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Wings Over Scotland


The Evergreens 415

Posted on September 20, 2017 by

It was nice to see an old friend back in the Scottish media today.

How times change.

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Nice Parliament you’ve got there 88

Posted on September 20, 2017 by

Be a shame if anything happened to it.

The warning notice 279

Posted on September 19, 2017 by

For anyone who thinks it’s safe to wait until after 2021 for another indyref.

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Black affronted 211

Posted on September 18, 2017 by

We struggled to summon up much more than a weary sigh about a story in a couple of the minor papers today (the Herald and Express), about a micro-scuffle at Saturday’s pro-indy rally in Glasgow. The most interesting thing about it appeared to be that the Express had written its article several hours before the event took place.

But we weren’t quite right.

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Fooled you twice 84

Posted on September 18, 2017 by

Three years ago today, Scotland bottled it. Almost uniquely in world history, its people turned down the chance to take control of their own affairs forever without a drop of blood being shed. They did so on the back of a package of vague promises, not least one of “extensive new powers”, almost all of which have subsequently been broken.

The Secretary of State for Scotland has chosen the anniversary of the referendum to let it be known that on top of that, the most fundamental building block of devolution – the premise that any power not explicitly reserved to Westminster in the Scotland Act 1998 would belong to Holyrood – will now be torn up, in the light of the exit from the EU that Scots were promised a No vote would protect them from.

In poker we call that a rubdown.

The nuclear umbrella 325

Posted on September 16, 2017 by

(Buy Chris Cairns’ second great book of cartoons here. Plus cuddly Hamish!)

Friends and allies 219

Posted on September 15, 2017 by

I apologise in advance to readers for the personal indulgence of this post.

Some months ago, quite coincidentally, I happened to avail myself of Twitter’s archive function, which allows users to download their entire tweet history. For various reasons I’ve been looking at it recently, and until I did I’d been unaware that it records not just a user’s own tweets, but also the tweets from other people that they’ve retweeted.

I’ve collected some of Wings’ tweets and retweets – in reverse chronological order – below. (Famously, of course, RTs aren’t necessarily endorsements, but you can decide on the underlying tone for yourself. Each of them links to the original tweet so you can see the whole conversation, or click on the links being referenced.)

They’re all on one subject, by way of illustration, because Twitter is a transient medium full of people all too eager to jump at the slightest excuse to make spurious and hateful allegations about everything (and anyone) under the sun to serve their own agendas, and for the sake of the future of human discourse it’s worth remembering that nothing exists in isolation or free of context, and we shouldn’t jump too easily to conclusions.

Because the other way never ends anywhere good.

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Kezia Dugdale Fact Check, Part 683 147

Posted on September 14, 2017 by

The Daily Record have continued to run Kezia Dugdale’s weekly column despite her resignation as Scottish Labour branch office manager (North British division), and this week we were interested to note her assessment of the devolution years, which could be summarised neatly as “Labour devolution good, SNP devolution bad”.

We raised an especially quizzical eyebrow at the claim that the 1999-2007 Labour/Lib Dem administrations had apparently ended homelessness. So we thought we’d do that thing we do when Kezia Dugdale claims something.

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The dog too big to see 71

Posted on September 14, 2017 by

This was Scottish Tory uberdunce Jamie Greene a few weeks ago, bitterly attacking the SNP for spending £22,000 on consulting the public over a policy on which the party won a landslide victory in the 2016 Holyrood election.

You might think that a government pursuing the manifesto policies it was elected on was a pretty legitimate thing to do, especially when it was asking voters for their views in order to shape that policy. Perhaps Greene was confused because the Tories have been acting as if they, not the SNP, won the election. But that raises another question.

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The boom blockers 219

Posted on September 13, 2017 by

A story from the Financial Times this week revealed the UK government’s latest act of sabotage against the Scottish renewable energy industry. It’s just one more in a long line stretching back to just after the independence referendum, when a string of “Better Together” promises were broken almost the minute the No vote was secured.

It was a particularly weak argument in the first place – if there’s a market in the rUK for Scottish energy, it’ll be there whether Scotland is independent or not. But it unravelled faster than most as soon as it had done its job.

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Making your own news 315

Posted on September 12, 2017 by

Today’s papers all report, with varying degrees of prominence and glee, this “story”:

But which internationally-regarded rankings are these, exactly?

