Wings Over Scotland

Visiting Scotland by train has always been an uplifting experience for me. There’s something very special about crossing the border into Dumfries and taking in those spectacular vistas as the train rumbles northwards. I’ve always considered this wonderful and spirit-enhancing landscape to be a metaphor for Scotland itself, full of glorious potential just waiting to be realized.

This journey also takes us through the lands of “Yr Hen Ogledd” (the old north), the heartland of the old Brythonic language, the prototype of modern Welsh and the seven kingdoms which established themselves in the intervallum of several centuries after the Romans left these shores in 400 AD.

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As a counterpoint to this unpleasantness from a couple of weeks ago, this is Kevin McKenna in this week’s edition of the Scottish Catholic Observer:

“The difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK at this moment is the difference between “Come to me all ye who are heavy burden’d and I will set you free” and “Come to me all ye who are heavy burden’d and I will stop your benefits”. I know which country I want to live in.”

Click the quote to read the whole article.

Something rather odd happened over on our Facebook page this week. It’s the most sparsely-populated outpost of the Wings empire, (because it’s mostly just links to articles here), and the average post there is doing well if it’s seen by 2000 people and gets five or six comments.

But yesterday, after running this article, we thought it might be fun to turn the two maps into one of our celebrated series of “leaked Better Together posters”, so we quickly knocked up this image and posted it on the Facebook page accompanied only by the words “Another Union dividend”:

And then things went a bit mad.

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I never understood why everyone hated Maggie Thatcher. Perhaps I was too young. Born in late 1980 I had no direct experience of the unemployment and closures of that decade, whilst the Poll Tax marchers were simply nuisance crowds who blocked the roads. Stuck on the No 14 on Argyle St, I just ate my Monster Munch and asked mum “Why aren’t we moving?” 

To me, Maggie was just a puppet on Spitting Image with mad eyes. She was funny, clubbing the other ones with her handbag. I never felt the hatred for her that everyone else in Scotland seemed to have. Even now – older and, dare I say it, well educated – I don’t hate her and just felt embarrassed by those morons whooping and jigging in George Square on the day of her funeral.

The rage of the 1980s simply passed me by. Thatcher and CND and the miners’ strike belong in the same distant era as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Young Ones and the Sinclair C5. So these days, you could forgive me for feeling a mite confused, because the 80s are here again. Only this time, there’s a much nastier sting.

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We usually make several tweets about other people’s pro-independence fundraisers, but don’t post them on the main site for several reasons – chiefly that there’s always one going on somewhere, and we don’t want readers to feel unable to visit Wings without being constantly pressured to put their hands in their pockets.

We’re going to have an exception for this one, though. Jack Foster and Chris Silver created the brilliant “Fear Factor” mini-movie (as well as some shorter clips previously), and they want to step things up a gear by making a full-length film about independence in time for the referendum.

We’d very much like that to happen. Jack and Chris are the indy movement’s Adam Curtis, and we’re absolutely certain that their movie would be a fantastic piece of work capable of winning hearts and minds and making a real difference.

They need just over £11,000 in a week – peanuts for the level of quality they produce. The Common Weal fundraiser recently cleared that sort of sum in that sort of timespan, and with much less clear and visible goals, so we hope and trust that it’s achievable. Visit the site to find out more, and please help if you can.

At 9am today, BBC newsreader Nicholas Owen read out the headlines with the words “The Queen will lead the Remembrance Sunday celebrations – commemorations – at the Cenotaph this morning”. He was right the first time, of course.

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We’ve had a go at this subject once before, but this time we’ve come up with a less hyperbolic analogy. It was sparked by another Twitter comment from Labour spin-doctor John McTernan, which cropped up last night in the middle of some truly abject cringing from “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall.

.@bobby_mckail@Dungarbhan@blairmcdougall@Jenemm3 My country is Scotland.

— John McTernan (@johnmcternan) November 7, 2013

We couldn’t help but note the use of the singular.

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In reference to this article we ran on Saturday, here’s (courtesy of several alert viewers) a timely piece from this week’s Scottish Catholic Observer.

Click the image to read it at full size.

When you’re a full time carer, managing to get out for an hour or so to the local branch of Morrisons to get the weekly shopping counts as ‘quality me time’. It allows me to stock up on favourite munchies and comfort food. I like a wee slice of Kirriemuir gingerbread, slathered with butter. The other half enjoys a thick slab of it in a bowl, covered in Devon custard with a dollop of double cream. Bugger the cholesterol.

But the other day there was none in the usual aisle, just a pile of Christmas cakes.

I asked a guy stocking shelves where they’d moved it to. He apologised, and told me there wasn’t any in stock. All the ordering is done by Head Office down in England he said, and they’d sent instructions that no more would be ordered until the New Year in order to make space for piles of Christmas cake. In October.

Who eats Christmas cake in October anyway?

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“There’ll be nae books or pencils fur Our Lady’s High School if the SNP gets in here.”

I heard those words first-hand at a door in Motherwell some years ago. But let me give you some context first. Lots of people reading this in parts of Scotland will have no idea about what I’m about to describe here so I’d better establish my credentials and provide some background.

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We’re really, really sorry about that headline, on several levels.

But wait until you see what this one’s about.

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Oh, I was irritating when I was 15.

On our way to school, my friends would stop at Ian’s Newsagents and scatter their pocket money on the counter to work out how many fizzy cola bottles and packets of Space Raiders they could get. I’d do the same, but mine would have a copy of The New Statesman thrown in too.

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