The UK’s political commentariat is afire with shock today over a new poll.
The poll showed that Tory members would by margins of around 2:1 willingly sacrifice Scotland and Northern Ireland – along with the UK economy and their own party – to make sure Brexit happened. Which is all very interesting, unless you read Wings in which case you knew it a year ago.
The Times, 30 June 1998.
Wait, Michael who? Well, this should be good.
You could actually weep for some of the people in our country.
But the point Yes supporters understand and Unionists don’t is that it’s everything to do with the question – because “who is or might be Prime Minister, or which party is in government” is never our choice. It’s the choice of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland together. One of those countries outnumbers the others by 8 to 1.
More than that, it isn’t just who is Prime Minister now, or who may be in the future – it’s every single Prime Minister in my 35 years of existence on this planet.
Our 2019 crowdfunder now has just 24 hours to go, and to be honest it’s exceeded our wildest expectations. Despite the moribund state of Scottish politics over the last two years we’re currently around £3200 beyond the previous all-time record, and that’s just phenomenal. You never stop taking our breath away, folks.
But we’re going to rattle the tin one last time by repeating something we said last year.
Imagine our surprise, etc.
Well, they do say a day is a long time in politics, etc. But just like David Cameron did on the day after the indyref, it’s nice to be reminded once again that Tory “respect” for Scotland has an average lifespan of less than 24 hours.
We probably don’t push the annual Wings fundraiser hard enough. Sure, we tweet about it every few days, but other than that we pretty much leave it to get on with itself – we haven’t run an article about it since launching it nearly a month ago.
That’s partly because thanks to the phenomenal generosity of the approximately 1% of readers who’ve donated so far, we’ve very comfortably covered our basic outgoings for the next 12 months and then some – the vast salaries for myself and near-regular cartoonist Mr Cairns, of course, plus webhosting and various other operating costs (eg commission to the fundraising/payment processing companies), money for some more opinion polls and a boost to the Wings Fighting Fund.
But as it enters its last few days we’re going to nag you a bit now, because we don’t think there’s a better-value investment in the independence cause to be had anywhere.
With all costs covered, every £1 you donate from this point onwards will basically put FOUR copies of Wee Blue Book 2.0 through Scottish letterboxes when the next indyref happens, and if you know of a more practical and effective thing you can do to bring independence about with a quid then we’d love to hear about it.
We were rather startled to learn this morning that Brian Donohoe, the former Scottish Labour MP for Central Ayrshire, had been awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s latest Birthday Honours List.
Not by the award itself, but because we assumed he must have done a lot of unsung charity work in his community or something. But no, the title was conferred purely for “services to Parliament and politics”.
So we thought we’d do a recap.
We all know how enthusiastically newspapers love to cover any celebrity story relating to Scottish independence, and this is actually quite a dramatic one.
Because Dan Snow’s not just some hasbeen pop star or rando off Big Brother.
This should definitely work. Because as we all know, nothing weakens the resolve of Scottish nationalists like having the Union Jack rammed in their faces every minute.
This man wants to be Prime Minister, readers.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
