Wings Over Scotland

Yesterday was quite an eventful day, so it’s moderately possible you may have missed the alarming news that some shady Mafia-backed hedge fund or such has apparently funded these irresponsible and morally-suspect chancers (last seen shilling on air for literally Vladimir Putin and BBC Scotland, in that order) to produce an all-new series of scurrilous and dubious fact-grubbing for some inexplicable reason.

We have alerted the appropriate authorities. For safety, remain in your homes.

It’s morning in America, readers.

Judge Dredd: Origins was published in 2007, although in fact the basic story of how Bad Bob Booth became the last President of the USA and what he did next was established right back at the 1970s beginnings of Dredd’s parent comic 2000AD.

We actually have a theory that it’s all the Lib Dems’ fault.

Read the rest of this entry →

Following our news report at the weekend that Kezia Dugdale had gone to the USA to help Hillary Clinton, a concerned reader etc etc with inevitable results etc.

Read the rest of this entry →

We thought we might leave this here so that Scottish journalists could print it out and stick it on their monitors as a memory aid. It’s something they keep unaccountably forgetting for some reason.

You never know, it might just cheer them up a bit.

Ah, the good old days.

Obviously, actually including the exact phrases “within 45 minutes” and “weapons of mass destruction” might have been a little bit too near the knuckle, but the message comes across just the same: “Here we go again.”

This week, as the UK’s new Conservative government brought forward a bill to impose tax on renewable energy projects, just seven Labour MPs turned up to oppose it.

You know these guys that you used to see wandering round the city centre with a sandwich board telling us “THE END IS NIGH”? It seems they were right.

Read the rest of this entry →

For the last month or so, the Unionist parties have briefly enjoyed the opportunity to taunt the SNP in the Commons over Full Fiscal Autonomy, challenging the party to bring forward proposals and accusing it of being afraid of the policy it campaigned and won on in the election. The Nats called the bluff, and today got the unsurprising result.

The reason given by Secretary of State David Mundell – who declined to appear on today’s edition of “Good Morning Scotland” to defend or explain the decision – was that FFA “would cost every family in Scotland £5,000”.

And we thought that figure had a rather familiar ring to it.

Read the rest of this entry →

Read the rest of this entry →

The BBC’s Robert Peston on yesterday’s Today programme. (About 2h 37m in.)

(Today, BBC Radio 4, 14 April 2015)
.

Thank heavens that nice Mr Miliband’s going to stand up for austerity, eh?

Last week we listened to a Radio Scotland phone-in debate on Trident, hosted very deftly by John Beattie, who managed to steer callers away from political points and keep the discussion on the merits or otherwise of the weapons system itself.

Sadly that didn’t dissuade the usual coterie of nutters/local councillors phoning in insisting that (a) North Korea would invade/blast Scotland off the face of the Earth the moment we let our guard down, and (b) Helensburgh would immediately revert to the Stone Age at the loss of jobs were the few hundred Trident sailors who spend about a week every year in the town to be reassigned to other posts in the navy.

We didn’t have time to ring in ourselves, but we did manage to think of a much better idea that solved both of those problems without lumbering Scotland with a gigantic nuclear white elephant, and one that would also free up an awful lot of valuable police time and resources that are currently spent arresting a bunch of hippies.

See if you can pick any holes in it, readers.

Read the rest of this entry →

With the “biggest party forms the government” lie now sunk and rusting slowly on the seabed (weighed down even further by polls suggesting that Labour actually will be the largest party even if they lose all of Scotland to the SNP), and four weeks of campaigning left to fill, Scottish Labour have had to grab a hammer, smash the glass on the “EMERGENCY – IN CASE OF DESPERATION” box and clutch desperately at whatever they found inside.

The abject answer is “Project Fear 2 – This Time It’s Full Fiscal Autonomy”.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s worth reminding yourself before you watch this clip from BBC News this morning that the gentleman at the lectern isn’t some rabid Daily Mail columnist, but is in fact the Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Fallon.

The “SPACE MONSTERS!” rationale for foreign policy. Who saw that one coming?