Wings Over Scotland

Newspaper sales figures in Scotland now come out in a patchy and unco-ordinated sort of way, with different frequencies and at different times of year, so we thought it’d be worth collecting them together for easy reference.

The numbers below are the most recent figures for each title that we know of – for papers classed as “national” that means November last year, and for those counted as “regional” (which includes the Scotsman and Herald titles) it’s this month.

Figures have all been rounded to the nearest 100, and increase/decrease stats refer in all cases to the corresponding sales for one year previously.

Read the rest of this entry →

The first quote below is from Magnus Gardham in the Herald, the second one is from Kenny Farquharson in the Times, both today.

So just to clear that up: four times £12 million is £200 million. The mystery of why people are increasingly reluctant to believe what they read in newspapers continues.

File this one under “the wish is the father of the thought”:

We wonder which government?

Read the rest of this entry →

This was a little cruel, frankly.

(From today’s Daily Politics.)

The slow news year in Scottish politics continues. These are all from today:

Sound familiar?

Read the rest of this entry →

Last night, MP Natalie McGarry made another heavily-qualified semi-apology to the popular abusive-tweeter enthusiast JK Rowling, because that’s how bullying works. (As far as we know McGarry has still refused Rowling’s demand that she make a sizeable donation to Rowling’s charity under threat of legal action.)

One of George Orwell’s most-quoted lines is “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

We wonder who was trying to silence the torrent of drivel below, then.

Read the rest of this entry →

Without a doubt our new favourite Unionist website is this one:

And it’s not just for the snazzy badges.

Read the rest of this entry →

Since the astonishing election of 56 SNP MPs to the UK Parliament last May, the Unionist media – suddenly deprived of a whole contacts book full of friendly Scottish Labour bench-warmers ready to feed it cosy stories over a boozy expenses lunch in Whitehall – has raked through every bin and gutter in the land looking for anything (however pathetic) that it can try to puff up, distort, and rope into service as “dirt” on each of the Nat members, in an attempt to discredit them and the party.

So let’s just have a little look in here and – YIKES!

This could take some time.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Herald’s lead politics story this morning:

So Scotland currently has no debt? No responsibility for any share of the enormous £1.5 trillion burden run up by the UK? We’ll take that deal. Where do we sign?

Read the rest of this entry →

Barely a week – indeed, barely a day – has gone by over the last year or so without some angry, confused and hurt-sounding Unionist pundit or politician churning out yet another article on the theme of “WHY AREN’T YOU GRATEFUL THAT WE SAVED YOU FROM INDEPENDENCE, YOU APPALLING PLEBS?”

As far as the No side are concerned, the oil-price slump is a slam-dunk game-ender which finally conclusively proves that Scotland is too wee and too poor to run its own affairs, and their uncomprehending bewilderment as support for a Yes vote not only fails to disintegrate but keeps increasing even as the oil price sinks lower and lower has been quite a phenomenon to behold.

So we were interested to see today’s Sunday Times report a YouGov poll done for the comedy grumpy-old-white-guys support group (and spectacularly unsuccessful tactical voting enthusiasts) Scotland In Union, and somewhat miss the point of the results.

Read the rest of this entry →

There’s an interesting article in today’s Guardian about the clown-shoed fiasco of a position the Labour Party has contorted itself into over Trident. It correctly identifies the conflict between a party representing its actual membership and being controlled by its Parliamentarians who insist they know better than the people they’re supposed to speak for, but then right at the end veers off to an irrational conclusion.

Because the obsessive insistence of the vast majority of commentators that political parties – and they’re nearly always talking about Labour – must at all times pander to the centre ground leads inescapably to one logical endpoint: that all political parties should disband themselves immediately and forever.

Read the rest of this entry →

Sometimes it’s the smallest, most trivial things that give you away. Graham Grant is the Home Affairs Editor of the Scottish Daily Mail, and earlier this morning he tweeted this snarky dig at prominent independence supporter and pundit Pat Kane, also of the primarily-1980s band Hue And Cry:

Ostensibly it’s a throwaway gag aimed at puncturing an opponent’s pomposity and over-inflated self-regard while portraying the journalist as an arch, wise cynic.

But hold on a second.

Read the rest of this entry →