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The slowest reader in Scotland? 75

Posted on July 25, 2013 by

We don’t like to resort to personal abuse or crude language on this website, but we’re really struggling not to use the phrase “clueless thick comedy twat” here. Dammit.

dimwit

Blair McDougall is the director of the “Better Together” campaign. He’s rumoured to be paid £100,000 a year. Yet his skills don’t appear to extend to reading the news.

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Scottish and British 127

Posted on July 25, 2013 by

Looks like someone had this problem at the online flag shop.

ukdl

Remind us again why it’s “cybernats” we’re meant to be ashamed of.

Later than you think 364

Posted on July 24, 2013 by

In an extraordinary outburst on TV last night, “Better Together” campaign chairman Alistair Darling accused Alex Salmond of exaggerating the amount of extractable oil in the Scottish sector of the North Sea by 1,200%.

The former Chancellor (who we learned a few weeks ago thinks the population of Scotland is six million, creating an impressive 705,000 imaginary Scots) suggested that rather than the 24 billion barrels currently estimated by the oil industry – and commonly cited by the UK government – there were in fact just 2 billion barrels left.

darlingoil

As BT are a tad wobbly with numbers, let’s do a quick bit of arithmetic on that.

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Meta-polling #1 355

Posted on July 23, 2013 by

Okay, we’re cracking on with this poll thing. Now we need your opinion.

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Down with this sort of thing 72

Posted on July 23, 2013 by

We’re still mentally paralysed from this morning’s horrific TV, sorry. So here’s a wee screenshot that we took while setting up yesterday’s ludicrously successful fundraiser.

indiegocountry

Vote Yes to stop this happening in the future, folks.

Please make it stop 199

Posted on July 23, 2013 by

Woke up this morning and accidentally switched on the news, foolishly thinking “It happened yesterday afternoon, surely they’ll have run out of completely inane drivel to say about it by now”. Brain now turned to semolina. Can barely construct sentences, let alone analyse anything. Be with you in a bit.

Stag night 75

Posted on July 22, 2013 by

Our hardworking and still-undiscovered mole at “Better Together” HQ reveals the extent to which the No campaign is becoming demoralised and irritable over the Scottish media’s increasing weariness – and sometimes outright mockery – of “Project Fear”.

mightbehardposter5

(Five bonus points if you spot what’s extra-special about this one.)

Let’s get a thing done 0

Posted on July 22, 2013 by

Okay, it seems safe to say already that reaction to the idea is very positive, so why waste time? The new fundraiser page is now live. The more money we raise the more questions we can ask, so let’s see what we can find out.

[EDIT: Base target crushed in 70 minutes. Wow. But keep it coming, folks, because we’d love to get to 10 questions, which will take a total of about £3,600.]

For the sake of tidiness, comments on this post will be closed – please carry on commenting and suggesting questions in the original thread.

Let’s do a thing 442

Posted on July 22, 2013 by

Recently we’ve seen quite a few people on social media wondering why there hadn’t been any opinion polls on independence published in a while. We thought it was a bit curious ourselves, so we rang a few polling companies with a view to commissioning our own one, but Panelbase told us they were doing fieldwork on one as we spoke, to be published roughly a week today (they’re every two months).

pollsbbc

But even though we don’t need to do one on the straight Yes/No thing now, that’s no reason why we can’t take it upon ourselves to ask a few other questions.

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The hopeless case 89

Posted on July 22, 2013 by

We linked you yesterday to a quite startling display of cognitive dissonance, as a dedicated Labour activist struggled to reconcile his party’s position on Trident with his own belief in disarmament, reaching some quite extraordinary contortions of logic in an attempt to convince himself that staying in the Union represented the best way of ridding the United Kingdom of weapons which are enthusiastically supported by every major UK political party and the Lib Dems.

torctrident

But it’s not just mad bloggers who are frantically trying to whip up a sandstorm of spin to obscure Labour’s final abject surrender to the nuclear weapons lobby.

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If you build it 80

Posted on July 21, 2013 by

In the whole of 2012, Wings Over Scotland was visited by 141,012 unique users, who made just under 2.6 million pageviews. In 2013 so far, we’ve reached 285,581 unique users who between them racked up over 6.6m pageviews.

bradbury

Just wait until we really get started.

One loud noise 60

Posted on July 21, 2013 by

In Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel “V For Vendetta”, the central character tells co-protagonist Evey: “Silence is a fragile thing. One loud noise, and it’s gone”.

silence

Yesterday we ran a guest post from the Scrap Trident Coalition calling for an end to the Johann Lamont and the Scottish branch of the Labour Party to end its silence on the subject of nuclear weapons.

But though Lamont remains “on holiday” and unavailable for comment on a range of issues (or even completely excluded from discussing them at all), her party has ended her silence for her, with a succession of loud noises nobody could possibly miss.

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    • Alf Baird on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““How did the imperial UK construct prove its immorality yesterday?” So many examples, Hatey, you’re obviously not paying attention to…Aug 25, 14:34
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “https://caithness-business.co.uk/article/32159 “What a needs?based formula actually means A needs?based formula allocates funding according to measurable indicators of need, not just…Aug 25, 14:23
    • Captain Caveman on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““That it?” I’m betting that’s a phrase you’ve heard quite often.Aug 25, 13:25
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Neither of us can say with truth if the Formula meets the needs of Scotland. Here is the abstract from…Aug 25, 12:37
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Jappy; “As a civil servant in London in the 1960s, and being part of the establishment, I always accepted the…Aug 25, 12:34
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “As I posted earlier. “Disingenuous Adrian”. But hey, worth a try, champ.Aug 25, 12:31
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    • gm on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Swinney was warned, by trained honest people, that the Smith Commission was a miserable effort at containment, nothing more and…Aug 25, 12:00
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    • Captain Caveman on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “”Aw, Adrian’s trying to post in Scotch” Wait, what? “Adrian” (I think you meant Aidan) is trying to post in…Aug 25, 11:06
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    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Caithness Business Index “It is based on outdated population data The population share used in the formula is updated only…Aug 25, 10:53
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““Scotland’s energy prices are certainly the highest among all the energy-rich nations” But then you have to define “nation”, Alf.…Aug 25, 10:50
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Barnett thought his Formula was “grossly unfair” due to inequalities in public spending. He thought it would be a temporary…Aug 25, 10:48
    • Jay on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “I forgot she is Labour, so used to Unionist SNP.Aug 25, 10:40
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Aw, Adrian’s trying to post in Scotch. Bless. Give it up. petal.Aug 25, 10:40
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “We need a unionist troll, quick; post something disingenuous to refute that “100%Yes” post above, in case any Scotch get…Aug 25, 10:36
    • Alf Baird on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““Scotland hasn’t got the highest energy prices in the world” We’ve been though this before Hatey yet you still appear…Aug 25, 10:31
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Good post, Jay. Now, inch yourself to the very edge of the precipice, look boldly over the vertiginous, sheer drop,…Aug 25, 10:28
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    • Hatey McHateface on Before Action: “Thought you were already done. But I was wrong – you’re back again. Seemingly you want a Block function alongside…Aug 25, 10:20
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    • Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “I was going to say Hatey – for the land of make believe this is incredibly unoptimistic. If Scotland had…Aug 25, 08:44
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    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “UKGov also turns a blind eye while random boys, lacking all certificates of authenticity, ponce aboot in tartan and kilts.…Aug 25, 08:13
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