Since it was founded back in November 2011, Wings Over Scotland has been solely financed by its readers. The site has never carried any advertising, we have no secret corporate backers, everything we do is funded by transparent voluntary donations and subscriptions, mostly of a few pounds a month.
We have the freedom to write what we believe, thanks to you, our readers. And since those earliest days, opponents have tried to end that freedom by blocking our funding.
Just a quick bit of housekeeping here with regard to the new Wings comments section, which offers far more functionality but has also attracted a few complaints because it’s no longer a straight chronology of oldest-to-newest tweets.
(We could actually change that back, but the cost would be losing the ability to reply directly to individual comments, which is a big loss, so we’re leaving it as it is for now.)
To those beefing because that means you can’t now immediately tell which comments are new, a couple of helpful pointers. The easiest way to fix the problem is a simple one: keep the tab open.
If you keep the most recent page open in a tab on your browser, the Comment Bubble (visible at the bottom left of that pic) will keep track of all new comments – it refreshes every 30 seconds – and highlight them for you in yellow until you’ve read them.
(The little orange circle should take you to the first unread one if you click it.)
Sadly the Bubble stops working if you close the tab or navigate to a new page from it, but since most people have scores of tabs open at a time that shouldn’t be a problem. So there you go.
Welcome, readers, to what may be the final week of Wings Over Scotland.
We’ve been covering the Scottish Government’s horrific, draconian Hate Crime Act for almost four years now. But until this month, we hadn’t felt directly under threat by it. Wings is – sorry if this comes as a shock to anyone – based in Bath, in England, and we couldn’t see how the Scottish police could come after us.
We were curious to find out what we’d said, but it seems to have been expunged from The National’s website. We eventually managed to track the email down in our vaults, though, so just as a bit of a change, here it is, as a reminder of a different time.
The SNP having a fondness for lying about their membership wouldn’t have come as quite such a shock to the Scottish press if they paid a little more attention to this website. Because we were pointing it out two and a half years ago.
It was in October 2020 that we told you how the SNP’s 2019 accounts revealed the party’s true membership figures weren’t the claimed 126,000 but more like 87,000.
A week ago, readers, I had not the slightest interest in bringing Wings Over Scotland back full-time. I had my Twitter account again and was having fun and I was happy with that. It scratched the itch of being able to engage with politics (and people) without the depressing business of wading in it for work.
And then I witnessed the quite extraordinary sight of an elected member of Parliament, in the shape of the SNP’s pico-witted ambulant brain vacuum Karen Adam, publicly gloating about having managed to shut down the voice of someone critical of her party.
At the same time, an extremely minor blogger (the word “rival” would be to over-dignify them) re-opened hostilities in his campaign of self-declared “open warfare” against this site, with a rapid succession of posts (just a few of dozens) forming such a demented scattershot tirade that to patiently debunk all of it would have taken until Christmas.
And I’ll be honest, folks, it all pushed my buttons a wee bit. It really shouldn’t have, but it was properly outrageous and I’m occasionally human, so I thought “Sod it, if I’m going to have to put up with all this crap anyway I might as well make it worthwhile”.
As a rule I try not to respond to the literally dozens of deranged attacks on this site that are posted by James Kelly of Scot Goes Pop, but I really dislike being called a liar so I’m going to take a moment for this one.
James appears to have taken extraordinary offence to a two-paragraph stats post I put up to mark Wings’ 11th birthday this week, and has written two purple-faced rants about it. So for the record’s sake I’m going to comply with his demand as best I can.
Someone had to remind us that today is Wings Over Scotland’s 11th birthday.
In a grim indictment of Scotland’s once-vaunted political new media, a site that’s been officially closed since May 2021 is still far and away the most-read in the country, despite that readership now being mostly angry overgrown children squabbling with each other in the comments. People would apparently still, by a vast margin, rather read that than endure the tedium of Bella Caledonia or Believe In Scotland.
We’ve said pretty much all that there is to be said about that miserable state of affairs already, so we won’t repeat ourselves. God help the independence movement.
