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The Way Forward 212

Posted on November 17, 2024 by

As a lifelong political geek and former SNP and Alba Party member, I’ve spent years supporting Scotland’s independence movement. However, over the last few years, I’ve watched the campaign (as opposed to support for independence) wither away. Being a Scottish nationalist has become increasingly disheartening, like watching someone you love succumb to a slow, debilitating illness. In frustration, I switched off from my homeland and turned my focus to the drama of US politics.

Over the last three years I immersed myself in it, watching both left and right-wing outlets. I became so hooked and invested that I jumped on a plane to Washington DC for the 2024 election. I canvassed with DC Democrats in rural Pennsylvania (that’s me third from the left in the pic below), attended Kamala Harris’s concession rally, and went to Trump’s only watch party in DC.

My journey led me to believe that Scotland’s independence campaign could learn a great deal from Trump’s victory and the Democrats’ failure.

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The People You Most Suspected 364

Posted on November 12, 2024 by

We’ll give you three guesses as to the highly controversial and extravagantly taxpayer-funded organisation that has its rainbow fingerprints all over this story, readers.

But you’re going to have two to spare.

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The Show Goes On 256

Posted on November 09, 2024 by

How it happened 421

Posted on November 06, 2024 by

So it looks like the USA has elected a mad orange rapist convicted of 34 felonies who could yet be in jail by the time of his inauguration. (He would remain President even if that happened, which would be really funny.) And we can’t even blame them for it, because the alternative they were offered was, remarkably and stupendously, worse.

Wings called it like we called Trump’s first victory (and most other things). We tweeted this last year when thinking about the upcoming election. It’s a variant on something we wrote about on Wings eight and a half years ago. We’re posting it again now in the desperate hope that one day, maybe, far in the future, someone will actually listen.

But, y’know, we’re not holding our breath or anything.

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Bespoilers Of Graves 266

Posted on November 03, 2024 by

From here, the top of the barrel is so far away that you can’t see so much as a pinprick of daylight through the most powerful pair of binoculars.

In a moving epitaph a few days ago, the widely-respected Professor James Mitchell of the University Of Glasgow noted of Alex Salmond that:

“He could be irascible and did not put up with fools […] He was impatient with lazy journalism […] and did not hide it. We can still see the consequences in some of the obituaries and commentary that reveal more about the writers than the subject”.

Mandy Rhodes of Holyrood magazine concurred, saying:

“In the clamour for commentators to vent their loathing, there have been too many sour column inches that have framed a man’s premature death around the egos of the journalists that have penned them.

Too great an appetite to rescue the words that were once filed and then spiked following a trial that didn’t give them the verdict they had prepared for. Too much haste to use his passing as the opportunity to seek revenge for a tongue-lashing or a put-down that they had never forgotten.”

And so, then, to Carlos Alba.

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The Skeleton Dance 73

Posted on November 02, 2024 by

That worth remembering 348

Posted on October 29, 2024 by

Alex Salmond will be laid to rest in the green turf of Aberdeenshire today in a quiet and dignified private ceremony. (A public celebration of his life will take place next month.)

Most of Scotland’s press and commentariat beclowned itself shamefully after his death just as it did during his life, but below is a (regrettably short) collection of those who did otherwise and who deserve to be noted honourably beside the man himself.

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The Impostor 33

Posted on October 26, 2024 by


The 24 Official Genders Of Scotland 325

Posted on October 21, 2024 by

Are listed below:

Click the pic to enlarge, if you want to lose the will to live.

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In Times To Come 149

Posted on October 19, 2024 by

The fleas on the ticks on the midgets 310

Posted on October 16, 2024 by

Wherever you find giants, you also find parasites, bottom-feeders and carrion. When a mighty lion dies in the jungle, tiny creeping crawling maggots and insects and bacteria feast gleefully on its corpse for many days.

Which naturally brings us to the Scottish media.

The above paragraphs of cowardly innuendo and baseless speculative smearing were penned by Severin Carrell and Libby Brooks in the Guardian on Monday. (They’re not from the ironically-headed “Appreciation” that the same two hacks wrote for Sunday’s Observer, in which they audaciously claimed that Salmond’s success was down to Nicola Sturgeon).

They sneakily imply that Salmond was guilty not only of the sexual assaults of which he was cleared in court, but also of an unspecified number of unnamed others, and make assertions of “disturbing evidence about his personal conduct” without specifying what that evidence or conduct might have been.

Naively, we’d imagined that as repulsive as those lines are – though not surprising, as Brooks has always been a keen participant in the whispering campaign from allies of Sturgeon trying to discredit the trial verdict – they were as bad as things would get.

We weren’t even close.

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The Giant 461

Posted on October 13, 2024 by

It’s hard to write an obituary for someone you can’t quite believe is dead.

But we must look the truth in the eyes, and it is so.

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