Wings Over Scotland

After six years in kneejerk opposition, extending even so far as to abstain on or vote against budgets with their own amendments in them, Scottish Labour have apparently suddenly discovered the merits of mature, constructive consensus politics. This week has seen the party calling for unity in opposing the bedroom tax, and demanding that the Scottish Government should mitigate the effect on social-housing tenants by providing tens of millions of pounds from its own budget to bridge the gap.

There are numerous reasons why this isn’t a practical long-term solution, some of which we explore in the comments on this Labour activist’s blog post. But if anyone should be wondering why it might also seem politically unattractive to the SNP, perhaps it might be instructive to note what Labour’s reaction was when the Nats did that very thing a year ago, when finance secretary John Swinney found £40m to lessen the effects of UK government cuts forcing the poorest to contribute more Council Tax.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s hardly a new phenomenon. But poor old Tom Harris just can’t stop fibbing:

Ian Davidson, as we’ve already noted, was in fact absent from BOTH votes on the bedroom tax. (Tom Harris missed the February division for personal reasons, but 214 of Labour’s 258 MPs evidently didn’t consider it “meaningless”, turning up to vote in favour of the opposition motion put forward by the SNP and Plaid Cymru.)

If you click this link, you’ll see some footage of the Labour MP for Glasgow South West, Ian Davidson, at today’s protest against the bedroom tax. The unnamed person with the camera approaches him and confronts him with a direct question.

There seems to be some doubt with regard to the veracity of the answer.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Radio Times was funded by the licence fee until the government sold it in 2011. We don’t remember receiving a cheque for our share. The extract below is from a feature about William Wallace in this week’s edition.

Let’s read that carefully. “Braveheart” has allegedly been “a gift to Alex Salmond and the SNP”. In what context? The context of “fuelling anti-English sentiment”. There’s no mention of winning elections, no mention of making people feel more positive about Scotland, no ambiguity whatsoever – the specific end to which the film has served the SNP, according to Dr Watson, is “the justification of anti-English sentiment”, and the associated perpetrating of violent assaults on young children.

We’ll run that past you again – the SNP love “Braveheart” because it helps them in their cynical aim of fostering xenophobia and getting little kids beaten up.

Read the rest of this entry →

This is a thing that really happened this afternoon:

It’s hard to know where to begin. It seems pointless to even try. An unelected trough-swilling convicted violent drunken criminal just used the rape of a child as a weapon against independence. More dignified things lurk slithering in sewers.

Frighteningly, Wings Over Scotland is fast approaching its 1,000th post (likely to happen sometime next week). Sometimes, for unknown reasons, someone will tweet a link to an old story I’d forgotten I’d written, and I’ll click to see what it was and get enraged as if I’d never seen it before and was just discovering it now.

Today was one of those days.

We know you don’t have all day. Let’s see if we can clear this up in under 600 words.

Read the rest of this entry →

A play in three very short acts.

UNIONISTS:“We need information! We must have more information! We demand answers! Why aren’t voters being given the information they need? It must be given to them sooner, if not immediately! It’s an outrage!”

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT: “We shall deliver this information.”

UNIONISTS:“Taxpayers’ money funding separatist propaganda! It’s an outrage!”

Hey ho. Just 18 more months of these idiots to go, readers.

Newsnight Scotland presenter Gordon Brewer got a bit exasperated on last night’s edition of the show as he tried, repeatedly but unsuccessfully, to get Scottish Labour’s ever-smirking Jackie Baillie to give him anything resembling a straight answer to a question about Labour’s (lack of) policy on the bedroom tax.

As the well-fed welfare spokeswoman embarked on another pre-scripted soundbite of SNP-bashing rather than commit Labour councils to a policy of not evicting tenants for arrears related to the penalty charge, Brewer sighed (at around 12m 52s) that “I was vainly trying to take into consideration the people who might be affected by this” before giving up and moving on to his other guest.

Baillie was demanding that the Scottish Government instead bring forward legislation to make such evictions illegal – just a few days after Scottish Labour’s press office had strenuously denied to this very website that the party was making any such demands. But it’s easy to see why she’d be having trouble keeping track of her position, because to Labour the bedroom tax is little short of a delight.

Read the rest of this entry →

We’re not sure we can untangle this.

Perhaps you can help us out.

Read the rest of this entry →

The media is in full-on spin mode today, reporting Ruth Davidson’s miraculous Damascene conversion to the principle of “more powers” for the Scottish Parliament, just 18 short months after her Churchill-esque declaration of devolutionary defiance to the effect that the petty tinkering of the Scotland Act was a “line in the sand”.

Most of the papers, of course, feign critical analysis by highlighting Davidson’s U-turn. But what we haven’t seen in a single one is any sort of actual examination of the content of Ms Davidson’s speech to a micro-audience of literally several people in what appeared to be the corridor of an Edinburgh hotel yesterday.

We suspect that’s because anyone who did would be very hard-pressed indeed to credibly describe the measures she proposes as representing “more powers” for anything. In fact, they’re the opposite.

Read the rest of this entry →

Read the rest of this entry →