Wings Over Scotland

We’ve observed that over the last few days a number of Unionists, led by tuba-honking dunderhead Blair McDougall (the man who turned a 30-point No lead into a 10-point one, who lost Labour 5000 votes when he stood in East Renfrewshire in 2017 on the basis of being the guy who saved the UK – trailing in an embarrassing 3rd in a seat where Jim Murphy had once won over 50% of the vote – and who is probably more responsible than any other individual for the utter destruction of Scottish Labour as a political force), have revived the ancient “Better Together” scare story about pensions in an independent Scotland.

So as a small public service, we republish below this article from November 2016 on the subject, which remains an accurate and up-to-date summation of the reality.

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Although we’re retired we already wrote this, so we may as well put it up for the 99.9% of Scots who don’t read the comments on David Leask‘s columns in the Herald.

Scotland’s worst, most reliably wrong and most pathologically insecure self-identified “real journalist” rehashed one of his favourite hobby-horses yesterday, namely that it’s a “nationalist myth” that Scotland got poorer after discovering oil in the North Sea.

It’s a claim he’s been banging on about since at least 2014, without ever providing a scrap of evidence to support it (his standard modus operandi), and yesterday was no exception. So let’s show Little Dave how proper big-boy journalists do it.

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The SNP collected slightly over 1 million list votes in Thursday’s election, which nevertheless elected just two list MSPs because SNP voters care about power for the SNP rather than about independence, and chose to let dozens of Unionist MSPs get seats rather than other pro-indy parties.

But the bigger tragedy is that one of those two was Emma Roddick.

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…about women’s rights after she wins the election:

And what the truth is:

Just hold it in, girls.

It really is deeply dispiriting the see the level of utter burning contempt in which Nicola Sturgeon holds the independence movement, if this is the sort of ludicrously insulting garbage she thinks it’ll swallow.

Who told us it’s garbage? Nicola Sturgeon did.

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There’s something missing from this.

Can you spot it, readers?

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At the weekend we all beheld the bizarre sight of two supposed investigative Scottish politics journalists sneering and trying to play down what appeared to be a genuinely major story about a live police inquiry into a possible £600,000 criminal fraud involving the party of government in Scotland.

Both of them work for the same rival outlet, so the most generous interpretation that could reasonably be put on their curious behaviour is that they were simply trying to focus attention instead on that outlet’s own big Sunday splash – also ostensibly a story of political fraud, albeit on a much smaller scale.

So let’s just clear that one up now to help them out.

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While we were out this afternoon diligently patrolling for bears in the 20C beauty of a Bath early spring (largely because there’s a rather implausible 40% chance of snow forecast for next Wednesday), an email flooded in from Tom Gordon of the Herald.

“Hello Stuart. We’ve been contacted by a reader who says he also contacted you about a post on the website in the early hours of Saturday. Referring to Nicola Sturgeon, the poster says “Decapitating this witch would stop the SNP dead in their tracks.” 

Our reader, Ian Reid, an SNP activist in the Borders, has been a regular Wings reader but was taken aback by the language. He had hoped you would have deleted the post, but that hasn’t happened.

He has reported it to the police and given a statement to them.

He has also given us these comments on why the Alba Party should condemn this sort of material and cut its ties to the Wings site.

“Alex Salmond and the leaders of the new party need to separate themselves from that, they need to call it out. They seem to be trying to set themselves up as the moral guardians for women’s rights, which I absolutely support. At the same time, we’ve got somebody posting this on a blog that they clearly associate with and clearly use.

On the one hand, they’re talking about gender-proofing their policies, which is great. On the other hand, they’ve got this where a woman is being described as the devil herself, and where there’s a reference to decapitating the witch having a justifiable end.

That needs to be called out. The party needs to come out and say something about it. The best possible outcome would be that they do condemn it. It would be such a powerful message. Separating themselves from that cesspit would be a very politically astute thing for them. As long as they don’t, it’s colluding with it, it’s condoning it.”

This is for a potential story online and in print.

Would you care to comment?”

And, y’know, of course we would.

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It’s already getting hard to keep up with the string of well-kent faces and veteran indy campaigners leaving the SNP to join Alex Salmond’s new Alba Party.

It might be an idea to start maintaining a list.

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Any time you’re not sure whether something that happens in Scottish politics is good or bad for the cause of independence, here’s a top tip for you: see how the enemies of independence feel about it.

“Running scared” would seem to be a fair, if understated, summary.

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We’ve received information this afternoon with regard to Nicola Sturgeon’s statements at today’s FMQs, which appear to have been wholly and disturbingly dishonest.

The quote below is from an email sent today by SNP communications chief Murray Foote, briefing ministers and MSPs on the official Scottish Government line, which is what the First Minister told the chamber in response to a question from Ruth Davidson.

We pass the true facts on to you below.

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We enjoyed doing this site a lot more when it was the dishonesty of Unionists and the Unionist media, not the SNP, that represented the main threat to independence. So let’s make like it’s the old days, just this once.

Because today has seen the Scottish press falling over itself once again to trumpet the latest joke poll from notorious idiots Scotland In Union as if it was at all meaningful:

And of course it’s purest garbage.

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