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Somebody make it make sense 42

Posted on August 26, 2023 by

Humza Yousaf today:

So… his job is to get a legally binding referendum (something which doesn’t actually exist), but he knows that if we’re likely to win it we’re less likely to get it, so… we need to look like we’re going to lose one if it happens?

So presumably with support for the SNP already plummeting through the floor, the next phase of his grand strategy will be to drive support for independence down too? We suppose that’s a more rational explanation of the party’s actions in recent years than anything else we can think of, right enough.

Or of course, it might be that the guy’s just a complete gibbering idiot. You tell us.

The Hollow Heart 192

Posted on August 25, 2023 by

Yesterday we took an extensive tour of all the red flags in the SNP’s 2022 accounts, which show a party in very deep financial trouble. But there was one part we left out because it deserves a post of its own.

The picture above – which was posted by then-CEO Peter Murrell during last year’s SNP conference – is a revealing one in all kinds of ways.

It starkly exposes how a party chose to hold an event for around 800 members in a venue with a capacity of 15,000 and then went to a lot of effort to disguise how empty the space was, rather than, for example, just hiring somewhere of an appropriate size (and cost) in the first place.

(Look how far into the hall the stage has been placed, leaving half the arena vacant, to then be hidden behind a giant screen and curtains and banners in order to give a false impression of how full it is.)

But what’s more symbolic is that there are almost no people in it.

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Don’t you wonder sometimes? 76

Posted on August 24, 2023 by

About sound and vision, we mean.

Three hundred and forty grand?

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Dead Cat Bouncing 58

Posted on August 24, 2023 by

We know the meanings of words are very flexible these days, especially in the SNP.

But this isn’t our understanding of the term “turning around”:

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The Day The SNP Died 116

Posted on August 23, 2023 by

Luckily, someone else has already said it for us.

The haunting words of a dead man, brought to you again on the exact anniversary of the day William Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered at Smithfield in London for treason against the English crown.

Three deaths for the price of one. RIP.

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Drawing blanks 40

Posted on August 23, 2023 by

Readers, we’ve got nothing.

Did you all get together and arrange this as a massive prank while we were out at the shops? Because if so, well done, you got us, but it’s time to own up.

The End Of The Enlightenment 487

Posted on August 19, 2023 by

Slacky The Holiday Boy is off for the next THREE weeks, gallivanting around the globe on the clearly excessive wages we’re paying him. We hope he does actually come back, because his home city is becoming a poisonously hostile place for the creative.

Around 300 years ago, Edinburgh was the birthplace and residence of the Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable period of intellectual and scientific accomplishment built around “the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason”, and which led to the city being famously dubbed “the Athens of the North”.

But those days are past now.

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The Ultimate Joke 174

Posted on August 17, 2023 by

Fair play to The National, the use of the word “HIS” in this banner on their front page today might be the single funniest thing ever printed by a Scottish newspaper.

Because everyone and his dug in Scotland knows whose strategy it actually is, and how many years Pete Wishart spent traducing it as nonsense and furiously venting his overworked spleen at anyone who advocated it – right up to the point where Nicola Sturgeon adopted it in a desperate last attempt to keep the indy faithful pushing the SNP gravy bus, at which point it became the greatest masterplan of all time.

But today’s piece in the indy equivalent of the Daily Express (albeit with only a tenth of the sales) is so jawdropping that we doubt even Robert Oppenheimer would be up to the job of putting a scorchmark on Wishart’s brass neck, so let’s spend five minutes having a look at it before we go out for a bit of sunshine.

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The Man Who Sold The Jerseys 127

Posted on August 16, 2023 by

We’ve used this video before, but it’s extra-apt today.

Humza Yousaf is played here by Morgan Freeman, the big plane carrying the bomb is the independence movement and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are in the chopper.

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An old favourite 340

Posted on August 12, 2023 by

The word “NEW” is working pretty hard there, lads.

By The Book 95

Posted on August 11, 2023 by

Even quite alert Wings readers may not recall our brush with thoroughly obnoxious SNP councillor (and former chair of the misleadingly-named Aberdeen Independence Movement) Fatima Joji, because it happened such a long time ago.

But sometimes when someone behaves particularly egregiously in their professional role you have to at least give the proper grievance procedures a try (although it can prove very expensive to do so), and 13 months ago that’s what we did. We still have no idea how close we may be to the end of the process, but we have an update.

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Christmas is coming 168

Posted on August 09, 2023 by

Three weeks of summer left.

How’s it been for you?

