The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘scottish politics’


Your Children Will Be Harmed 124

Posted on September 04, 2024 by

This sounds like good news, doesn’t it?

But in fact the headline on the STV News website – whether intentionally, through innocent misunderstanding or, as we suspect, a result of being deliberately misled by government ministers – is a flat-out lie.

In fact the Scottish Government has done the exact opposite. It has taken Dr Hilary Cass’s four-year report and set it on fire, so that it can continue to irreversibly destroy the lives of Scottish children in the name of gender ideology.

Read the rest of this entry →

All The Rainbows In The Sky 125

Posted on September 02, 2024 by

There may, readers, be a connection between this:

and this:

But the key fact about the SNP is the same either way.

Read the rest of this entry →

Event on the horizon 100

Posted on September 01, 2024 by

Those of you on Twitter will probably be aware of this already, but for the rest:

It should be a bit of a lark, although the retrospective part will probably be rather more fun than the looking-forward part. I don’t get out much, so if you want to come along and throw some rotten fruit and/or say hi, tickets are here.

The Scissor Sisters 56

Posted on August 31, 2024 by

The Solution 22

Posted on August 30, 2024 by

All one can hope is that this was an unfortunate slip of the tongue.

Otherwise, folks, you’ll just have to buck your ideas up.

The casual hand grenade 79

Posted on August 30, 2024 by

We’ve just watched a hearing at the Court Of Session with regard to Alex Salmond’s civil claim against the Scottish Government. It was an ostensibly minor one, in which Salmond’s team were requesting a sist (pause) in the case for the fourth time, on the grounds of a number of ongoing police inquiries related to the events around the claim.

For most of the time Wings was the only journalist in a (virtual) room full of lawyers – although a couple of Scottish Daily Mail hacks turned up midway through – and we got to hear a dramatic surprise revelation.

James Hynd is a civil servant who was head of the Scottish Government’s cabinet, parliament and governance division during the inquiry.

(And he may still be – he’s a man with a microscopic digital footprint, and pretty much every piece of what little there is to be found concerns the inquiry. Indeed, the same is true of his entire department, which is extremely publicity-shy.)

But the hearing revealed for the first time that Hynd is currently subject to a criminal investigation by Police Scotland, with the name Operation Broadcroft, on suspicion of the serious crime of “wilfully making false statements on oath” to the inquiry.

And the ramifications of that extend much further than Mr Hynd himself.

Read the rest of this entry →

Into the far away 183

Posted on August 27, 2024 by

Poor old Tommy Sheppard’s got a contract, so he has to keep talking. And this week he said something that, if anyone really thought the constitution was still a current live political issue, would have attracted a lot more attention than it did.

Because even the SNP are now saying another indyref is – at best – a decade away.

Read the rest of this entry →

Going For Broke 157

Posted on August 24, 2024 by

The Number You First Thought Of 99

Posted on August 22, 2024 by

We were very pleased to discover this morning that Johnny Ball is still alive.

But even the man who managed to make maths fun for generations of children would be hard pushed to make sense of the SNP’s membership figures.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Dogs That Think They’re People 85

Posted on August 20, 2024 by

In these grim times, at least we have funny animal videos to cheer us up.

Unfortunately when you write about politics for a living, everything is an analogy.

Read the rest of this entry →

But Then Again Maybe Not 181

Posted on August 16, 2024 by

These paragraphs are all from the same story.

The Hate Crime Act has rather faded into obscurity after the furore surrounding its introduction, with the police apparently just trying to pretend it doesn’t exist by ignoring thousands and thousands of complaints, and the useless Scottish commentariat duly proclaiming as a result that it was all just a big fuss about nothing.

But as soon as everyone stopped looking at it, there it was.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Manipulation Of Perception 212

Posted on August 13, 2024 by

In many ways, the fabricated, hysterical furore of Humza Yousaf Vs Elon Musk is the ultimate in summer-silly-season politics stories.

Absurdly plainly, the former First Minister ISN’T going to take any legal action against the billionaire owner of Twitter. He only likes bullying small nurseries, and even then he doesn’t follow through. He didn’t even sue us for calling him racist a few months ago, so there’s zero chance he’s going to square up to the world’s richest man.