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Jewish News: Ex Labour MP used parliamentary pass 48 times due to antisemitism crisis: “A former Labour MP who recently…” Jan 12, 02:51
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Gscene Magazine: Originally called ‘The Queer Guide’, Brighton was not quite ready for the ‘Q’ word in 1993: “PRIDE: Guest…” Jan 12, 02:45
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Elon Musk: “Now we know why Labour voted against an inquiry: they are guilty.”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1878244779441447191 #ChildGroomingPedos” Jan 12, 01:55
Peter McAvoy on In Ruins: “They must have forgotten David Cameron’s regular comment during the independence referendum campaign that the union is a partnership of…” Jan 12, 01:52
gregor on In Ruins: “You… https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_Is_Within_You https://wingsoverscotland.com/eyes-full-of-beams/#comment-2947088” Jan 12, 01:24
gregor on Eyes Full Of Beams: “‘Know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and the gods.’ Malcolm’s Round Table: The real when closely observed becomes magical:…” Jan 12, 01:08
gregor on Eyes Full Of Beams: “Elon Musk: “Massive creep”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1878173703428587974 #MassiveStatePedoNetwork” Jan 12, 00:21
gregor on Eyes Full Of Beams: “Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman: “A former Labour Minister did this interview last week slamming Elon for mean posts. He was just…” Jan 11, 23:47
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Labour MP Dan Carden: “This is not an obsession of the far right. I am speaking out because over the…” Jan 11, 23:27
Mia on Eyes Full Of Beams: “The quote below have been taken from the “Letters of George Lockhart of Carnwath, 1698-1732” I apologise for its length.…” Jan 11, 23:11
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Mhairi Black (@SNP): Bad guys run the town in social media wild west: “ELON Musk and Donald Trump make my…” Jan 11, 23:07
sarah on In Ruins: “Wow – the first link to Vivian’s btl re the USA’s choice of Scottish politicians to be invited for [“programming”…” Jan 11, 22:41
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Sally Bee @SallyBee644023: “CPS?????”: https://x.com/SallyBee644023/status/1878206164720091539 https://www.cps.gov.uk/ #Ouch” Jan 11, 22:39
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Elon Musk: “Wow”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1878199811750379742” Jan 11, 22:33
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “William, 3rd Earl of Wan Chai @CX252HKG: “Then you see his audience”: https://x.com/CX252HKG/status/1878192819178983447 #LabourGovernmentSexCult” Jan 11, 22:32
gregor on In Ruins: “#MakeScotlandGreatAgain2025” Jan 11, 22:25
gregor on In Ruins: “Keep proving the point, people…” Jan 11, 22:18
gregor on Safeguarding Is Not Right-Wing: “Queen Natalie @TheNorfolkLion: “I can’t believe a former MP @ivorcaplin would post these kind of comments brazenly and openly on…” Jan 11, 22:08
gregor on In Ruins: “Errol is protected by Preston Watson and his marvelous flying machines… Preston Watson… The Flying Scotsman: https://medium.com/the-dundonian/preston-watson-the-dundonian-who-became-the-flying-scotsman-b2cdfd5b69e” Jan 11, 21:53
gregor on Eyes Full Of Beams: “Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump: Jan 6, 2021 “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No…” Jan 11, 21:33
Dan on In Ruins: “Practicing my searches for Vivian’s past posts gets plenty hits. A lot of interesting detail in this one from a…” Jan 11, 21:06
gregor on In Ruins: “I don’t need to talk about my kingdom (power) – I’m showing you, Scotland: #FreedomKing” Jan 11, 21:03
sarah on In Ruins: “With independence we wouldn’t have these people in sole control. All our systems and institutions would be opened up as…” Jan 11, 21:03
PacMan on In Ruins: “If only the Electric soup comic was still alive today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Soup” Jan 11, 21:03
sarah on In Ruins: “BAP – yes, I’m sure I remember that. As a Keynesian I find it impossible to stomach the economic line…” Jan 11, 20:58
Dan on In Ruins: “No problem, the longer this protracted stasis goes on the harder it is to recall the ever-growing list of dubious…” Jan 11, 20:51
gregor on In Ruins: “Talking Heads: Little Creatures: Road To Nowhere: “Well, we know where we’re goin’ But we don’t know where we’ve been…” Jan 11, 20:48
sarah on In Ruins: “Fair points, Dan. I had forgotten the “not voting because on maternity leave” episode.” Jan 11, 20:44
Dan on In Ruins: “Not entirely so Sarah. Aside from Freeports, with her fiscal remit she must have had some inkling around the ScotWind…” Jan 11, 20:42
Mia on Eyes Full Of Beams: “This is another quote from the lord Balmerino – Maule letters. This quote is from 31 January 2012, still in…” Jan 11, 20:37