The end of a bad song 30
Posted on
December 31, 2017 by
Chris Cairns
It’s the love that makes it worthwhile 97
Posted on
December 30, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scottish people are the BEST at compliments 🙂
Not minding your language 293
Posted on
December 29, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In our latest Panelbase poll, as usual we took the opportunity to ask various social-attitudes questions as well as political ones, and some which span both categories. One of the most controversial posts ever on Wings addressed the subject of Gaelic, and having given everyone two-and-a-bit years to calm the hell down we thought we’d see what the Scottish electorate thought.
That’s a pretty tight call. Let’s have a wee delve in the data depths.
Friendly neighbourhood rival fans 135
Posted on
December 28, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Not too many surprises here. (Except, perhaps, the 18% of respondents who claimed to be football fans yet also said they had no interest in the World Cup.)
Excluding the disinterested the numbers were:
England 24%
England’s opponents 38%
Others 40%
And for people actually born in Scotland the figures came out at
England 20%
England’s opponents 41%
Others 39%
And that’s pretty much the natural order of things. If you’re a “Rangers” fan and you cheer for Celtic when they play (let’s not say “compete”) in the Champions League, or a Celtic fan who backed “Rangers” in the Petrofac Training Cup, you’re the weirdo.
The Green Ink Gang 232
Posted on
December 27, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Readers, have you ever noticed how the letters pages of Scottish newspapers are full every day of the same names, a clutch of a couple of dozen super-hardcore frothing ultra-Yoons tirelessly and reflexively raging against independence, the SNP and pretty much anything without a Union Jack on it?
Have you ever found yourself thinking it must be some sort of co-ordinated group that gets together, plans topics in advance then writes in backing each other up, to create an illusion of speaking for a wide cross-section of society, before dismissing that idea as a daft paranoid conspiracy and getting on with your day?
Because we thought that too, until an alert reader infiltrated it.
Our very favourite bit is “we must not advertise the existence of the group. It can be mentioned verbally, in safe environment, that some people share letters/encourage each other, but anything more risks editors discriminating, nationalists reacting, and this diverse group being portrayed as a monolithic campaign”.
Probably don’t put it in an email, then. But your secret’s safe with us, lads.
The zero-faced liars 57
Posted on
December 27, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
So this isn’t true, any more than it was when Labour first promised it 22 years ago.
But the sheer number of ways in which it’s a lie is quite the thing.
The not-so-nearly man 62
Posted on
December 27, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We were having an idle browse on Google Play Books this morning for some bargain holiday reading when we happened upon a startling new cover for Chris Mullin’s 1982 classic A Very British Coup.
We found ourselves thinking “rise to what, exactly?”
And as it happened, we had some new Panelbase polling data on that.
Fight and you may die 209
Posted on
December 26, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scotland’s favourite Scottish movie is still Braveheart, folks.
But the devil, as always, is in the detail.
Not much longer now 196
Posted on
December 25, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Have a great one, readers.
Alex Cole-Hamilton Fact Check 137
Posted on
December 24, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The prissy, easily-upset and extravagantly-funded Lib Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton tweeted this this morning:
Now, we’re not sure “you’ve had the government you’ve voted for about half the time in a two-horse race” would be all that great a selling point in the first place, but shall we see if it’s actually true, readers?
How the Scottish media works 289
Posted on
December 23, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Our poll story yesterday was a pretty interesting piece of politics news considering it’s the Christmas dead season. We put an interesting new angle on the independence question, and posted all the poll data so that reporters had plenty to get their teeth into. And we released it at lunchtime so they had plenty of time to get it into today’s editions.
Remarkably, though, none of the Scottish media – with the honourable exception of The National, who made it their front page splash – thought that the best numbers for independence in many months merited even a dismissive passing mention. Scotland’s political hacks doggedly ignored it on social media. And then things got weird.
The tweet above appeared briefly – having been posted at 11.44am it was gone by no later than 12.10pm – on the Twitter account of the Herald. The story it linked to cannot be found through the paper’s website, though it’s still hidden away on the servers.
(Its sister paper the Evening Times carried the story, then outright deleted it.)
And the reason why provides a fascinating insight into how the press operates.
