Wings Over Scotland

An alert reader this weekend linked us to a 1963 speech by the famed American civil rights and racial equality campaigner Malcolm X.

We’d never heard of it before, which is probably to our shame, but as we read it we were overcome by an inexplicable sense of incredible familiarity.

We present it to you below for your interest, without further comment or editing, but we’ve included a few pictures just to break up the block of text.

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As if we hadn’t had enough controversy this week, it’s time to tackle the big issues.

The Scottish Sun’s been running stories for the last couple of days about the heresy that’s shortly going to be committed against Scotland’s most legendary iconic brand.

Penny-pinching Cumbernauld drinks giant AG Barr – which carefully avoided getting involved in the independence referendum so as not to upset anyone – is about to slash most of the sugar out of Irn-Bru despite there already being two low-sugar versions of it available, and the paper has called in a few consumers to decry the move.

But how does the wider public feel? Well, as it happens we’ve got poll data on that too.

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In our latest Panelbase poll, as usual we took the opportunity to ask various social-attitudes questions as well as political ones, and some which span both categories. One of the most controversial posts ever on Wings addressed the subject of Gaelic, and having given everyone two-and-a-bit years to calm the hell down we thought we’d see what the Scottish electorate thought.

That’s a pretty tight call. Let’s have a wee delve in the data depths.

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Scotland’s favourite Scottish movie is still Braveheart, folks.

But the devil, as always, is in the detail.

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What’s even the point any more?

Even if you don’t buy into any of the persistent health concerns about aspartame, there are already TWO chemically-sweetened Irn Bru brands (Sugar-Free and Xtra) for the people who can stomach the foul taste of fake sugar. But now nobody will be able to choose a version without it.

Alongside whisky, Irn-Bru is arguably THE iconic branded product of Scotland but now 120 years of history have just been casually crapped on and thrown aside in the name of the nanny state and corporate greed (aspartame is dirt-cheap compared to sugar, and Barr – having ruined Tizer, Red Kola and its other drinks the same way years ago – also wants to avoid the UK government’s sugar tax taking a bite out of its profits).

Let’s just shut down Holyrood, rebrand as North Britain and be done with it.

(It’s nearly Christmas! Buy a cuddly Hamish The Lion toy here! Plus maybe some cartoon books.)
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Today’s Cairnstoon will be along a little later. But in the meantime, if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of Glasgow (or if you’re not, but hurry), today offers a rare opportunity go along and physically touch the magical drawing fingers of the artist himself, as Mr Cairns takes time out from his busy schedule of holidays to launch the second volume of his splendid sketchings, alongside other beloved Wings contributors Greg Moodie and the esteemed Wee Ginger Dug (plus his human butler Paul Kavanagh).

(Please note that Mr Cairns is currently carrying a rather painful spinal injury probably incurred during an an overenthusiastic golf swing, so we respectfully ask any readers who may be planning particularly expressive bearhugs or backslaps to ca’ canny.)

We referenced this a few days ago because we definitely remembered it happening, but we’d been unable to actually locate the evidence, and at Wings Over Scotland that sort of thing bothers us. After a very considerable amount of effort we’ve now tracked it down, so we’re bunging it up here to preserve it for the record.

(At that point host Frank Skinner gave up and moved on.)

It’s from one month after the indyref, and the interesting thing is that Robinson is twice given the opportunity to respond to Skinner’s question about whether he thought that the pro-Yes supporters had any sort of fair point about his alleged bias, and both times – rather than, say, just dismissing it with a quick “Of course not” – he ducks it.

Readers can, as always, make their own judgements.

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I apologise in advance to readers for the personal indulgence of this post.

Some months ago, quite coincidentally, I happened to avail myself of Twitter’s archive function, which allows users to download their entire tweet history. For various reasons I’ve been looking at it recently, and until I did I’d been unaware that it records not just a user’s own tweets, but also the tweets from other people that they’ve retweeted.

I’ve collected some of Wings’ tweets and retweets – in reverse chronological order – below. (Famously, of course, RTs aren’t necessarily endorsements, but you can decide on the underlying tone for yourself. Each of them links to the original tweet so you can see the whole conversation, or click on the links being referenced.)

They’re all on one subject, by way of illustration, because Twitter is a transient medium full of people all too eager to jump at the slightest excuse to make spurious and hateful allegations about everything (and anyone) under the sun to serve their own agendas, and for the sake of the future of human discourse it’s worth remembering that nothing exists in isolation or free of context, and we shouldn’t jump too easily to conclusions.

Because the other way never ends anywhere good.

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20 years ago today, Scotland voted to have a Parliament for the first time in almost three centuries, by an overwhelming margin (although with modest enthusiasm – less than 10% more people actually voted for devolution than voted for independence in 2014, at 1.78m and 1.62m respectively).

Just 20 months after the vote the Parliament came into being, and Scotland’s media has been complaining about how useless it is ever since.

Today’s newspapers commemorate the anniversary by unleashing the full pontificating weight of the punditariat – most of whom have been opining wearily on Holyrood’s failings for the entire period – to bleat with their customary single voice about what a disappointment it’s all been.

The weird thing is that after all that time, none of them can actually explain why.

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Great news, readers! After years of requests, it’s now finally possible to possess and cherish your very own adorable cuddly toy version of Wings’ symbolic embodiment of benign and welcoming independence, Hamish the lion!

Admittedly you’ll have to buy some slacker’s book of cartoons to get one, but that’s surely a small price to pay.

A Scot living in the EU, and an EU national living in Scotland, discuss the implications of the Brexit being forced on Scotland against its will by the UK government.

The clock is ticking.