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.
Aidan on The same old tricks: “Mia – it’s no skin off my back if you don’t provide any evidence to support your claim. You just…” Jan 19, 19:42
Dan on Poisoning The Unwell: “Comedy site this has become. Couple of rocket quick dislikes to my last posts. Do Angus and Jennifer really sit…” Jan 19, 19:34
Dan on Poisoning The Unwell: “Indeed MaryB https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2023/04/14/how-can-we-trust-you/ https://wingsoverscotland.com/how-to-make-a-coup/” Jan 19, 19:20
Dan on Poisoning The Unwell: “One can only ponder why Angus would be so compliant to ongoing UK requirements. Is he just a plain and…” Jan 19, 19:17
MaryB on Poisoning The Unwell: “Remember that Angus Robertson was the initiator and enactor of all the SNP reforms which removed the internal democracy and…” Jan 19, 19:16
Willie on Poisoning The Unwell: “The Murrell’s have property. That’s interesting because it seems there is a court order on Peter Murrell preventing him from…” Jan 19, 18:22
sarah on Poisoning The Unwell: “Some of us are watching, aided by this site and some others. However many SNP rank and file still think…” Jan 19, 18:20
Mia on Poisoning The Unwell: “Browsing around I have just come across a letter submitted by Angus Robertson to the inquiry “The Governance of the…” Jan 19, 17:59
Dan on The same old tricks: ““Can a single bawbag unionist actually tells aw us Scottish plebs how we can exercise oor right to self-determination.” Hmm,…” Jan 19, 17:34
Mia on The same old tricks: “I cannot provide evidence until you tell me the full, official name of the entity you have in mind. Which…” Jan 19, 17:33
Aidan on The same old tricks: “The revealing thing is that even though you cannot produce a single piece of evidence in support of your view,…” Jan 19, 17:17
Dan on The same old tricks: “Aye, I have the self awareness to recognise that I am different from more conventional “normal folk” that all too…” Jan 19, 17:03
James Gardner on Poisoning The Unwell: “Talking about toxic apart from the Betrayer, a friend of mine who lives in Perth W.A sent a photo of…” Jan 19, 17:03
Young Lochinvar on Poisoning The Unwell: “Hmmm.. White wig, heavy rimmed glasses, purple earrings- lookalikies indeed. You could be onto something there 🙂” Jan 19, 16:28
Mia on The same old tricks: “Which part of the formal name of that entity you are so furiously peddling back from and why?” Jan 19, 16:18
Aidan on The same old tricks: “Right, so you claim to have an in-depth and mature understanding of the constitutional structure of the U.K., but apparently…” Jan 19, 16:07
Mia on The same old tricks: “I am still waiting for the name in full of the entity I am supposed to provide evidence for. I…” Jan 19, 16:04
Captain Caveman on The same old tricks: “Your efforts make you look like someone very odd, with a chip on their shoulder, shouting gibberish at clouds.” Jan 19, 16:03
Dan on The same old tricks: “Aye, that’s the issue right there when you think everything is jist fine with taxpayers paying someone good money to…” Jan 19, 15:37
Mia on The same old tricks: “The formal name of the entity in full, please. The complete name of the entity is part of the evidence.…” Jan 19, 15:31
Captain Caveman on The same old tricks: “The (unasked for and unwarranted)“contents” of your post in this instance and the last consists of a bunch of bitter…” Jan 19, 15:28
Mia on The same old tricks: “I totally take your point, Confused. I know that responding to trolls may seem futile, but there might be other…” Jan 19, 15:25
Dan on The same old tricks: “Wrong again fud! There’s nae chip oan my shoulder but you seem overly exercised about responding to me and not…” Jan 19, 15:20
Aidan on The same old tricks: ““Beyond all reasonable doubt” – you aren’t on trial here (luckily for you). I’ve also referred to the U.K. several…” Jan 19, 15:13
James on Poisoning The Unwell: “I heard from a local about 7 years ago that she was buying in Bridge of Allan. That sounds more…” Jan 19, 15:07
James on Poisoning The Unwell: “I’ve heard Uddingston is lovely at this time of year?” Jan 19, 15:05
Captain Caveman on The same old tricks: “No mate, you’re the “fud” pal. What’s that chip on your shoulder, you want the rest of us to be…” Jan 19, 14:52
