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Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘navel-gazing’


Sorry, guys 259

Posted on September 12, 2016 by

neilwilson

but party time‘s over.

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What you can’t say 293

Posted on September 12, 2016 by

As several alert readers have already spotted, our Twitter account was suspended at some point in the early hours of this morning. We’ve had no email from Twitter offering any sort of explanation, but it seems most likely to have been at the behest of a Daily Express hack called Siobhan McFadyen who’s been huffily bleating to the company’s executives over the weekend about this tweet:

smcf1

The reason we tweeted that comment is detailed here and here. But apparently it’s an opinion that you’re no longer allowed to have.

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A terminal decline 145

Posted on June 01, 2016 by

We rarely do stat posts now, because readership has settled to a pretty steady level (generally bobbing between around 250,000 and 300,000 users a month) and we’ve run out of ways to blow our own trumpet. But we’re making an exception this month.

williamsonpredicts

The snide, arrogant, pompous and casually factually-inaccurate comment above was made by a founder/editor of a rather less popular Scottish political website. And in the (statistically unlikely) event that you happened to read it and became concerned, we thought you’d like a little more information about our “ever-decreasing readership”.

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The media they don’t like to talk about 229

Posted on December 31, 2015 by

Below is a very interesting 13-minute chat from this afternoon’s John Beattie Show on Radio Scotland, also featuring Stuart Cosgrove (presenter of the excellent footy prog Off The Ball) and Eamonn O’Neill, who we presume is this Eamonn O’Neill.

(The John Beattie Show, BBC Radio Scotland, 31 December 2015)
.

Naturally we like it because there’s mention of Wings, which – for just about the first time we can recall on broadcast media in our four-year life – isn’t about how vile and awful we are, but the whole thing is much more wide-ranging and well worth a listen.

(The line “The media the media doesn’t like to talk about” is Beattie’s, not ours.)

We are four 236

Posted on November 07, 2015 by

So, it’s our birthday. It was exactly four years ago today, on the 7th of November 2011, that Wings Over Scotland published the first post of what was supposed to be a pretty insignificant spare-time blog picking out interesting politics stories in the day’s Scottish media and challenging any inaccuracies in them.

4yearstats

It got a bit out of control, frankly.

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You are legion 61

Posted on November 01, 2015 by

Another three months have come and gone – where does the time get to, eh? – so it’s time for a quick Wings readership-stats update. There’s nothing particularly interesting or dramatic about them, so we’ll just give you the numbers and move on.

UNIQUE VISITORS IN OCTOBER 2015: 293,793
PAGE VIEWS: 4,616,334

In what’s been mostly a very sleepy time for politics, we’re thrilled with that.

The rest of the story 142

Posted on September 18, 2015 by

Alert readers of The National will have noticed an article by me in it today. It reads slightly weirdly, jumping from subject to subject, because it was originally done as an interview but they then decided to cut the questions out to get more text in.

tnrsc

That’s all absolutely fine – they okayed it with me first – but some readers may be interested in seeing the full original piece, which is about twice as long. If you are, you can read it below. If you’re not, um, do what you like. I’m not your mum.

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The Persuader 258

Posted on September 18, 2015 by

Nobody else is going to do this, so we’ll do it ourselves.

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The Top 10 153

Posted on August 21, 2015 by

For reasons best known to himself, and almost certainly NOT related to the recent publication of his new book, the BBC’s Nick Robinson has today chosen to reignite the issues surrounding his infamous questioning of Alex Salmond a week before last year’s independence referendum, claiming that the reaction to his presentation of the incident was reminiscent of “Putin’s Russia”.

The state broadcaster’s political correspondent then inflamed social media further by claiming on Twitter that a grassroots protest – neither instigated nor endorsed by the SNP or Yes Scotland – outside BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow a couple of days later was in fact organised by “a governing party”.

(Robinson also claimed the mob had been 4000-strong, although the BBC’s own report had put the figure at “up to 1000”. The demo was sedate and entirely peaceful – no arrests were made, nobody was hurt and no damage was caused.)

robinsonpq

The footage showing that Robinson had lied on air about his encounter with Salmond was captured and published by this website, in a pair of videos which garnered well over 600,000 views on YouTube and one of the most-read posts in Wings history.

When we mentioned that fact earlier today, a reader asked what other posts were in the top 10. So we looked, and noticed that the biggest ones had a common theme.

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Ticking along 122

Posted on August 01, 2015 by

It’s three months since our last traffic-stats update, so we’re due again.

WINGS OVER SCOTLAND JULY 2015

Unique users: 308,314
(up 20,626 on June 2015, up 79,159 on July 2014)

Visits: 1,147,571
(up 90,453 on June 2015, up 229,604 on July 2014)

Page views: 4,732,038
(up 94,495 on June 2015, up 498,717 on July 2014)

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The third voice 231

Posted on July 04, 2015 by

We’re not due a traffic post this month, so we’ll just leave this here.

sitespoll

(From a new Panelbase poll. More findings coming soon.)

