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A whole new world 201

Posted on January 01, 2016 by

bullpress

Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.

The Slightly Tubby Quiz Of The Year 567

Posted on December 29, 2015 by

It’s time to find out just how alert you really are, readers.

jcarr

The answers to each of the 24 questions below about Scottish politics in 2015 can be found in Wings articles. But no Googling – we’ll know.

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The anatomy of a smear 138

Posted on December 28, 2015 by

The Scottish Daily Mail, which alongside its Sunday sister paper is spending the festive period engaged in an “SNP BAD!” frenzy – attacking the party over everything from foxhunting to the brutal Stalinist suppression of free speech to using taxpayers’ money to send people Christmas cards – today runs the same story across a news page, a comment column and an editorial leader:

mailiran

Let’s take a closer look.

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BREAKING NEWS 126

Posted on December 28, 2015 by

Sometimes stuff breaks. Apparently this is news.

nhscrisisx

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Bad wolf baying 268

Posted on December 26, 2015 by

The Christmas truce on social media ended unusually early this year as Magnus Gardham, the political editor of the Herald, filed a column which had all the hallmarks of a man who’d overdone the sprouts and redirected the usual outcome of such an error out of his mouth rather than the other end of his digestive tract.

gardhambad

Backed up with a series of borderline-trolling tweets from his Herald colleague David Leask (who ambitiously referred to Gardham as a “genius”), the piece triggered a mild stushie on Twitter which we fully expect to see written up in tomorrow’s papers as “VILE CYBERNATS IN ABUSE STORM”, because it’s Christmas and you’ve got to fill pages with something.

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A bridge too far 171

Posted on December 24, 2015 by

EPSON scanner image

To the bitter end 309

Posted on December 23, 2015 by

This was a brief exchange between the Scotland correspondent of the Guardian and the Political Editor of the Daily Record on Twitter last night. (The hug referred to is the one between Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru and Natalie Bennett of the Greens at one of the leaders’ debates for the May general election.)

brooksclegg

A little vision of the future, there.

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Another blow for Sturgeon 331

Posted on December 22, 2015 by

As SNP forecasting incompetence sees Forth Road Bridge re-open two weeks ahead of schedule, throwing holiday travel plans into chaos for thousands.

forthopen

Many questions to answer.

Shocking incredible news 298

Posted on December 21, 2015 by

Telling voters they’re morons and robots rather surprisingly hasn’t worked.

tnssnp

We suspect the opposition parties will give it a few more years just to be sure.

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An end to the matter 207

Posted on December 17, 2015 by

Remarkably, it seems some angry Unionists are still trying to dispute the known facts surrounding the Forth Road Bridge closure. We’d like to think this quote from today’s Central Fife Times – from Tony Martin, the man who was convenor of the authority managing the bridge until a few months ago – was unambiguous enough to settle it once and for all.

cllrmartin

That’s from the man who ought to know more about it than any human alive, and who as a Lib Dem councillor has no reason to make excuses for the Scottish Government.

cllrmartin2

It’s over, angry Unionists. Deal with it.

He can’t get no satisfaction 342

Posted on December 16, 2015 by

This tweet mysteriously vanished from Blair McDougall’s Twitter timeline last night:

mcdoecd

We’re not sure why, as we know that Scottish Labour love nothing more than to attack the Scottish Government (no matter how ham-fistedly) over education.

And we’re pretty sure it’s not because McDougall felt guilty about picking out only the negative aspects of what Scotland’s biggest teaching union called a “largely positive picture” of the state of Scottish education – and which the OECD itself said contained “much to be positive about” – because if there’s one thing we know for sure about Blair it’s that his conscience isn’t troubled by misleading people.

Our best guess was that even he was just too embarrassed at having made an attack line out of the fact that 20% of the country’s schools were “only” rated “satisfactory”, thereby implying that “satisfactory” status was actually in some way unsatisfactory.

In doing so, of course, he was echoing the words of his hapless leader Kezia Dugdale, who in September told the Holyrood chamber that “no parent wants a satisfactory education for their child”. Maybe McDougall just realised belatedly that he was reading from the wrong month’s script.

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Kelly’s Heroes 170

Posted on December 15, 2015 by

Because some of you won’t have seen it yet.

