The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘analysis’


Too Tight To Mention 379

Posted on July 02, 2025 by

So this snuck out quietly at the bottom of page 2 of today’s Daily Record.

And like, we suspect, most of Scotland, our response was “WHAT?”

Read the rest of this entry →

The Con Merchant 433

Posted on June 28, 2025 by

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, before the internet, scammers used to have to work a bit harder to cheat people than they do now.

A popular method was to advertise a “clearance sale” in the press. You’d see an ad in the Daily Record or a local paper for an event in a High Street location – typically a vacant shop – promising brand-new TVs for £20, microwaves for a fiver, toasters for £2.50 or whatever. So you’d show up on the day and it always worked the same.

There’d be the ringmaster on a raised platform, surrounded by loads of unmarked white boxes, and he’d start off by picking some “random” punter from the crowd and bestowing gifts upon him. This guy would walk away with armfuls of swag for £25 or something (doubtless just going straight round the back with them), and the real show would begin.

Next the ringmaster would say “Now, before we get properly started, who’ll give me £10 for what’s on my mind?” (that phrase, “what’s on my mind”, was always the same). And basically they were flogging a mystery box, invariably containing a few trashy trinkets worth a fraction of the cost.

Any chump who bought one would then be escorted out of the shop before opening it, on the pretence that the bargains on offer in these sales were so great that they were limited to one per person. (There was always security on the door, sometimes even cops. There’s nothing intrinsically illegal about selling mystery boxes, even mainstream chainstores still do it today.)

And that was basically it. The ringmaster would delay and delay, punting more mystery boxes and never actually getting to the bit where you could buy a specific item at a specific price, and after a couple of hours the event would close down and the would-be customers would disperse in disgruntlement.

Now here’s John Swinney.

He’s got a mystery box to sell you.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Art Of Noise 38

Posted on June 27, 2025 by

Genuinely, can anyone tell us what the heck this actually means?

Because to us, it’s just meaningless quacking to fill a void.

Read the rest of this entry →

But Don’t Give Yourself Away 60

Posted on June 25, 2025 by

Seamus Logan, an SNP MP of whom it has often been said “Seamus who?”, has an article in The National today categorically ruling out Scotland achieving independence via a democratic vote in an event fully recognised by the UK government.

That in itself shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to Wings readers, as this site has been documenting the SNP’s increasingly open abandonment of even the pretence at achieving independence for more than five years now.

Logan’s stance that if begging Westminster for another Section 30 doesn’t work (which it doesn’t, hasn’t and never will) then it’s basically impossible and we should just give up has – to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention – been official SNP policy since at least the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and in reality long before then, and we don’t think it’s a coincidence that the party has lost more than half of its members and over 40% of its voters over that period.

Read the rest of this entry →

Anatomy Of A Lunatic 79

Posted on June 23, 2025 by

Honestly, folks, I don’t even want to do this because almost nothing is more tedious for anyone else to read than two people having an internet beef – a lesson that I learned, ironically, from reading the site this post concerns, which does little else – but as well as reacting on a basic human level to someone being THIS deranged by hatred of you, it’s worth marvelling, like an elegant Victorian gentleman or lady taking a guided tour of an asylum, at how much insanity they can squeeze into a small space as a result.

And to detail the madness we have to start with that headline.

Read the rest of this entry →

A different school 144

Posted on June 23, 2025 by

Tommy Sheppard knows a John Swinney you don’t know.

And who, conveniently, you’re not allowed to see.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Grand Tour 154

Posted on June 10, 2025 by

Lacking anything better to do on a grey and cloudy day in Bath, we thought it might be a lark to go through every Holyrood constituency in Scotland and contemplate where it might go in next year’s election, based on the current state of polling.

And just to make things interesting, compared to our last assessment we’re going to give opposition parties the (often considerable) benefit of the doubt in a few seats for the sheer heck of it, and see if there’s any even slightly plausible outcome that means the SNP might win some list seats if all their voters vote for them on both ballots, or if they’ll waste a million votes for nothing and get dozens of Unionists elected like they did in 2021. [SPOILER: don’t prepare yourself for a surprise.]

Read the rest of this entry →

Two Of A Kind 58

Posted on June 09, 2025 by

Humza Yousaf, March 2024:

Actual result: Labour 37, SNP 9, Lib Dems 6, Tories 5. The two horses in the two-horse race finished second and fourth, and won just 19% of seats between them.

And here’s John Swinney a week and a half ago:

The two horses finished second and third.

The matter of whether Yousaf and Swinney are a pair of massive liars, or are simply hopelessly out of touch with political reality, is one we’ll leave to your own judgement.

What We Don’t Know Now 71

Posted on June 08, 2025 by

One of the very few phrases universally recognised in Scotland but which will draw blank looks anywhere else in the UK is the dry, dark “Well, ye ken noo”. Until recently it had no equivalent that we can bring to mind in the rest of the English-speaking world, although arguably that gap has now been at least partly filled by the acronym “FAFO”.

(We try not to swear on the site, so let’s say it stands for “Fool Around, Find Out”.)

So now the smoke has cleared, the troops have departed the battlefield and the winner is enjoying the spoils, what did we find out on Thursday night, and what didn’t we?

Let’s assess the scene.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Jokers 144

Posted on June 06, 2025 by

In the end, the people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse made fools of us all.

Because nobody, but nobody, saw that result coming.

Read the rest of this entry →

Ball Of Confusion 18

Posted on June 05, 2025 by

We must admit, we don’t quite get what the Daily Record is trying to achieve.

