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Archive for the ‘wtf’


Commonwealth Games begin 355

Posted on July 23, 2014 by

Scotland enjoys the opening ceremony.

orange

The BBC, home of the facts 387

Posted on July 23, 2014 by

There’s an article on the BBC website today with the self-explanatory title of “Scottish independence: How would the UK fare without Scotland?”

bbcfacts

On the left is what it said yesterday (that losing Scotland would be bad for the UK). On the right is what it says today (that losing Scotland would be good for the UK).

Does anyone know what calamity befell Scotland’s economy overnight?

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Return of the living dead 207

Posted on July 20, 2014 by

For independence supporters of a certain age, the 1979 devolution referendum is one of the most infamous moments in Scottish history. While a wafer-thin majority of Scots voted Yes to devolution, an electoral fiddle conceived by a Labour MP meant that it didn’t happen, and part of the reason was that in effect, dead people were counted as No votes.

(We won’t go into all the details here, but basically an impossible threshold was set for turnout, and people who’d died but hadn’t yet been removed from the electoral roll were counted towards the calculation of that threshold.)

We were put in mind of it by an odd development this evening.

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The guest editor 146

Posted on July 12, 2014 by

We assume Danny Alexander has been writing for the Record this morning.

record3bn

We still haven’t been issued with our special UK Goverment Scottish Independence Costs Calculator by the Treasury, but we nevertheless still feel fairly confident that £550 million minus £250 million is £300 million, not £3 billion.

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This could be a record 259

Posted on July 05, 2014 by

There was an article on independence in the Huffington Post yesterday, which we’ve only just seen. Penned by one Dr Nicholas M Almond, a “cognitive neuropsychologist and author” who also has cerebral palsy – a physically debilitating condition but one which doesn’t affect mental capacity in any way – we think it may, word for word, be the most spectacularly ill-informed and offensively moronic article on the subject of Scotland ever to appear in a recognised and vaguely respectable publication.

howlmoon

For fun, we thought we’d count the errors.

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Twitching corpse stamped on 287

Posted on June 13, 2014 by

Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir has a piece today on the nasty comments a tiny handful of idiots made to JK Rowling this week, which – unlike the alleged “barrage” of abuse supposedly unleashed against Labour activist Clare Lally – can at least definitely be said to have happened.

janmoir

The piece is a tedious one-sided rant, but at the end something awesome happens.

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The missing (hundreds of) millions 114

Posted on June 04, 2014 by

Today’s papers are full of a report from right-wing thinktank the Institute for Fiscal Studies proclaiming that an independent Scotland would be even more unaffordable than the last time it was completely unaffordable, tax increases, public spending cuts, plagues of frogs, yada yada yada.

(We’re paraphrasing the Executive Summary there somewhat, but that’s the gist.)

We’re just not sure everyone’s got their sums right.

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Another one of our blackouts 142

Posted on June 01, 2014 by

We’ve been toasting in the sun with the Wings Emergency Kitten most of today, readers, celebrating the fact that Wings Over Scotland now has more unique readers per month than the sales of any Scottish newspaper.

(As of May we’re reaching 253,000 people monthly, whereas the best-selling paper, the Scottish Sun, shifts 248,000 copies. It is, of course, a ridiculously unfair comparison for all sorts of reasons, but it’s still nice as a purely symbolic milestone.)

Even so, when an alert reader sent us a picture of today’s Scottish Sunday Express we wondered if we might have baked our brains a bit too much, because it carried a feature about something that we didn’t remember doing at all.

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Working for the Yankee dollar 148

Posted on May 18, 2014 by

It’s been a grim sort of day today, so let’s finish off with something a bit lighter.

“William Wallace, before Mel Gibson (who is, let’s remind ourselves, a Yankee) made the factually inaccurate film in 1995, was a symbol for the unification of Great Britain, a unionist hero.”

We highly recommend reading the entire thing. It seems not to be a spoof.

This is not a spoof 180

Posted on May 16, 2014 by

We have not made this story up. It’s not the work of BBC Scotlandshire.

bbcoil5yrs

Just casually, there, beneath an unassuming, innocuous headline. No big deal.

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FOR COMMON SENSE 279

Posted on May 13, 2014 by

Because some of you won’t have seen it yet. This is NOT a spoof.

jean

That’s what they think will persuade people to vote No, readers.

Two percentage points 118

Posted on May 12, 2014 by

Surely. At least.

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    • Anthem on The Nobodies: “Ah, so that’s why BP bought up all those natural energy licences and about to pump £bn’s into it. They’re…Jul 31, 21:21
    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “Because the Scottish government is even keener on Nutt Zero than WM. Because the Scottish government has committed Scotland to…Jul 31, 19:51
    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “Strange as it is for me to be sticking up for Confused, he does have a point. I am willing…Jul 31, 19:43
    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “It’s doable if we get the towel heids to do all the hard bits. No doubt that’s the part of…Jul 31, 19:32
    • Insider on The Nobodies: “Anthem @ 6:05, You’re having a laugh, aren’t you ?Jul 31, 18:53
    • Anthem on The Nobodies: “A little off topic, but why can’t the Scottish government purchase the oil & Gas from BP? It would make…Jul 31, 18:05
    • Jay on The Nobodies: “Thank you Agent xJul 31, 17:16
    • Minceheid on The Nobodies: “To be fair they did have a few clever ideas back in yer Golden Age, but sadly it all went…Jul 31, 16:59
    • 100%Yes on The Nobodies: “The words coming out of your mouth started Nazi Party in Germany. But its only joking, its a same that…Jul 31, 16:26
    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “Occam’s Razor suggests they did invent zero. They needed to put something on the measuring stick to record their cultural…Jul 31, 15:25
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    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “All very true, Northy, but on an Indy supporting site like this one, you omit (I’m certain accidentally 🙂 )…Jul 31, 15:12
    • Confused on The Nobodies: “spain invaded by 49 BILLION potential workers to boost the ECONMYUNTHENETZERO (ursula never done lyin was down there, taking line…Jul 31, 15:01
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    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “@Captain Caveman says: 31 July, 2026 at 12:52 pm ‘I love the way the BBC described these 49,000 as “500…Jul 31, 13:31
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    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “@ Young Lochinvar says: 30 July, 2026 at 11:05 pm “I see the casting of a black actress … is…Jul 31, 10:14
    • Hatey McHateface on The Nobodies: “The “Spanish Gibraltar”, Ceuta, is appealing for help from the mother country after an estimated 2 to 3 thousand Moroccans…Jul 31, 08:26
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