Wings Over Scotland

When I was a boy at Balbardie Primary School in Bathgate in the mid-70s, football was banned in the playground. Of course we were all fitba-daft laddies, so we sought ways around the prohibition. Occasionally someone would bring in a tennis ball, but those were difficult to control in school shoes and also apt to fly over the wall of the outdoor toilet block if somebody caught one sweetly on the volley.

So most playtimes somebody would produce a tin of Pepsi or Irn-Bru or Cresta, chug the contents, stand the empty container on its end and stomp sharply on it, producing something more akin to an ice-hockey puck that would serve for our kickabout.

But even after being skelped and scudded around a concrete playground into stone walls for 20 minutes, that can was still in better shape at the end of our game than the one the SNP have been kicking down the road since 2016.

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He just can’t grasp anything, can he?

Because no, they don’t.

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If you’re still falling for this idiot-fodder after seven years, give yourself a shake.

Because for the love of Christ, an orangutan would have twigged by now. And we’re not talking about the long-suffering fans of Dundee United.

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The SNP now seem to be involved in some sort of competition where they dare each other to come up with the most blatant insult to their own members and/or the wider independence movement and see just how much they can get people to put up with.

First up was this drivel:

Humza Yousaf is leader of the SNP, a political party whose defining purpose – arguably its SOLE real purpose – is the pursuit of Scottish independence, but his “vision for Scotland” didn’t include a single mention of it.

Instead, Yousaf intends to spend the next three years on “equality”, “opportunity” and “community”, three meaningless buzzwords which every political party on Earth would claim to be in favour of. He might as well have identified his key values as kittens, lollipops and hugs.

But it gets worse.

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Just slightly under four weeks ago, this site told you “It seems very much as though the strategy has reverted to ‘Beg the UK government for a Section 30, and when they refuse, wait a while then beg them again'”.

Once again, we’re dismayed to report that we called it right. Because last night SNP MSP Mairi McAllan, officially representing the party on Question Time, told a weary audience in Fort William that that was precisely the case.

And readers, if ever a policy has been tested in battle and found wanting, it’s that one.

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Just over a year ago, Shona Robison – then the Cabinet Secretary For Social Justice, now the Deputy First Minister – told the Scottish Parliament this:

There now follow some quotes from the media regarding the case of Andrew Miller, aka Amy George, who yesterday admitted the kidnap and repeated sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl at his home in Galashiels earlier this year.

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We had to check this wasn’t Photoshopped.

It isn’t.

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This is where Scottish politics is now.

And it’s a properly grim state of affairs, readers.

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As all alert Wings readers will know, we love a “1984” quote. Here’s one:

So with that in mind, let’s have some fun and talk about Pete Wishart again.

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When Humza Yousaf was campaigning to be elected leader of the SNP, he pledged that he would be not only the First Minister, but also the “First Activist”. It transpired that this in fact meant chapping a few doors in Dundee, just down the road from his home in Broughty Ferry (and on the way to his Glasgow constituency).

But what might a real “First Activist” have done with the position and power?

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Oily SNP MP John Nicolson – a man who was pompous and condescending even as a teenager presenting Open To Question in the 1980s – this week posted an extended and theatrical Twitter rant at the fine Herald and National columnist Kevin McKenna.

It was quite the performance.

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Goodness knows we could all do with some cheering up at the moment, so let’s have a momentary change of tone and kick today off with a chuckle or two.

We’ve been working a bit too hard lately, and yesterday’s Wings post went to press with an unprecedented FOUR errors in it, including an “is is” instead of “it is”, a “more far” in place of a “far more” and a “strata” where there should have been a “stratum”. We’re deeply ashamed, and thanks to the alert Wings readers – including our mum – who swiftly drew our attention to them.

The most embarrassing clanger was this one, which we fixed promptly:

So imagine our surprise when we were reading this morning’s Scottish press.

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