Wings Over Scotland

We’ve had no takers from any Nicola Sturgeon loyalists for this yet, so let’s narrow our focus a bit and see if we can get some joy from the payroll vote.

The quote pictured below is an absolutely unequivocal statement, with no qualifiers or conditions, made during and with full knowledge of a major peak in the COVID-19 pandemic. The halfway point of the current Scottish Parliament is 9 November 2023.

So: I bet Pete Wishart £5,000 that he’s a liar.

I have the money, and on the £100K-a-year-plus-expenses wage he’s been stealing for most of the last 20 years (and let’s not forget the juicy £50,000-a-year Westminster pension he’s built up over two decades of totally failing to deliver the only thing he’s ever been elected to do), we damn sure know that HE has the money.

My bet is simply that there will NOT be a second indyref on or before that date.

Please, everyone reading this with a Twitter account, tweet this to Pete Wishart until he takes five seconds off from attacking real independence campaigners and gives us all his answer, and let’s see if he’s prepared to put a tiny little fraction of his money where his endlessly bloviating mouth is.

Because if he isn’t, we’ll all know why.

This is the last piece of data from our recent Panelbase poll.

Click image to enlarge. Full data tables here.

I’ve just remembered that I meant to leave this pinned to the front page when I shut Wings down as a blog, so here it is. It’s just a short one.

I am willing to bet anyone in the UK any amount of money of their choosing that there will NOT be a second independence referendum in Scotland while Nicola Sturgeon is First Minister.

If you still believe she’ll deliver one, now’s your chance to demonstrate your faith in public AND get yourself some free cash. (It’s a matter of public record that I’ve never failed to pay up on a losing wager.)

So come on, SNP loyalists and true believers, let’s see you. Put your name and the amount you want to bet in the comments below* and let’s find out how much you really trust her. This is an entirely genuine, serious offer and remains open to anyone** until such times as Nicola Sturgeon stands down as First Minister, even if that’s 20 years from now. Any amount you like. I’m waiting keenly for your responses.

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*PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT EXCEPT TO TAKE THE BET.

**WAGERS FROM GERRY “THE WELCHER” HASSAN NOT ACCEPTED.

Craig Murray is due to be released from HMP Edinburgh a week tomorrow, having served half of an eight-month sentence for contempt of court via “jigsaw identification”. Our latest poll data from Panelbase, surveying 2000 Scottish voters last week, reveals that just a quarter of Scots think that such an offence merits imprisonment.

Readers may find the figures for male and female respondents of note. The full data tables can be downloaded here.

So, in accordance with the wishes of the readership (and despite rather peculiar claims on some sites that all polls in Scotland are now commissioned by Unionists), Wings has its first polling data for you in its present form, relayed without comment.

In association with Panelbase, this month we surveyed 2000 Scottish voters (double the normal sample size) on a couple of subjects. The first question was this:

“Barring unforeseen events, next year Nicola Sturgeon will overtake Alex Salmond as Scotland’s longest-serving First Minister. She took office in November 2014, in a Scotland which was evenly split on the constitution. (Average support for independence in polling was at 50%, compared to the current 48%.)

Which of the following, if any, do you personally regard as her greatest achievement in office?”

The results are below. Click images to enlarge.

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When the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts died last month, the first of their songs that popped into my head, for no particular reason, was “Under My Thumb”, a mildly controversial 1966 album track the band never released as a single in the West.

Its most infamous place in history, though, is this.

Until Watts’ death I was only very broadly aware of the events at Altamont Speedway in 1969, a free festival at a racetrack near San Francisco at which four people died in scenes of malevolent chaos and which is widely regarded as the grim headstone of the hippy era.

But on seeing the extraordinary footage above for the first time on the day of Watts’ death – taken from “Gimme Shelter”, notionally the official movie of the show, although the first two-thirds of it are actually a mundane travelogue of the preceding tour dates – I did some proper reading up on it.

And as I did, a horribly familiar feeling started to unfold.

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…appear to be absolutely raging tonight about this:

Folk used to accuse Wings of being divisive. But look who we’ve united!

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Craig Murray’s speech to the Alba conference yesterday, delivered by his wife Nadira.