Slacky The Holiday Boy is once again on his monthly two-week break, so it falls to us to try to amuse you on a Saturday morning with an image of some sort. Unfortunately very little funny is happening in Scottish politics, so all we’ve got is this.
We are, as always, absolutely enthralled at the prospect of discovering from James Kelly what our vile secret masterplan has been over the last 18 months.
Wings just can’t seem to stop breaking traffic records these days.
Despite having considerably fewer posts (46 to March’s 69), April saw the highest number of unique visitors to the site in close to three years. And that’s even more remarkable when you consider how hard just about everyone is trying to stop them.
Our always-alert readers will probably have noticed that Nicola Sturgeon’s constant catchphrase this week has been how Yes supporters still need to “build the case for independence”, rather than actually do anything to achieve it.
But the thing is, she’s the leader of the SNP. Building the case for independence is literally her job, and she’s now been doing it for six and a half years. So how much progress have we made?
There’s a strange new affliction affecting the SNP: fear of figures.
Now, we should say that we don’t believe for even a second that the SNP has actually had 10,000 new members in the last two days. It’s ridiculous to the point of insulting. But purely for the sake of argument, let’s imagine it was true.
After this morning’s mini stats post, quite a few people have asked in the comments if there’s any means of comparison between Wings and mainstream media outlets. And the shortest answer is no. The Scottish press is terribly coy about its online readership, offering almost nothing by way of verified figures.
(For a meaningful comparison it would also be necessary to separate out their politics coverage from general news, sport and everything else, which they’ve never done.)
But what used to be possible was at least comparing their print sales, via the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures that newspapers published monthly (for national media) or six-monthly (for supposedly “regional” papers like the Herald and Scotsman), which we kept a record of in our Reference section.
When we went to look at the page today we noticed we hadn’t updated it in just over a year, and figured it could do with a dusting and sprucing. But we were in for a surprise.
We’d been wondering why our traffic was so crazy high that we’d already smashed last month’s four-year record to bits with a full week of February still to go.
Two weeks ago a Wings scoop caused quite a furore to erupt around the SNP’s ham-fisted and corruptly-motivated attempts to increase BAME and disabled representation at this year’s Holyrood election.
We’ve always been opposed to what were until recently known as “quotas”, and prior to that “positive discrimination”, but have now been cunningly rebranded as “diversity and inclusion” because that’s a much more difficult thing to say you object to.
It’s easy to make an honourable-sounding case against any form of “discrimination”, because decent and civilised people are taught to automatically think of discrimination as a bad thing, even if you put “positive” in front of it.
So the word “quotas” was adopted to move the concept from a pejorative term to a neutral noun – objecting to “quotas” doesn’t sound intolerant, any more than objecting to (say) “procedures” does. So that’s fine, because you can still discuss it like adults without too much unpleasantness.
But those pushing the agenda got smarter still by changing the name again. If you say you object to “diversity and inclusion”, you sound like a monster and a racist, because diversity and inclusion are plainly good things – no decent person wants to live in a monoculture, or to exclude anybody from society – and so the debate is immediately drowned out by self-righteous tossers screaming “BIGOT!” and “NAZI!” at everyone.
And yet in the context of social policy the three phrases mean the exact same thing. They’re all systems for overriding raw democracy so as to increase the representation of selected groups at the expense of other groups, for one reason or another.
(Sometimes it’s ostensibly just penance for historical wrongs, while at other times it’s supposedly for economic benefits, and so on.)
And while the proponents of those systems will openly argue that the only group being disadvantaged is straight white men so it’s all fine (because nobody likes straight white men and anyone standing up for them can be easily dismissed as a “gammon” for lots of woke points and Twitter likes), it isn’t even remotely close to the truth.
Because in “diversity and inclusion”, some groups are a lot more included than others.
There’s still a day and a half of January 2021 to go, but it’s already been the busiest month for traffic on Wings Over Scotland in several years, despite endless claims from detractors (both Unionists and Pete Wishart types) that we’re in tragic decline.
And since Saturday afternoons are the one quiet moment we get these days – and it’s not like we can go out for a nice walk in the sunshine or have a potter round the shops – we thought we’d take a deeper look into the stats.
In 2014, it was women who stopped Scotland becoming independent.
But it was still a man’s fault, of course. Those of us who were around at the time, while many of the SNP’s earnest young activists of today were still squeezing their spots, will recall a multitude of media articles on how it was apparently the fairer sex’s personal antipathy to Alex Salmond that was responsible for the No camp’s victory.
