Wings Over Scotland

Can be discussed below. (We don’t know what they are, we’re on holiday.)

…for us off their own bat this week, unasked. It’s pretty awesome, though we haven’t the slightest idea what we could use it for. (What it really makes us want is a snazzy 1cm-thick cutout metal version of the logo to use as a poker guard. Anyone?)

But when we have our own nightly current-affairs TV show on an independent Scottish Broadcasting Service, it looks like the intro is pretty much sorted. 🙂

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Ever since our insanely successful fundraiser we’ve been pondering on the best way to get printed materials and promotional stuff spread across Scotland without spending hours every day lugging boxes of stuff down to the post office, what with us still being an inconvenient distance from the action.

We may have just solved the problem.

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Let any dispute be over. Wings Over Scotland has the best readers.

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We’re nowhere near done asking you for money in our second annual fundraiser yet. But with the original goal smashed to pieces in just 48 hours, we can afford to take a day off to direct you to a couple of other worthy pro-independence causes that could do with a little help just to nudge them over the finish line.

Independence debate – the case for Glasgow
A bold move by Yes Glasgow to call out “Better Together” on their cowardly refusal to argue their case for the Union, by sidestepping them and holding a major public event in Glasgow with speakers from both Yes and No sides, because there are still some Unionists less chicken than the pitiable official No campaign. Currently just £800 short of its target with less than a day to go.

**EDIT** TARGET NOW REACHED

Labour For Independence campaign
Labour voters will be key to winning the referendum. Help the party’s enlightened wing reach more of the people who will benefit most from a Yes vote. Plenty of time with this one, but also just £800 short.

**EDIT** TARGET NOW REACHED

The future of Scotland – Scottish Borders
The Yes campaigners working closest to England have one of the toughest jobs, in a traditionally Tory and Unionist region. There are huge potential gains from getting the facts out in that region, and we’re sure the folk slogging away down there would appreciate a hand. They’re a very long way from their goal at the moment, but it’d be nice if we could give them a boost.

**EDIT** TARGET NOW REACHED

The generosity of Wings readers is legendary. We know it’s asking a lot when you’ve just put your hands so deep into your pockets. But if perhaps you’ve held off donating to us in the light of how much we’ve already made, it might just be that you and these three highly-deserving projects are made for each other.

We’re only a few days from the second annual Wings Over Scotland fundraiser, readers, so don’t go buying anything expensive, because we’ve got some big and very exciting plans and we’re going to need your cash. We want to mark the appeal with the third of our super-fun opinion polls, and we’re already at work on the initial draft.

We’ve got some excellent questions lined up already, but what do YOU want to see asked? We’re especially keen to find out more social-attitudes stuff, as the data last time (here and here) were fascinating, so ideas for more of that will be extra-welcome, but let’s hear anything you’ve got.

Readers, you can’t begin to imagine how much stuff happens. Seriously, it’s going on EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. You’d think there’d be lulls now and again, but people just keep doing things. It’s annoying.

Throughout the day, we’ll see or be sent roughly a billion links, and because otherwise you’d never keep up with Twitter alone, what you do is click any that sound interesting to open them in a tab, then go and actually read them later when you’ve got the time.

Unfortunately there are always more things than time (like, WAY more), so you end up having a huge backlog of tabs that you either haven’t read, or have read but haven’t got round to writing something about yet.

We’ve just had a brutal pruning of Firefox and we’ve still got 76 open, so to let us get a few more closed we’re just going to stick some of the ones we HAVE read here and you can go through any you like the sound of for yourselves. They’re all good.

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So the Daily Mail emailed us earlier in the week, all friendly-like. They wanted to chat on the phone about this whole frightful “cybernat” business or send a reporter and photographer round, but as our head doesn’t button up the back and we didn’t just sail up the Clyde on a digestive biscuit we indicated that we’d rather keep everything nice and on-the-record in case of any unfortunate accidental misquotings.

So instead, we had them send their questions in writing and we sent back some helpful replies, accompanied by a clause that we’ve found effective in dissuading newspaper hacks from using extracts out of context. Below is a list of the Mail’s questions and the answers we sent them. In bold we’ve highlighted the parts that were actually used in the article, purely for the interest of readers who might find themselves in similar situations in the future and would like to know how it works.

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We’re quite keen to peruse the results of this poll, which was conducted a few days ago by YouGov alongside their World War 1 one, but hasn’t yet published.

We got in touch, but the company was unable to tell us when, or whether, the responses to this question (and some others about independence, along with some on Welsh education) would be made public. It doesn’t seem like the kind of question that would be particularly useful as a piece of private polling, so keep your eyes peeled.

Just a wee round-up.

“Plan for Ukip ‘vote swap’ with Tories to to keep Miliband out of No. 10

Writer and Conservative campaigner Toby Young plans to launch a website that will encourage Conservatives and Ukip supporters to pledge to swap votes in margnial constiuencies”

We’re going to assume they mean “marginal” and “constituencies” there. (Even the Telegraph can’t afford sub-editors now?) But hey, it’s a comforting thought, right?

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On 20 May 2012 this site ran a headline which read “BREAKING: Lockerbie bomber still alive”. That was of course the day it was announced that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had died of prostate cancer. Even I did a double-take before the penny dropped.

The attached story was a mere 17 words long, but going by the links the assertion that Megrahi was not in fact the ‘Lockerbie bomber’ seemed to draw on three sources: the fact that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had found six grounds to believe the conviction might have been a miscarriage of justice; a documentary by Al-Jazeera based on investigations by George Thomson (a private detective who’d worked for Megrahi’s defence team); and a review article by English solicitor Gareth Peirce.

All good sources, but I had better reasons for believing that Megrahi was innocent.

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Because it’s aimed at you. (As judging by the increase in donor numbers set against the number of clickthroughs we registered from yesterday’s piece to the benighted Yes Scotland fundraising page, there’s no mistaking where the money came from.)

Bella and Newsnet both now over £10,000 too, even though it’s barely over a week until Christmas. Take a moment to give yourselves a wee pat on the back, readers.