16 seats polled – 14 held by Labour and two Lib Dem – 15 would go to the SNP on staggering swings of over 20%. Labour’s Glasgow heartlands would be all but wiped out, with only Willie Bain in Glasgow North East barely clinging on.

The SNP will undoubtedly be cock-a-hoop, but will almost certainly also be feverishly warning activists that polls don’t win seats and reminding them of the party’s own spectacular recovery in the 2011 Holyrood election from what looked like disaster just a couple of months out from the vote.

Lord Ashcroft himself points out (as we did ourselves on Twitter last night) that the seats he polled were mainly in areas that voted Yes last year, and so may be unduly flattering the SNP. But it’s worth seeing them in context.

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