Wings Over Scotland

If you vote Scottish Labour:

And if you vote Scottish Conservative:

Always good to know.

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It’s probably overdue that we start collecting these together. So here’s Sir John Major on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, explaining why a “once in a lifetime” referendum should in fact be held again because its outcome was determined by something that turned out to be untrue.

Which is, of course, totally different to Scotland being told to vote No in 2014 in order to stay in the European Union, because [REASONS TO FOLLOW AT SOME POINT]

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The entire Scottish media has today leapt like starving dogs at a tin of Chappie on a new “study” by right-wing flag-crazed imperialist nutjobs T***e I*****s, which claims to prove that an independent Scotland would have a BLACK HOLE!!! of infinity squillion pounds and all the crops would wither in the fields and stamps would be £5000 each and we’d be invaded by space monsters and all the usual stuff you’d expect.

(In all seriousness for a moment, it genuinely tries to flog the “fiscal transfer” myth and the “Scotland would have to join the Euro” myth and a bunch of other Better Together Greatest Hits that were utterly debunked old hat half a decade ago, and in order to make its economic case work it basically pretends that Brexit isn’t happening.)

But at the bottom of its article the New Statesman offers to link its readers to the full extent of the author’s professional economic expertise and well-argued case, and in fairness if you click the link they do exactly that.

Credit where due, it’s an uncanny likeness of the gloomy wee fella.

Labour MP Stella Creasy, explaining to Sarah Smith on today’s Sunday Politics why she backs a so-called “People’s Vote” on Brexit because voters should have the right to change their mind about a referendum if circumstances change.

Except, as always, for viewers in Scotland.

Oh God. Would you look at the absolute state of this, readers?

Let’s make like everybody’s mental health and break that down.

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The Daily Record’s politics lead story today is a slightly underwhelming poll that shows 41% of Scots believe the Tories are carrying out a power grab against the Scottish Parliament, against 34% who think they aren’t (and 25% who have no idea).

Which seems a good time to round up the last results of our own most recent poll, and some slightly disturbing revelations about the Scottish public’s grasp of devolution.

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Dear Mr. Trump,

I’m a big fan of your work.

Especially your later stuff. You are the obvious natural successor to those other great leaders, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush – the perfect combination of dodgy and thick. You’ve got it all.

Since the first day of your tangeroid slithering into Barack’s old gaff, you’ve gone from strength to strength. I thought building a thousand mile wall to stop people escaping would be your greatest triumph. But putting kids in cages? Genius.

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Most of Scottish Twitter has been enjoying itself greatly for the last few hours after England’s exit from the World Cup, but scattered in amongst the amusing memes has been a fair amount of angst about victors Croatia – a nation of 4 million people – being in the final when Scotland once again failed to qualify.

And while we’ll more than happily listen to any amount of criticism of the unbelievably incompetent, hapless clowns who’ve been in charge of the SFA/SPL/SPFL for the last several decades, that judgement is a bit harsh on the players and coaches and the nation as a whole. Because there really hasn’t been much in it.

Scotland’s qualification for World Cup 2018 hinged and ultimately faltered on a split second and a single badly-chosen pass in stoppage time.

That really is how close it was.

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Scotia episode 2, because posting anything about the World Cup feels too mean.