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    • Spartan 117 on Faces In Sand: “Pished, hysterical, incoherent rambling as per.” Oct 26, 13:31
    • Captain Caveman on Faces In Sand: “Yes, the “useful idiot” argument (from a Unionist POV) isn’t lost on me. 🙂 However, it is bloody tedious, isn’t…” Oct 26, 13:25
    • Aidan on Faces In Sand: “I think Confused is having a tougher time as an adult. I would guess passing the days drinking very strong,…” Oct 26, 13:24
    • Aidan on Faces In Sand: “It has a practical purpose in driving the cause of independence down a dead end and diverting time and resources,…” Oct 26, 13:18
    • Captain Caveman on Faces In Sand: “I’m guessing you had a tough time at school, Confused, and were no stranger to the “bogwash”.” Oct 26, 12:40
    • Confused on Faces In Sand: “getting into the english at the UN is useful, and enjoyable, because it “hits them where they live” – they…” Oct 26, 12:17
    • Confused on Faces In Sand: ““Rewilding” is another con job – what it means is : GET ORFF MOI LAND – and whenever an ANGLO…” Oct 26, 12:14
    • Lorncal on Faces In Sand: “Northcode: although contemporary international law would back us up in most areas, the Treaty will almost certainly come into play…” Oct 26, 11:30
    • Spartan 117 on Faces In Sand: “Alf, but the UK *does* exist, legally, politically and physically, not just within its territory but it is internationally recognised.…” Oct 26, 10:55
    • Northcode on Faces In Sand: “I understand the frustration — democratic systems are imperfect everywhere. But my point was simply that, unlike in 1707, Scots…” Oct 26, 10:24
    • Captain Caveman on Faces In Sand: “Hey, it’s almost as though this “ancient guff” that happened over 300 years ago is of no pragmatic consequence in…” Oct 26, 10:14
    • Captain Caveman on Faces In Sand: “So it’s a case of “Schrödinger’s Union” then, eh Alf? 😀” Oct 26, 10:08
    • Willie on Faces In Sand: “Morning Northcode, ” In 1707, ordinary people weren’t given a choice. Across Europe, citizens had no democratic say in major…” Oct 26, 10:02
    • Marie on Faces In Sand: “You forgot Palestine and Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, born in East Lothian.” Oct 26, 09:53
    • Alf Baird on Faces In Sand: “You can’t end something that never existed in the first place, Northcode.” Oct 26, 09:18
    • Northcode on Faces In Sand: “The confusion begins with the name. “Treaty of Union” suggests an equal partnership, but the institutional reality created in 1707…” Oct 26, 08:59
    • Northcode on Faces In Sand: “Hatey — that’s a very clear way of putting it. The distinction between wanting to end the Union and pretending…” Oct 26, 08:53
    • Hatey McHateface on Faces In Sand: ““the White House will be adorned by a downright moron” Haha, Scotland leads the world! We’ve already had a string…” Oct 26, 08:29
    • Hatey McHateface on Faces In Sand: ““That there was colonialism of Northern Ireland was an idea widely considered by many groups and individuals” That it was…” Oct 26, 08:11
    • TURABDIN on Faces In Sand: “«As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.…” Oct 26, 08:04
    • Hatey McHateface on Faces In Sand: ““those such as yersel who maintain that a UK ‘union’ exists when it becomes ever more evident that it does…” Oct 26, 08:04
    • Willie on Faces In Sand: “The repeated euphemism of the word ” the Troubles ‘ is a masterpiece of spin to mask the reality of…” Oct 26, 08:00
    • Alf Baird on Faces In Sand: ““..dismantle a political and economic union that he claims doesn’t exist” The problem surely lies with those such as yersel…” Oct 25, 22:36
    • sarah on Faces In Sand: “Dan, thanks for the info on trees. I brought the chestnut tree up from Kent as a sprout 25 years…” Oct 25, 21:56
    • Lorncal on Faces In Sand: “I absolutely agree, Northcode, that we need to make a powerful case for independence across the board, but, after an…” Oct 25, 20:52
    • Dan on Faces In Sand: “@ Sarah They are not my Hazel or Sweet Chestnut trees. They are just planted locally along a roadside. I’m…” Oct 25, 20:31
    • sam on Faces In Sand: “That there was colonialism of Northern Ireland was an idea widely considered by many groups and individuals during what is…” Oct 25, 20:12
    • Hatey McHateface on Faces In Sand: “Wheesht, Xaracen! Dinna tell the Picts we Scots stole most of the country from. Got to say, it does seem…” Oct 25, 19:44
    • Hatey McHateface on Faces In Sand: “My benchmark 30 seconds of internet research reveals the budget of BBC Scotland TV to be ÂŁ42 million PA. The…” Oct 25, 19:36
    • Insider on Faces In Sand: “sarah @7:13 This is solely due to the vicious, heartless colonialism that we Scots suffer under. But never fear…in Alf’s…” Oct 25, 19:33
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