Read the rest of this entry →

  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,969 Posts, 1,249,425 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • twathater on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Where the FUCK is engerlands barnet formula where the fuck is engerlands parliament, where the fuck is engerlands version of…Aug 25, 18:10
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Ah, c’moan noo Aidan! Div ye want Indy or nae? If ye dae, swear blind tae abody that WM is…Aug 25, 18:06
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “An interesting take on things, sam. Some people would rather kill themselves than have a more equitable allocation of scarce…Aug 25, 17:49
    • Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “There has been no “extraordinary rise in mortality” across the UK, the mortality rate has decreased overall since 2010, and…Aug 25, 17:41
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““Typical factors: … Housing need and homelessness” Uh Oh. There’s 5.7 million UK households getting cash from the government to…Aug 25, 17:34
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Just for a moment there, Alf, I thought you had a serious point to make. I guess the joke’s on…Aug 25, 17:19
    • Alf Baird on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““What a chump was Swinney to accept the Smith Commission crap.” Yes, Swinney also tells the SNP faithful he is…Aug 25, 17:15
    • sarah on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “@ sam: interesting stuff re Barnett and Caithness. Thanks for posting.Aug 25, 16:53
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Over the period 2010 to 2019 austerity cuts led to a reduction of about £540 billion. Local government funding and…Aug 25, 16:43
    • Mark Beggan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Broken hearts are for arseholes.Aug 25, 15:56
    • Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “@Sam – the funding received under the Barnett formula is consolidated though, so it’s up to the Scottish Government how…Aug 25, 15:29
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “But Scotland will still be artificially ‘poor’. All part of the Onion dividend.Aug 25, 14:46
    • Alf Baird on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““How did the imperial UK construct prove its immorality yesterday?” So many examples, Hatey, you’re obviously not paying attention to…Aug 25, 14:34
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “https://caithness-business.co.uk/article/32159 “What a needs?based formula actually means A needs?based formula allocates funding according to measurable indicators of need, not just…Aug 25, 14:23
    • Captain Caveman on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““That it?” I’m betting that’s a phrase you’ve heard quite often.Aug 25, 13:25
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Neither of us can say with truth if the Formula meets the needs of Scotland. Here is the abstract from…Aug 25, 12:37
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Jappy; “As a civil servant in London in the 1960s, and being part of the establishment, I always accepted the…Aug 25, 12:34
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “As I posted earlier. “Disingenuous Adrian”. But hey, worth a try, champ.Aug 25, 12:31
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “That it? Amateurs in action; must try harder.Aug 25, 12:29
    • Spartan 117 on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Fada bho abhainn an t-sluaigh, as a favourite band of mine sang back in 1991. Zero understanding of the world…Aug 25, 12:16
    • gm on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Swinney was warned, by trained honest people, that the Smith Commission was a miserable effort at containment, nothing more and…Aug 25, 12:00
    • Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Actually James, it’s you trying to post in “scotch”, by which I mean the incoherent meaningless ramblings of someone who…Aug 25, 11:21
    • Captain Caveman on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “”Aw, Adrian’s trying to post in Scotch” Wait, what? “Adrian” (I think you meant Aidan) is trying to post in…Aug 25, 11:06
    • Aidan on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “That’s absolutely right Sam, and one of Joel Barnett’s main criticism is that Scotland’s advantage was essentially baked into the…Aug 25, 11:06
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “I’m gonna refute that any plausible Scot ever refers to himself as Scotch. And I’m gonna question why you slipped…Aug 25, 10:55
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Caithness Business Index “It is based on outdated population data The population share used in the formula is updated only…Aug 25, 10:53
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: ““Scotland’s energy prices are certainly the highest among all the energy-rich nations” But then you have to define “nation”, Alf.…Aug 25, 10:50
    • sam on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Barnett thought his Formula was “grossly unfair” due to inequalities in public spending. He thought it would be a temporary…Aug 25, 10:48
    • Jay on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “I forgot she is Labour, so used to Unionist SNP.Aug 25, 10:40
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Aw, Adrian’s trying to post in Scotch. Bless. Give it up. petal.Aug 25, 10:40
  • A tall tale



↑ Top