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Wings Over Scotland


Archive for the ‘stupidity’


Instructions on sex and travel 97

Posted on March 12, 2014 by

We don’t mind telling you, folks, we’re struggling on this one.

“If Scotland was independent today we would have no option but to cut spending on services like schools and hospitals or put up taxes – or probably both. Today as part of the UK we don’t have to do that.” (Alistair Darling)

But… don’t…

“Whatever the Scottish government says now, the government of an independent Scotland would be forced to raise taxes and cut public services. We are better off together.” (Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury)

Aren’t… haven’t you…

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We made a mistake 69

Posted on November 30, 2013 by

This morning we’ve been double- and triple-checking our story from last night, because we were so sure we must have missed something. Even given the low esteem in which we hold the integrity of the hapless “Better Together” campaign, we felt that they surely couldn’t have made such an idiotic and fundamental error, and that instead we must have misinterpreted a word or a sentence somewhere along the way.

btfbsf

But no. We were wrong in that assumption. They really ARE that dim.

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Welcome to the debate 250

Posted on November 27, 2013 by

Dear Yes Scotland,

Please immediately contact Channel 5 and ask them how much they want for this:

Pay any price they ask, and show it on September 17th. 100% Yes, in the bag.

(Download links 1 and 2.)

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The privilege of stupid 122

Posted on November 20, 2013 by

Even as a supporter of independence with little interest in their wellbeing, sometimes you just can’t help slumping face-first onto your desk in sheer helpless despair at the spectacular idiocy of the Scottish Parliament’s clownish, dim-witted opposition parties. Scotland, to coin a phrase, deserves better.

headdesk2

Today’s demonstration appears, as it so often does, in the Telegraph.

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Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies 187

Posted on November 07, 2013 by

We were hoping to come up with a subtler headline than that, but trying to analyse today’s media in fine detail is a bit like trying to translate a complex scientific report from Mandarin into Latin, when it’s taped onto the front of a locomotive that’s hurtling directly towards you at 125mph and you’re standing on the track with a telescope.

recordfrontbae

There’s horror as far as the eye can see on this morning’s newsstands, but the most despicable and inexcusable is the atrocity of a front page disfiguring the Daily Record. The cover of “Scotland’s Champion” is crammed with falsehoods and idiocy from top to bottom, but that’s not the half of it.

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It’s a trap! 106

Posted on November 01, 2013 by

Blair McDougall, director of “Better Together”, Dundee University, 30 October 2013:

“UK ministers are not going to fall into the trap of acting against Scotland until Scotland decides to leave the United Kingdom”

blairsdu

You heard it straight from the horse’s – well, let’s be kind and say “mouth”, folks.

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Spending £20 to save a tenner 81

Posted on October 31, 2013 by

This week it was claimed by Stuart Adam, senior economic researcher at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), that taxes would have to rise almost 14% in an independent Scotland, if they were the sole method used to fill the Scottish budget deficit.

taxes

It’s a dramatic headline, for sure. But is it an accurate reflection on the relative finances of an independent Scotland and one that remained part of the United Kingdom? As ever, you have to dig a little deeper to find out what’s really going on.

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When you have no culture 83

Posted on October 10, 2013 by

Particularly alert readers will have noticed that this site isn’t called Wings Over Wales. Which is a shame in one sense, because “WOW” would be a great acronym to have.

kingsway

But we’re going to make an exception to our normally all-Scottish, all the time agenda today, because of something that happened in the smaller of mainland UK’s sub-states about which we happen to have some personal experience, and which ties in to Labour peer Lord George Robertson’s extraordinary assertion in a debate last month that Scotland has “no language or culture or any of that”.

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A brave electoral strategy 42

Posted on September 14, 2013 by

dannytories

If we must, then 76

Posted on September 04, 2013 by

The No campaign got itself rather excited today about the third independence poll of this week, this time by TNS-BMRB, which showed a spectacular and unexpected doubling of the “Don’t Know” figures at the expense of both Yes and No.

zimbabwe

We didn’t go into the other two in any depth (noting only the difference in media coverage of them), because as we’ve said for the last 18 months, simple Yes/No polls at this stage are fairly meaningless. But this one deserves a little scrutiny.

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Revenge of the radio star 12

Posted on March 25, 2013 by

Something's puzzled me for more than 15 years, viewers, and an article I read today brought it back to mind, so I'm going to raise it very briefly in the hopes that someone might even now be able to answer the question for me.

There's something odd about the chart above, isn't there?

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A little less conversation 81

Posted on February 05, 2013 by

We know the No campaign is dead set against entering any discussions before the independence referendum, but we were so moved by Willie Rennie’s concern today about Scotland not having enough time to negotiate over 14,000 international treaties in the 16 months between a Yes vote and the first elections to an independent Holyrood that we thought we’d help him out a bit with some advance work.

We did enquire of Mr Rennie as to where these “14,000 international treaties” could be found, but he was too busy helping poor people by fining them £80 a month to answer. Luckily, alert reader Angus McLellan was hot on the case, and swiftly directed us to a handy Foreign Office website featuring the magic number.

We’ve now had a brief skim through some of the UK’s historic agreements with other countries, and to save some time after 2014 we’ve knocked a few off the list.

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    Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)

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