Having already told its dwindling band of readers that voting for both the SNP and Labour is the only way to stop Reform in today’s Hamilton by-election, for the last two days it’s deployed some random loony in a hard hat and the vegan former Rangers captain Graeme Souness to the same ostensible end.

Souness, famously a supporter of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives, tells Record readers today that they must vote Labour in order to prevent Thatcher’s right-wing heirs from winning the seat – even though Labour are dead, plucked, stuffed and cooked geese in the eyes of the bookmakers and voting for them only increases the chances of both Reform AND the SNP.

Read the rest of this entry →

And No Great Mischief Should They Fall 131

Posted on June 03, 2025 by

A few weeks ago we had a thought. And it seemed quite an interesting thought, so we decided to commission a poll on it from our old pals at Norstat.

63-37? Well, there’s your clear and overwhelming support.

Read the rest of this entry →

  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,785 Posts, 1,221,659 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Zat so, YL Sah! Then I was right. You couldn’t find Darien on a map without help. I recommend you…Jul 9, 01:11
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: ““Something inspired me” Ah, c’moan noo NC. It’s mean of you to deny Buckfast an honourable mention.Jul 9, 00:57
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Awa and not shite, Andrew R. Shout from the rooftops that you, and by extension Indy, support the kinds of…Jul 9, 00:52
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Nae eulogies fer Starovoit yet? How insensitive of me. The usual suspects will need time to process their grief.Jul 9, 00:46
    • AndrewR on Too Tight To Mention: “More – if she committed any real crime she should have been prosecuted in an English court. It’s pure racism…Jul 9, 00:00
    • AndrewR on Too Tight To Mention: “The treatment of Shemima Begum was outrageous and broke all international law. She was 15, a minor when she left,…Jul 8, 23:37
    • Northcode on Too Tight To Mention: “Something inspired me to write a wee poem. A hiv nae idea whit. Back door, front door, throu an open…Jul 8, 23:07
    • MaryB on Too Tight To Mention: “Re Craig Murray at the UN C24: If nothing else, it’s important for the rest of the world to know…Jul 8, 22:58
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: ““Appear to have issued a D notice” ???? You really are off the reservation today aren’t you. Do you think…Jul 8, 22:10
    • James on Too Tight To Mention: ““This whole thing is going to be an absolute gift to the unionists” Says the unionist….Jul 8, 22:05
    • Northcode on Too Tight To Mention: “Craig says this… again just for good measure: “Be very very happy at the extent of international support for Scottish…Jul 8, 22:05
    • Alf Baird on Too Tight To Mention: ““This whole thing is going to be an absolute gift to the unionists” Actually our colonial rulers understandably don’t want…Jul 8, 21:49
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “Right, because whilst Scotland’s capital is more productive than Norway’s or Singapore, Scotland also has pockets of severe deprivation left…Jul 8, 21:39
    • Stuart on Too Tight To Mention: “Well Northcode that’s 52 minutes of my life I’m not going to get back… The upshot of it being no…Jul 8, 21:06
    • Chas on Too Tight To Mention: “Great stuff. At least I am not a twat.Jul 8, 20:52
    • Chas on Too Tight To Mention: “If Stu has any sense he won’t respond to your drivel. I suspect he has more sense than you. In…Jul 8, 20:47
    • Alf Baird on Too Tight To Mention: ““does Edinburgh not have one of the highest rates of GDP per capita anywhere in the world, higher than Tokyo…Jul 8, 20:41
    • Aidan on Too Tight To Mention: “@Xaracen – no, its thrown it out. Secondly, again you miss the point. The UN recognises the U.K. as a…Jul 8, 20:13
    • Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “Easy Penisbreath. Stick your finger on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal and you’re 9/10ths there.Jul 8, 19:52
    • Northcode on Too Tight To Mention: “On Craig Murray’s return from his ambassadorial mission to the United Nations in New York where he presented the case…Jul 8, 19:32
    • Xaracen on Too Tight To Mention: ““Right” Thank you, so, the C-24 hasn’t actually thrown out the Salvo Petition, it’s just shelved it until it becomes…Jul 8, 19:29
    • twathater on Too Tight To Mention: “Stuart you CLAIM to be an independence supporter yet you EAGERLY join with the yoonionists to try to demean and…Jul 8, 18:29
    • twathater on Too Tight To Mention: “YL try not to take much notice of Chas his comments usually consist of his sexual fixation with Prof Baird,…Jul 8, 18:14
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: ““has ever presented anything positive” Ah, c’moan noo Alf. Why not ask one of the many perennial gurners about oor…Jul 8, 17:58
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Your post above is a masterpiece, Chas. Or should that be “masturb piece”? 🙂 As for the TWAT, he’s fearfully…Jul 8, 17:48
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Sure, x, but it’s kinda lost its ability to hit home. Put it another way. Nae steaming schemie at an…Jul 8, 17:42
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “I don’t understand hardly a word of Gaelic, Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh, but I always enjoy your contributions (in as far as…Jul 8, 17:32
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “Something else you’ve said before, NC, is that your ancestral language is Brittonic (apologies if I spelled that incorrectly). It’s…Jul 8, 17:18
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: ““much bigger, fluffy and a white rear” A white sizzler bee. There’s more and more of them every year, surging…Jul 8, 17:08
    • Hatey McHateface on Too Tight To Mention: “I will happily admit to being unable to point out the location of “Darien” on a large scale map of…Jul 8, 17:04
  • A tall tale



↑ Top