And who knows, maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t. We have no idea. But what we do know is that you can’t have it both ways.
robertkknight on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “No need to wait, just cast your mind back by three weeks. Compare and contrast… 2021 Election Results SNP Constituency…” May 31, 13:20
Saffron Robe on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Do not say, “I did not do it,” when you know you have done wrong, for “ill-gotten gains have no…” May 31, 13:13
Confused on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “I sometimes see Brookmyre walking about; he is a local. “your books are shite” I banter in passing, listing a…” May 31, 12:56
Captain Caveman on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: ““Reading shite crime novels gives middle class pricks a vicarious dark streets of Scotland fix, whilst making them feel as…” May 31, 12:51
TURABDIN on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “SCOTS BORN could be around 100k mark as census returns may be conservative owing to family data withheld. Second &…” May 31, 12:50
Hatey McHateface on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: ““I suspect those ‘customers’ who once supported the SNP in their many thousands have just silently abandoned it” I guess…” May 31, 12:44
Rob on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “I do not have a problem with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals or “queers” per se. As long as it is…” May 31, 12:24
findlay on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Could that be described as assisted suicide? However, as far as I know, it’s still a crime to lend assistance…” May 31, 12:20
TURABDIN on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “the ULTIMATE QUEER list, a few you might actually have heard of, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/independent-pride-list-2026-lgbt-changemakers-alan-carr-b2981863.html Nae Nicola! Maybe next year hen, Next…” May 31, 12:18
Northcode on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Silent churn is a business term mostly used by sales and marketing professionals. The silent churn of unhappy customers is…” May 31, 12:15
Mark Beggan on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Story circulating that Alex Salmond paid £500 pounds out of his own pocket to cover a theft by Murrell many…” May 31, 12:12
Mark Beggan on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “It will be easier to get rid of queers from positions in civic society than it was to force them…” May 31, 11:55
David Lindsay on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “The Crown Prosecution Service will not be seeking the extradition of Kenneth Law, despite his 79 known victims in the…” May 31, 11:52
robertkknight on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “A glance to the right of this webpage displays just some of the ‘Jam Tomorrow’ front pages of that rag…” May 31, 11:51
Rob on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “It seems that the SNP have forgotten the original brief for the party, upon independence the party was supposed to…” May 31, 11:51
Rob on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Has she ever heard the saying, “when you are in a hole stop digging?” The whole story from her seems…” May 31, 11:43
Hatey McHateface on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Smart, successful politicians should organise their own assassinations.” May 31, 11:42
Hatey McHateface on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: ““I feel I’m being tried for a crime I didn’t commit” Un be fucking lievable. When is somebody gonna confront…” May 31, 11:39
findlay on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Sometimes life is just one steep learning curve, and I imagine she’s learning, just a little bit, about how she…” May 31, 11:36
Hatey McHateface on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “There’s some 90,000 Scots already living in London, CC, making it the fifth most populous Scottish city in the UK,…” May 31, 11:27
Hatey McHateface on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “I guess she’s not yet sweating, then. And these days, it’s Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. Leave your glengarry undoffed, willie!” May 31, 11:10
Owen Mullions on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: ““I feel I’m being tried for a crime I didn’t commit” wails a tearful Sturgeon. She doesn’t do irony doesn’t…” May 31, 11:08
Terry on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Ha ha. Well done You deserve a laugh and praise after your tireless pursuit of the truth. The whole of…” May 31, 11:04
Cynicus on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: ““ Sturgeon’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg will come to be seen alongside Prince Andrew’s interview with Emily Maitlis.” ========= Are…” May 31, 10:59
Captain Caveman on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Well, it would’ve been quite amusing if she had in fact chosen that most beautiful English city – the Roman…” May 31, 10:48
TURABDIN on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Independence movements eventually take the violent route. The mainstream Scots independentists appear rather squeamish/nervous in that regard. Fanon ultimately reached…” May 31, 10:47
Ex President Xiden on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Well there you have it. In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning, wee Nicola reveals she is in fact…” May 31, 10:44
willie on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “And here’s a prediction. Sturgeon’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg will come to be seen alongside Prince Andrew’s interview with Emily…” May 31, 10:28
willie on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “Just watched Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning interview with Sturgeon. Pinnochio would be hard pressed to come up with the whopper…” May 31, 10:21
Hatey McHateface on Nicola’s Summer Reading List: “If Fanon, Memmi, Cesaire, Elkins and the Jonesy boyo don’t explain the “colonial condition of Scots”, Alf, why do you…” May 31, 10:09
