Poking the bear 328
Posted on
November 28, 2015 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
Archive for the ‘world’
Down memory lane 347
Posted on
November 24, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Ah, the good old days.
Obviously, actually including the exact phrases “within 45 minutes” and “weapons of mass destruction” might have been a little bit too near the knuckle, but the message comes across just the same: “Here we go again.”
What happens next 189
Posted on
November 22, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We don’t often bring you footage of an Armed Forces Committee session in the US Senate, readers, but this spellbinding six minutes of questioning from a Republican senator on the subject of military action against ISIS doesn’t miss and hit the wall.
(We should note that Sen. Graham is a hawk who wants ISIS bombed back to the Stone Age. But even he can see the insane, irrational nature of the action currently being proposed, which would leave Syria a shattered mess but firmly in the hands of a murderous Russian-backed dictator conducting a ruinous, destabilising civil war.)
A small revision of history 184
Posted on
November 21, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is John Humphreys on the Today programme on Radio 4 earlier this week:
(Today, BBC Radio 4, 18 November 2015)
.
And there’s only one small thing wrong with that.
The enemy amid us 47
Posted on
November 21, 2015 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
Fighting in the War Room 228
Posted on
November 09, 2015 by
Lindsay Bruce
Last Friday’s article on the limitations of GERS caused quite a stir among the stout defenders of the Union, as social-media users may have noticed over the weekend.
Amidst the wildly-flailing fury-storm of shouty, abusive responses which pathologically evaded addressing the article’s point, the one vaguely factual argument raised was the notion that an independent Scotland wouldn’t be able to make significant savings on its current (notional) £3bn defence budget because NATO supposedly requires all member states to spend 2% of their GDP on defence.
So we thought we’d see if it was true.
A myth of independence 210
Posted on
November 02, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The video clip below is from Russia Today, which is in no way an impartial news outlet. However, it’s dangerous and unwise to reflexively dismiss any message purely because of the medium. Heck, even the Daily Mail tells the truth sometimes.
That’s because the messenger in this case is Major General Patrick Cordingley DSO, a highly distinguished British Army veteran commander who led the invasion of Iraq in the first Gulf War in 1991, and who before the second one in 2003 (by which time he’d retired) had a very perceptive view of both the battle and the likely aftermath.
When we join the clip he’s discussing the USA.
His views are expert and worth listening to. (The full interview is here.) Readers can, as ever, decide for themselves whether to believe him or David Cameron.
UDI is the answer 374
Posted on
August 09, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Alert social-media users will have noticed that it’s hard to avoid a constant low-level buzzing from a faction of the Yes movement, calling on the next Scottish Government (in the event, as currently seems likely, that it’s another SNP majority) to issue a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, or UDI for short.
And in the context of achieving Scottish independence UDI is indeed the answer, if we assume that the question is “What’s the stupidest thing the SNP could possibly do?”
The end really is nigh 146
Posted on
July 18, 2015 by
Siobhan Tolland
This week, as the UK’s new Conservative government brought forward a bill to impose tax on renewable energy projects, just seven Labour MPs turned up to oppose it.
You know these guys that you used to see wandering round the city centre with a sandwich board telling us “THE END IS NIGH”? It seems they were right.
Greece isn’t the word 216
Posted on
June 30, 2015 by
Douglas Daniel
In today’s Scotsman, Peter Jones makes the case for why an independent Scotland would have been plunged into the same crisis currently affecting Greece (and making the case along the way for why George Osborne’s austerity is inevitable and we should just shut up and accept it).
He insists strenuously throughout the article that he’s doing no such thing and is simply highlighting the flaws in the idea of a currency union between Scotland and the rUK, but to anybody who actually reads the article, it’s patently obvious that that’s exactly what he’s doing.