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Per ardua ad astra 97

Posted on May 01, 2015 by

We’re only doing stats posts quarterly now, but since the last one we ran was for the January readership figures that means it’s time for a quick update.

wingstatsapril2015

Almost 23,000 extra readers compared to last month and nearly 600,000 more page views? Yeah, we’ll take that. (For perspective, here’s April 2014.)

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    • Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “Beggars (fresh from Church) If he was the Lord and Creator of all things then why did he need both…Apr 20, 02:23
    • Geri on The Pit Of Vipers: “British plants written all over it. Evans, that was a given. £600K wasted because of her but the “UK cabinet…Apr 20, 02:19
    • twathater on The Pit Of Vipers: “Joan WHY does it matter how , when , or who publishes the TRUTH , do you want a Scotland…Apr 20, 02:13
    • Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “Who is Lady Dorian Grey? Judge Dredd; ye know – police, judge, jury and executioner? Stinks. No doubt she’ll be…Apr 20, 02:00
    • David Ferguson on The Pit Of Vipers: “One of the amusing things that comes out of the Whatsapp exchanges is that some of the conspirators appeared to…Apr 20, 01:36
    • Mark Beggan on The Pit Of Vipers: “The Lord said to Moses Chisel out two tablets….Apr 20, 00:17
    • Confused on The Pit Of Vipers: “re : “deleted” messages … if any of you folks think you can access secure messaging and you are not…Apr 19, 23:41
    • willie on The Pit Of Vipers: “I suspect the names are more widely known that folks realise. The hidden emerge, are exposed. That is inevitably appears…Apr 19, 23:09
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Pit Of Vipers: “To refresh memories… short article by Gordon Dangerfield about Craig Murray’s imprisonment by Lady Dorrian: THE CROWN CAME FOR CRAIG…Apr 19, 23:05
    • Jerry Carroll on The Pit Of Vipers: “I didn’t think I could be any more sickened by the SNP but here we areApr 19, 23:02
    • Mark Beggan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Baby Trump says. When was the last time you said to yourself: I’m going to be Better, Bigger than ever…Apr 19, 22:54
    • Anne Gorman on The Pit Of Vipers: “Couldn’t agree more. She’s a nasty piece of work and you cross her at your peril. I remember reading an…Apr 19, 22:26
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Pit Of Vipers: “Best wishes to Craig Murray who is incapacitated abroad: « It was not my intention to run for election to…Apr 19, 22:15
    • Mark Beggan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Amen. Wake up time folks.Apr 19, 22:11
    • Gav on The Pit Of Vipers: “I never thought I could hate a politician like I hated Thatcher. Then along came non stick NickyApr 19, 21:48
    • Debatablelands on The Pit Of Vipers: “Yet a third will still turn out and vote for them. If it’s depressing what this story says about the…Apr 19, 21:46
    • Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “Lorncal Of course she was behind it, individually or as a fully embedded major part of their own little Lord…Apr 19, 21:46
    • Lorncal on The Pit Of Vipers: “Because that’s not how evidence works, tw. Lady Dorrian considered them extraneous to the actual charges. That they are coming…Apr 19, 21:45
    • 100%Yes on The Pit Of Vipers: “NS was front and right dead center of it all she was in total control of the SNP, just ask…Apr 19, 21:34
    • Lorncal on The Pit Of Vipers: “Everything she touches fall to bits, so good news. Not before she pockets wodges of lolly, of course. Should have…Apr 19, 21:29
    • Alf Baird on The Pit Of Vipers: “Aye Dan, still too many Scots in denial of our colonial status, which is of course part of the ‘condition’:…Apr 19, 21:25
    • Lorncal on The Pit Of Vipers: “You know, I don’t actually believe that NS was behind it all, but she must have okayed it. She did…Apr 19, 21:21
    • MaryB on The Pit Of Vipers: “The revolving door keeps revolving… Remember too, that Kez is Jenny Gilruth’s partner.Apr 19, 21:13
    • Mark Beggan on The Pit Of Vipers: “So how you good folks gonna vote now?Apr 19, 20:58
    • Lorncal on The Pit Of Vipers: “Joan: Joanna Cherry’s book has blown the lid off a great deal. That is why they have released it now.…Apr 19, 20:54
    • George Ferguson on The Pit Of Vipers: “@100%Yes I have always voted too but there comes a time when not voting is a victory. If less than…Apr 19, 20:41
    • Alf Baird on The Pit Of Vipers: ““the poisonous, posing human trash on our quangoes, running our councils, topping our public bodies” Indeed, and according to Albert…Apr 19, 20:31
    • Sally Hughes on The Pit Of Vipers: “Aye Alf, and timing is everything. Swinney has promised a second referendum if they get an SNP majority. Polls indicate…Apr 19, 20:17
    • 100%Yes on The Pit Of Vipers: “Kezia Dugdale appointed new chair of LGBT+ charity Stonewall.Apr 19, 20:01
    • George Ferguson on The Pit Of Vipers: “@Dan Well my only regret on the betting front is not backing Reform UK to get 20 MSPs at 8…Apr 19, 19:53
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