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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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Category comment, media, scottish politics, wtf

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.

Tags:
Category scottish politics, wtf

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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Category apocalypse, scottish politics, wtf

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.

Category comment, culture, scottish politics, wtf

Two percentage points 118

Posted on May 12, 2014 by

Surely. At least.

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Category media, scottish politics, wtf

A catastrophe for Africa 368

Posted on April 25, 2014 by

This clip comes from yesterday’s “Good Morning Scotland”, around 2h 35m in.

soundwave2

It features Professor Paul Collier, who is apparently the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and therefore an obvious choice for the BBC as a go-to guy on the subject of Scottish politics.

We think you’ll find it a stimulating and thought-provoking opinion.

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Category audio, comment, scottish politics, world, wtf

Keep watching the skies 196

Posted on April 16, 2014 by

Remember, readers, how last year “Better Together” tried to ridicule the fact that we’d put a satirical line about “space monsters” into one of the questions in our first Panelbase poll? Remember how it was the most absurd, stupid thing imaginable?

spacethreat

That was the UK Secretary of State for Defence, yesterday.

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Category comment, scottish politics, wtf

A genuine mystery 159

Posted on April 16, 2014 by

We honestly don’t understand how anyone with electricity in their house or a newsagent anywhere within a 30-mile radius can possibly come to say things like this:

“[Independence] is a view not shared by IT teacher Elaine Coates, originally from Glasgow but now in Tettenhall. The mother of three has lived in England for 30 years but has no strong views on independence.

‘I just don’t see how it will work, I think Scotland would be crazy to do this,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t have any oil so how is it going to get its income? Whisky and tourism, probably, but that’s it.'”

Firstly, Elaine, we’d have to say that “it would be crazy” DOES actually sound like quite a strong view on independence to us. But in all seriousness, leaving all snark and sarcasm aside, how on Earth does a human being living in the UK in 2014, seemingly not inside any sort of secure institution, come to believe something like that?

Ms Coates isn’t some lone madwoman. Other people, also not resident in mental hospitals, say the same thing. And we get that lots of people aren’t into politics. But when it comes to ignorance about your own nation, being unaware that Scotland has oil is somewhere on a par with not knowing that Great Britain is an island. How in the world do you go through decades of adult life without ever picking up on that fact?

It’s not a rhetorical question. Can someone actually explain it to us?

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Category comment, investigation, scottish politics, wtf

No jocks please, we’re British 222

Posted on April 13, 2014 by

One of the great things about this site’s sky-high viewing figures is that on the rare occasions when we might be, for example, out having a walk in the park to get over the crushing disappointment of somehow losing yet another Scottish Cup semi-final, our ever-vigilant readers will remain alert.

Otherwise, we might have missed this.

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Category comment, disturbing, scottish politics, uk politics, video, wtf

Neither national nor collective 114

Posted on April 10, 2014 by

It’s late, but we couldn’t let this one pass.

nhstogether

Heavens, where do we start?

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Category comment, reference, scottish politics, wtf

Mork calling Orson, come in Orson 118

Posted on April 04, 2014 by

Our email inbox this week has been packed with people sending in their Labour MP’s or MSP’s responses to our questions about the party’s proposals for the devolution of taxation (aka “Devo Nano”) in the event of a No vote.

morkmindy

With the exception of the very first reply – an arrogant, rude, dismissive effort from Tom Harris – until this evening all of them have been the exact same text except for minor variations in the introductory sentences, with some members choosing to insert little digs at this site but others being more polite to their constituents.

But tonight everything changed.

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Category analysis, scottish politics, wtf

The Devo Nano Policy Explosion 469

Posted on March 28, 2014 by

We’ve had a second response from a Labour elected representative to a reader, regarding our six simple factual questions about the party’s “Devo Nano” proposals for the Scottish Parliament. This one’s from Richard Baker, regional MSP for North East Scotland and Labour’s former Shadow Finance Secretary.

richardbaker

We were extremely surprised by its contents. You can read the reply, stripped only of two paragraphs of introductory waffle about Keir Hardie, below.

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Category analysis, investigation, scottish politics, wtf

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