Wings Over Scotland

There’s already opinion polling in the field regarding the Alba Party.

It’s hard to say how the party will do at such an early stage. But what we DO know is that it has a very low bar to clear – all it has to do is come out ahead of the Greens and/or the Lib Dems (ie probably score about 6%) to destroy any possible rationale for it not being included in election debates like the one the BBC is showing tonight.

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It’s already getting hard to keep up with the string of well-kent faces and veteran indy campaigners leaving the SNP to join Alex Salmond’s new Alba Party.

It might be an idea to start maintaining a list.

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There’s a lot of this going around from SNP and Unionists alike this weekend.

Because, as we may have mentioned before, they really do think you’re stupid.

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Any time you’re not sure whether something that happens in Scottish politics is good or bad for the cause of independence, here’s a top tip for you: see how the enemies of independence feel about it.

“Running scared” would seem to be a fair, if understated, summary.

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Okay. So we hate the name and the first half hour of the online press conference was a complete shambles. But none of that matters.

There is now a pro-independence party with a serious chance of winning a significant number of seats that sane people who believe in science and women’s rights and civil liberties (and actually meaningfully pursuing independence rather than just using it as a carrot to generate pension contributions) can vote for.

Wings Over Scotland has never told its readers who to vote for. But what we can say is that if we lived in Scotland we would be voting for it without a moment’s hesitation. We don’t believe it’s at all an exaggeration to say it’s the last chance to save Scotland as a country that we’d want to live in if and when it finally does achieve its independence. A country worth winning.

If you feel the same, click the pic above.

Readers may wish to know that Alex Salmond will be making an announcement at 2pm today. You should be able to watch it live on Sky News and probably other news channels. We’ll give you any more details as we get them.

It’s now official that blogger and former diplomat Craig Murray has been found guilty on several charges of contempt of court (although also cleared of several others).

It is of course not for this site to question the judgement of Lady Dorrian (while noting that the verdict may well be subject to appeal and is therefore not yet final), although we do find some aspects of it somewhat troubling – particularly paragraph 74 in which the fate of a defendant appears to be held hostage to the speculative “imagination” of a hypothetical observer.

But it’s not the conviction (NB we are not lawyers and the strange civil/criminal hybrid that is the offence of contempt of court makes the correct terminology somewhat uncertain) of Craig Murray that’s the true cause for concern in this matter.

What’s alarming, as this site has noted previously, is the highly selective and partisan eye with which the Crown Office appears to be pursuing the offence.

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Today is going to be by some distance the quietest one in Scottish politics this week, so I hope you’ll forgive me a personal indulgence, readers. Because while I just ignore unimaginably vast torrents of online abuse every hour of every day of every year, once in a blue moon some things get said that you just can’t let pass.

Paul Kavanagh made a lot of unpleasant personal-attack tweets yesterday off the back of an unpleasant personal-attack article on his blog, which I don’t propose to get into the many individual falsehoods and misrepresentations of here.

(While I believe his evidence in the Dugdale case actually did more harm than good, I don’t hold him responsible for that and I appreciated his willingness to try to help when others I’d considered friends had turned their back.)

But the comments above are too much to bear.

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Readers will be aware that Wings has been experiencing some enormous amounts of traffic this year, and it’s not only among the general public. Someone just forwarded us a reply they got today to an FOI request, and it reveals the site’s popularity – well, maybe that’s not exactly the right word – in Scotland’s corridors of power.

The last time someone asked that question (last October) the figure for Scottish Government computers accessing Wings over a six-month period was just under 1100, so the latest numbers represent an increase of almost 30%.

(It should be noted that the two periods overlap, so the true like-for-like increase is probably considerably more. Unfortunately the two requesters didn’t ask about the same sites so we don’t have direct comparisons, but we’re sure Craig Murray will be pleased with the #2 slot even though his site is currently closed because the Scottish Government, in the shape of the Lord Advocate, is trying to put him in jail for it.)

So a big special wave tonight to all our readers in the Scottish Government. We’re sure it’s nice to know of at least one place that’ll tell you the truth about what’s going on.

Alex Salmond’s spokesperson has issued the following statement this afternoon. We present it to readers unedited save for added emphasis of two sentences.

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Hey folks, remember the happy days when indyref 2 was going to be in “the first half” of the next Parliament? Well, here comes the totally surprising and unexpected news.

This was Ian Blackford on Sky News yesterday, quietly confirming that at best we can expect it in the SECOND half of the Parliament, ie 2024 at the earliest. (And that’s with all the usual waffly evasiveness about how it could be achieved.)

So if readers were wondering why Blackford had quickly released a squirrel to distract from the appearance, perhaps now they know.

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One month ago, writing a mild political slogan on a wall in Scotland in chalk – which washes off instantly at the first sign of a damp cloth or a small shower of rain – was enough to have uniformed officers of Police Scotland turn up at your door on suspicion of hate crime, conspiracy and breach of the peace.

Of course, that depends wholly on which views you’re expressing.

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