Wings Over Scotland

Wings Over Scotland has been monitoring the BBC’s coverage of Scottish politics for over 11 years now, readers, and other than The Nick Robinson Incident we’re honestly struggling to remember seeing anything worse than this.

The Corporation’s “coverage” of Ash Regan’s campaign launch for the SNP leadership election ran for roughly seven minutes. And we suppose we should be grateful that it did at one point feature a brief, incidental cameo appearance from Ash Regan.

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This is beyond insane.

Like, obviously Rangers aren’t better than Celtic.

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Yesterday, readers, we warned you that “online newspaper polls are self-selecting and vulnerable to manipulation”. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Let’s crunch some numbers.

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It’s remarkable how openly a certain faction of the SNP is now declaring surrender.

And it’s becoming increasingly clear that the events of the next few days and weeks will not just determine the future of the independence movement, but whether in any meaningful, practical sense it continues to exist at all.

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When assessing who might be the best choice for the next leader of the SNP, and by extension of the independence movement, it’s a pretty good rule of thumb to beware of anyone being bigged up by the Unionist media.

(Not only because they don’t have the SNP or Yes movement’s best interests at heart, but also because these are the people who thought Jim Murphy would take Scottish Labour surging to triumph in 2015 and Kezia Dugdale would win the 2021 election.)

So let’s take a quick look at the runners and riders.

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Can you spot the subtle change between these two National stories, readers?

Now, as they’re both in The National the standard of journalism is obviously completely dreadful, and so neither of them actually explains their headline. Nobody is named or quoted even anonymously, and there’s no elaboration other than that “[a member of] the NEC appeared to halt any proposal to use the next General Election as a proxy constitutional vote”, with no indication of HOW they “appeared” to do that.

But they DO raise the question of where on Earth – whoever becomes its new leader – the SNP goes from the smouldering bomb crater that Nicola Sturgeon has left it in.

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So here we are, the morning after the morning before.

The thing that had to happen happened. What happens now?

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Firstly, some of you owe us money.

But much more importantly, why now?

Nicola Sturgeon told Scotland’s press this morning that despite her weariness, she could have managed a few more months or even a year as First Minister, which would at least have got her halfway to keeping her promise to serve a full term if she was elected in 2021.

Which just makes her timing all the harder to explain.

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Last night we tweeted this:

We did so because we’d just been told – by a completely random source – that Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney would both resign today, and Brown would be the interim leader while a replacement was elected. We’d never spoken to this person before, but the manner in which they said it made us take it more seriously than all the “someone told me” rumours we get told and ignore every other day.

As yet only the first part has been confirmed, but you have to admit that our source is looking pretty darn hot right now.

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The title of this article might sound a bit like the name of a band making their debut at Glastonbury this year, but in fact it’s something infinitely more serious.

News broke late last night that the person we must presumably now refer to as an “individual” who had been arrested in connection with the disappearance of a missing Galashiels schoolgirl (happily found safe and well and back home with her parents) had in fact been charged with an as-yet-unspecified crime.

But the alleged crime wasn’t the only thing going unspecified.

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After Wings’ investigation into the disturbing world of “furries” earlier this week, the mainstream press picked up on the quite extraordinary decision by SNP MSP Christina McKelvie to endorse a “counter-protest” being organised by the costume fetishists against a women’s-rights event in Glasgow tomorrow.

Because it appears the SNP are more and more openly throwing their weight behind both extreme sexual kink (and worse) and the intimidation of women.

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Wings readers are by now familiar with the face of Jack/Beth Douglas, the transgender Scottish Greens activist with a long history of abuse and advocating violence against women who is nonetheless feted and worshipped by most of the Scottish Parliament.

Yet even after our extensive revelations about his past last week, not a single MSP has disassociated themselves from him. And now we find ourselves in a position whereby in order to protect other women, we’re forced to direct people’s attention to something we really wish we didn’t have to.

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