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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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    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

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    • Hatey McHateface on The Final Robbery: “Small change. What’s the bill for the failed jam jar return scheme? Well into the tens of millions, isn’t it.…May 26, 07:23
    • Alf Baird on The Final Robbery: “““We’ve been colonised by wankers”.” Indeed, a ‘famous rant’, and spot on. Matches anything by Burns, even. Well said Irvine…May 26, 07:09
    • Hatey McHateface on The Final Robbery: “Good post, Geri. Don’t all those posters wanging oan aboot stolen money grind yer gears though? They could be shilling…May 26, 07:08
    • Bilbo on The Final Robbery: “As others have said, it was a paltry sum compared to what both were legally earning throughout the period but…May 26, 04:19
    • Young Lochinvar on The Final Robbery: “Chas @ 9.49 Bad enough that it may be so without you wishing it! You Scotchland hating cringing Unionists really…May 26, 02:21
    • Lynne on The Final Robbery: “No public funds were lost Just the small matter of £2.7m Brachform has cost.May 26, 01:37
    • Young Lochinvar on The Final Robbery: “Olster 2 “words”. – Boris Johnson -. They are ALL self serving scum.May 26, 01:34
    • Young Lochinvar on The Final Robbery: “Reminiscent of Dugdales “yer too thick to know what ye were saying” judges summary in its case against the site…May 26, 01:29
    • David Lindsay on The Final Robbery: “Tessa Jowell professed to have had no idea that David Mills had remortgaged their house. At least unless you believed…May 26, 01:12
    • Olster on The Final Robbery: “I’m a unionist, unreservedly. However I have great respect for the Rev’s journalistic brilliance. I have always had a modicum…May 26, 01:01
    • Ian Smith on The Final Robbery: “If the Murrell/Sturgeon junta couldn’t keep their sticky fingers off a mere 600k in the SNP’s accounts, what have they…May 26, 00:27
    • Colin Dawson on The Final Robbery: “I asked Google AI: “If it transpires that Sturgeon was the benificiary of his embezzlement, can any of the assets…May 26, 00:08
    • Mark Beggan on The Final Robbery: “There’s no need to rub Patrick Thistles nose in it. A Third world hick with lots of oil.May 25, 23:57
    • Geri on The Final Robbery: “They’re the only two sticking to international law despite severe provocation that’d test the patience of saint. Just shows how…May 25, 23:54
    • Grum on The Final Robbery: “Since I was young, Scotland was solidly Labour, and they were corrupt bastards. Unfortunately, it appears that the modern SNP…May 25, 23:46
    • Confused on The Final Robbery: ““dont worry peter – that dot bain will get ya aff … ” did peter and nikki have a joint…May 25, 23:46
    • James on The Final Robbery: “Two sneering, servile unionists there. Both paid by the post.May 25, 23:32
    • James on The Final Robbery: “Got that, everyone? English-appointed civil servants and Vauxhall Cross are benign agents, and do nothing but good in Scotland and…May 25, 23:29
    • James on The Final Robbery: “Your comment is correct. Almost. You pay f*ck all to Scotland in taxes. The ‘block grant’ as England patronisingly calls…May 25, 23:22
    • Oneliner on The Final Robbery: “Agreed, Robin is on fire. The next Through A Scottish Prism should be interesting.May 25, 23:11
    • Hatey McHateface on The Final Robbery: ““So where is it during the night ?” Erm. It’s the Earth that moves. It revolves on its axis. The…May 25, 23:07
    • Onlooker on The Final Robbery: “https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/artist-paints-nicola-sturgeon-over-5002394May 25, 23:02
    • Hatey McHateface on The Final Robbery: “That’s the size small. The size XL is £99.99.May 25, 22:35
    • Skip_NC on The Final Robbery: “I’m curious why you’re including Calum Steele in that comment. He was the only one of those you mentioned who…May 25, 22:23
    • robertkknight on The Final Robbery: “Anyone with an ounce of integrity should be angry as to what’s happened to the SNP over the past decade.…May 25, 22:19
    • A2 on The Final Robbery: “Nope, the whole 600k is still missing. He’s nicked from the SNP but theres nothing that shows he just took…May 25, 22:15
    • Hatey McHateface on The Final Robbery: ““The embezzlement amounts to an average of £35k per year, and for most of that period, him and Sturgeon would…May 25, 22:08
    • GM on The Final Robbery: “True.. and we are kept in that state by the actions of self serving, conscienceless wankers. Sturgeon being the worst…May 25, 22:02
    • Colin Alexander on The Final Robbery: “Well done Stuart Campbell and Sean Clerkin. If it weren’t for yous pesky kids, he would probably got away with…May 25, 22:00
    • Hatey McHateface on The Final Robbery: “Hark to the tinkle of the royal wee. “We all know the media aren’t journalists these days either but government…May 25, 21:55
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