Before we were so rudely interrupted, we were about to write a little more about the issues around the BBC’s takedown of this site’s YouTube channel. Because while we got a very respectable five-and-a-half minutes on Good Morning Scotland earlier today, you never have the time on radio or TV to say everything you want to.
Incidentally, we get the impression – nothing more solid than that – from a number of sources that BBC Scotland are somewhat out of the loop over the whole affair, and the impetus to silence Wings has actually come from London, which is slightly scarier. But aside from that, there are a number of really rather disturbing aspects to the situation.
No explanation of any kind was offered for the decision – we can’t imagine what has led YouTube to conclude all by itself that we don’t have the “necessary rights” – and it appears to let the BBC entirely off the hook from having to decide whether to launch a court case or concede the fair use of the clips.
We’ll be investigating further to see what we can find out.
So this morning, four days after our entire YouTube channel was deleted at the behest of the BBC, and after days of wrestling with YouTube’s shambolic robot-staffed admin maze, we finally managed to get an email out of them with the full list of what the BBC had complained about.
(If you should ever find yourself in a similar situation, we can recommend contacting @TeamYouTube on Twitter, who appear to be actual human people and can eventually prod the robots into action.)
The signatory was a London-based BBC lawyer, who’d plucked 13 videos apparently at random from the hundreds on our channel and decided to whine about them (citing US copyright law, rather than UK) up to four and a half years later.
And that’s all fair enough – it’s a legitimate news story. But what’s really odd about it is that both of the articles leave out what you might imagine would be a rather crucial piece of information.
As we’re writing this, our YouTube channel remains dead. We’re still trying to navigate through YouTube’s awful maze of robotic guards to reach a human being, and while at least two newspapers – The National and the Scotsman – have asked the BBC for a comment, none has been forthcoming.
The mainstream media’s attacks on this site in the last couple of years have included getting our Twitter account shut down in 2016, getting me arrested, having all of Wings’ electronic equipment confiscated by the police and now killing our YouTube channel full of crucial documentary evidence, most of which isn’t available anywhere else. (On top of an endless catalogue of smear stories and hatchet jobs, of course.)
Now, we’re not planning on going anywhere, but in the face of such a concerted and increasingly sinister assault aimed at silencing us, we also can’t make any guarantees that Wings itself will continue to survive. WordPress may prove as fragile in the face of malice as Twitter and YouTube have.
So in case we fall victim to another unexpected technical/censorship catastrophe, or suddenly commit “suicide”, you might want to strengthen the rest of the team.
We happened to be looking at a couple of old articles this morning, and noticed that some of them had blank spaces where videos should be.
We didn’t think much of it at first, because people do sometimes delete old videos or shut down their accounts, but when we checked one of them we discovered it was hosted on the Wings Over Scotland channel.
An alert reader sent us a piece of interesting follow-up info to yesterday’s piece on NHS Scotland costs. Because comparable figures for NHS England are available too, and they make for surprising reading.
These are the Scottish figures for medicine costs at list price, ie before any negotiated discounts that the health service is able to obtain:
The population of England, at 55 million, is just over 10 times that of Scotland (5.4m). So one would imagine that its like-for-like costs would come in at around £12 billion.
The BBC front page headline for this is actually just the alarming-sounding “Scottish prescription costs rise by 25%”, without even the qualifier about the timespan.
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Shield of the Americas. The cartels are Toast.” Mar 7, 20:02
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Rugby is a hooligans game played by gentlemen. Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans.” Mar 7, 19:52
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Nine tenths of all rational BTL comments, Alf. Don’t you ever feel an overwhelming urge to mock some of the…” Mar 7, 19:16
agentx on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Yes Scotland were great today and England were crap.” Mar 7, 19:06
David Holden on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Oh well I see Italy has just beaten the mighty England at rugby union only a few years after our…” Mar 7, 18:50
TURABDIN on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “VIVA L’ITALIA…… the «big one», bring it on Donaldo, after your mega dose of viagra of course.” Mar 7, 18:43
Red on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “whatever happened to the Scottish independence movement? When they killed nationalism, which was the intellectual foundation of the independence movement,…” Mar 7, 18:38
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “The majority of their drones have been fired at the UAE. Who also think Starmers a wanker.” Mar 7, 18:25
TURABDIN on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Forget Eurabia, we have Euramerica….. Some one’s end is nigh. Very Sad. Classical reason is cowering in a corner.” Mar 7, 18:17
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “It was on the good ship Dragon The deckhand started cryin’ His lipstick broke Coz he’s a poncy woke As…” Mar 7, 18:13
Alf Baird on Scotland’s Most Frightened: ““you already have a solid track record of mocking anybody” Pot and kettle, Hatey over Scotland, as ‘mocking anybody’ is…” Mar 7, 18:12
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Thousands, Willie? Reports indicate dozens certainly, maybe into the low hundreds in total. But thousands? Naw.” Mar 7, 18:11
Cynicus on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Had you told me last week that France would come to Murrayfield and scored 40 points I would’ve put my…” Mar 7, 17:11
Willie on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Seems that one of the UKs aircraft carriers is being readied in case it needs to head off to protect…” Mar 7, 16:59
Sven on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “I take it our Prime Minister was successful then, and they must have, “Released the sausages” then Mark. Calls for…” Mar 7, 16:38
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Does Milliband know it’s going full speed? That must be slaying the nautical miles per gallon figure. Won’t anybody think…” Mar 7, 16:35
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Not factually accurate, YL. We all know that in the Mad Mullah’s frame of reference, step 2 is: 2. Slay…” Mar 7, 16:22
Mark Beggan on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “HMS Sausage steaming full speed towards Cyprus. Britannia rules the waves.” Mar 7, 16:19
David Holden on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Well that was a bit special as Scotland beat France at Murrayfield in what has to be one of the…” Mar 7, 16:14
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Actually, Geri, your juxtaposition of R and love reminds me. I was wondering if your recent absence was down to…” Mar 7, 16:08
TURABDIN on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Aaaah…let us psychoanalyze the word SHITHOLES. «they make shitholes and call it peace» an update on an old theme. eneuch…” Mar 7, 15:20
Geri on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “You reap what you sow, hatey. Didn’t the good Lord tell you that? He’d spit you out of the land..…” Mar 7, 15:11
Hatey McHateface on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “Perhaps you need to read our history. Centuries of every horror imaginable. Our ancestors fought each other to a standstill…” Mar 7, 15:04