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    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: “Here you go, Bob. Ben Bulbin (Sligo) Ben Lugmore (Mayo) Ben Gorm (Mayo) Ben Baun (Galway) – part of the…Jan 30, 19:21
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: “Naw, Dave, that’s nae richt. I’d hae wrote Camel Shaggers. And ye forgoat ane. In an Independent Scotland, the untermenschen…Jan 30, 19:00
    • robertkknight on Shield Of The Phantom: “The Picts, christened thus by the Romans who were apparently impressed by their tattoos, left plenty of evidence of their…Jan 30, 18:35
    • DaveL on Shield Of The Phantom: “…and you still can’t spell ‘cunt’.Jan 30, 18:29
    • DaveL on Shield Of The Phantom: “Choice! And that coming from the man who’s variously named vast populations as: Covid spreaders Orcs Camel jockeys Rag heads……Jan 30, 18:14
    • DaveL on Shield Of The Phantom: “Wee Adolf! You never cease to amaze. You wrote ‘Chinese’, that’s probably a first and way off your standard referencing…Jan 30, 18:03
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: “Beautifully painted windows on her! She’s sailing under the flag of the UK, a fictional country. Hope the Ukies don’t…Jan 30, 17:43
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: “It’s an interesting idea, Lorna. But it comes up against the unimpeachable fact that no parliament can bind its successor.…Jan 30, 17:36
    • agentx on Shield Of The Phantom: “For anyone interested the new ferry built in Turkey – Isle of Islay is currently sailing down the east coast…Jan 30, 17:26
    • Lorna Campbell on Shield Of The Phantom: “100 to 200 women die at the hands of men each year in the UK – considerably more than ‘trans’…Jan 30, 16:19
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: ““So what have you ever achieved?” No mirror needed, James, to see I’ve achieved the writing of a simple statement…Jan 30, 16:15
    • Lorna Campbell on Shield Of The Phantom: “Absolutely agree, James. Any changes to the basic Treaty Articles is tantamount to resiling the Treaty because the changes have…Jan 30, 16:05
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: ““communicate the kind of neutrality that taxpayers expect of civil servants” Odd. I thought we all understood that Scottish civil…Jan 30, 15:40
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Shield Of The Phantom: “PEER: CI CIVIL SERVICE CASE HIGHLIGHTS DANGERS OF ‘POLITICISED POLICING’ Baroness Fox of Buckley has commended The Christian Institute’s legal…Jan 30, 15:24
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: “I believe that one of the Voyager spacecraft has just marked a major and unique achievement. It is now one…Jan 30, 15:24
    • sam on Shield Of The Phantom: ““In our study, we looked at how genetically similar the Pictish genomes were to other ancient genomes from Britain and…Jan 30, 13:57
    • sam on Shield Of The Phantom: “There was frequent contact between the Gaels and the Picts. The Gaels brought Christianity from Ireland into the west of…Jan 30, 13:46
    • Sven on Shield Of The Phantom: “Willie @ 12.26. Whilst it’s the same basic principle, former Army medic, 51 yr old David Toshack whose on daughter…Jan 30, 13:24
    • Aidan on Shield Of The Phantom: “So you think that constitutional legal questions are determined by reference to vague anecdotes and metaphors and without reference to…Jan 30, 13:12
    • Southernbystander on Shield Of The Phantom: “Both Sun Ra and Karlheinz Stockhausen said they were from Sirius, so the Picts hailing from somewhere in the Andromeda…Jan 30, 13:08
    • James on Shield Of The Phantom: ““So what have you ever achieved?” Look in a mirror and ask yersel that, ya fucking roaster. But I expect…Jan 30, 13:03
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: “As does this one.Jan 30, 13:01
    • James Cheyne on Shield Of The Phantom: “The parliament of the Great Britain or Uk cannot add a reservation or alter its original dates on the treaty…Jan 30, 12:46
    • Cynicus on Shield Of The Phantom: “Lorna, I think this comment belongs elsewhere.Jan 30, 12:43
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: ““I see no implied self-aggrandizement” How about the disparagement I refer to? See any of that? It’s a perfectly natural…Jan 30, 12:42
    • Willie on Shield Of The Phantom: “So the latest Tribunal hearing into a custody officer being sacked for not pandering to a woo woo gender bender…Jan 30, 12:26
    • Hatey McHateface on Shield Of The Phantom: “Few readers will know nor care that the word “pict” comes from the Latin. It is derived from a common…Jan 30, 12:25
    • James Cheyne on Shield Of The Phantom: “A Treaty is a formal agreement legally binding between two or more Sovereign States, Treaties are roughly Contracts, All treaties…Jan 30, 12:11
    • Northcode on Shield Of The Phantom: “Gaelic is the language of the Scotti, the invader of Pictland who came from Ireland. Gaelic bears no relation to…Jan 30, 12:10
    • James Cheyne on Shield Of The Phantom: “Aiden. Logically and legal common sense. Destroy the foundations of your house and it automatically falls. Destroy the foundations of…Jan 30, 11:36
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