And it’s almost easy to dismiss it as meaningless. You can report to the police that aliens dug up your prize petunias and they’ll record it and give it a reference number and promise to investigate, before concluding that it was actually the neighbour’s cat.
But there’s one word in the 500-word piece that makes it much more interesting.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
The reality-TV let’s say “personality” Kelly Given – who Wings readers previously met on a trip to New York for Tartan Week with a raft of SNP let’s say “celebrities” a couple of months ago – has been off on another nice holiday.
Last night she told both the viewers of BBC Scotland’s “Seven Days” that she’d just spent three weeks on an island in Greece, where apparently she was quite shocked to discover that the Mediterranean nation was hot in July.
Wings readers are of course the last people in the country who need any reminding of what a ditch-slithering creature Scottish Labour activist Duncan Hothersall is. And in truth by his standards these tweets are only about averagely despicable.
Even not-very-alert readers will have noticed that we’re taking a little summer holiday in the complete absence of any political events. Rest assured that we’re using the time to patrol Bath diligently for bears. But we couldn’t help noticing this on Twitter today.
Someone tweeted it to show that as late as summer 2020 the SNP was still soliciting money for what it called its “ring fenced Independence Referendum Campaign Fund”.
bumsrush on The Only Notes That Really Count: “Spot on. Now, are there powers to force disclosure of the Police and COPFS files? Jimmy Savile’s Police and CPS…” Jul 14, 03:17
twathater on Step One: “As usual Aydan you have comprehension issues or you are just stupid , “What time of restrictions are you after?…” Jul 14, 02:34
Young Lochinvar on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Rev The cracks are starting to show.. Keep going.” Jul 14, 01:04
Mark Beggan on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “The down side of being a Wings reader is that you find yourself shouting at the English media reporting on…” Jul 14, 00:20
Young Lochinvar on Step One: “AI DUN @ 7.11 Well AI DUN, that’s just great eh? C’mon fess up, you clearly have a personal interest…” Jul 14, 00:19
Hatey McHateface on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “And on that day, everybody’s drawers will be around their ankles.” Jul 14, 00:08
ben madigan on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “I mean Scotsmen and women, wake up!!! What are we expected to believe – an individual who has been arrested…” Jul 13, 23:58
Insider on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Question… Does Alf Baird really post his repetitive mince himself ? Or does he have a bot churning out irrelevant…” Jul 13, 23:23
willie on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “When it’s all laid out like Rev Stu has done it becomes so very clear what a barefaced liar Nicola…” Jul 13, 23:20
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Step One: “QUESTION XLI. « The sovereignty is originally and radically in the people,»” Jul 13, 22:56
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Step One: “SAMUEL RUTHERFORD: LEX REX. Summary prelude for QUESTION XLIII — « WHETHER THE KING OF SCOTLAND BE AN ABSOLUTE PRINCE,…” Jul 13, 22:36
Alf Baird on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: ““The former First Minister…is nothing but a stain on Scotland’s history.” Indeed Rev, however the fact remains that “a colonized…” Jul 13, 22:16
Mark Beggan on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Anwar is a rat in a suit defending the pig in knickers.” Jul 13, 21:50
Old John on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Anwar has been a radge wee man for most of his adult life. Ever since he got a bit of…” Jul 13, 21:34
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Step One: “SAMUEL RUTHERFORD (1600-1661) Highly influential anti-monarchist Scottish constitutional thinker. « Presbyterian minister and St Andrews Professor, Samuel Rutherford in his…” Jul 13, 21:29
Fro on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Isn’t there expression meant to be “gold-standard”. “Gold-plated’ suggests it looks authentic and real at first glance but is virtually…” Jul 13, 20:35
Ex President Xiden on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Every terrorist who gave a no comment interview can now be said to have fully cooperated with the police. At…” Jul 13, 20:27
Hatey McHateface on Step One: “@Andy You are doing that Guardian BTL thing of assuming that the EU cries itself to sleep every night because…” Jul 13, 20:21
Innocent bystander on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “It is a joy to behold, that sharp common sense coupled with dogged persistance applied like an old fasioned poultice…” Jul 13, 20:15
Aidan on Step One: “@Andy – I think that’s broadly the point that a lot of posters are making, not that it can’t be…” Jul 13, 20:14
Alf Baird on Step One: “The use of a ‘local government franchise’ for a people who are also subject to extensive ‘demographic manipulation’ is clearly…” Jul 13, 20:09
Hatey McHateface on Step One: ““Indigenous Scot means ‘someone who agrees with me'” Bingo, Rob! Franchise discussions are a repeating theme on here. They usually…” Jul 13, 20:07
Hatey McHateface on Step One: “Odd, Northy. Most reasoning readers will conclude that the owner of a blog site is right. Posters BTL are wrong.…” Jul 13, 19:55
Andy Ellis on Step One: “@ Aidan 6.57pm I don’t underestimate the potential challenges posed by independence. The point is rather convincing more “soft No”…” Jul 13, 19:43
Blackhack on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Now if that was me, and I had nothing to hide I’d be demanding that the “police interview” was published.…” Jul 13, 19:43