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Sour grapes and bad wine 244

Posted on September 11, 2017 by

20 years ago today, Scotland voted to have a Parliament for the first time in almost three centuries, by an overwhelming margin (although with modest enthusiasm – less than 10% more people actually voted for devolution than voted for independence in 2014, at 1.78m and 1.62m respectively).

Just 20 months after the vote the Parliament came into being, and Scotland’s media has been complaining about how useless it is ever since.

Today’s newspapers commemorate the anniversary by unleashing the full pontificating weight of the punditariat – most of whom have been opining wearily on Holyrood’s failings for the entire period – to bleat with their customary single voice about what a disappointment it’s all been.

The weird thing is that after all that time, none of them can actually explain why.

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    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Large in size, small in intellectJul 13, 15:45
    • Captain Caveman on Just Good Friends: “@Aidan In the interests of fairness and balance, Aidan, Fatso is anything but “little”. The twat can barely squeeze into…Jul 13, 15:23
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “If it’s such a cracking idea, why hasn’t the private owner of Grangemouth realised it?Jul 13, 15:08
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “The only relevant benchmark for Scotland’s ECONOMIC POTENTIAL is with our small nation peers, most of whom are in EFTA.…Jul 13, 14:59
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Yeah you don’t like people calling out your hysterical drivel do you little manJul 13, 14:56
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “norway has relatively high oil prices for its citizens but this hides a number of things – the duty goes…Jul 13, 14:52
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “https://archive.ph/SMuis we go backwards, the “backward” nations go forwards. Nigeria also subsidises energy prices for its citizens.Jul 13, 14:44
    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “https://archive.ph/p2Bsf why doesn’t england shut down its 5 oil refineries and just import the refined products from amsterdam. – doesn’t…Jul 13, 14:38
    • James on Just Good Friends: “What an unending stream of pish. Away and lie in yer water.Jul 13, 14:35
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “You mean apart from the aforementioned £200m? Scotland is a declining market for oil products, due to policy choices that…Jul 13, 13:54
    • James on Just Good Friends: ““Aidan” That’s the whole point, prick, they can find money (our money) to save English refineries (a country with no…Jul 13, 13:34
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Who is “they”? The UK government who neither owned nor operated it?Jul 13, 13:18
    • James on Just Good Friends: ““Aidan”; Fuck off ya Yoon bampot. They closed Grangemouth. There is no longer an oil refinery in Scotland.Jul 13, 12:56
    • sarah on Just Good Friends: “War of the Worlds? It’s a guess as I’ve not read it.Jul 13, 12:33
    • James Cheyne on Just Good Friends: “Alf Baird, While busy clearing out the house, I came across a book titled ,The White Country by David D…Jul 13, 12:26
    • sarah on Just Good Friends: “@ agent x at 7.47 on 12th July “those links don’t work for me”. Sorry agent x, IT isn’t my…Jul 13, 12:17
    • Captain Caveman on Just Good Friends: “@Aidan 😀 I’ve heard the expression “great oaks from small acorns” but this really does take the biscuit, good old…Jul 13, 12:13
    • James Cheyne on Just Good Friends: “Northcode. 12 july, 9:52 pm, Excellent post.Jul 13, 12:00
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “You mean aside from the £200m already committed to Grangemouth?Jul 13, 11:58
    • James on Just Good Friends: ““…The UK government is working to rescue an English oil refinery where hundreds of jobs are at risk. The Lindsey…Jul 13, 11:48
    • TURABDIN on Just Good Friends: “A QUHEIN LETERATOUR, «We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy,…Jul 13, 11:33
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “@Andy – and to put that in context, a petition to secure the release of a dog from a dog…Jul 13, 11:21
    • TURABDIN on Just Good Friends: “OK, WE ALL GET IT that union treaty was total gruel, cauld kale, and by today’s standards probably illegal, but…Jul 13, 10:46
    • Andy Ellis on Just Good Friends: “So a whopping 675 signatures on the petition now? I wonder what explains that given you constantly advertise it on…Jul 13, 09:14
    • Chas on Too Tight To Mention: “Hopefully somewhere where they do not have an internet connection.Jul 13, 08:22
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Inspirational stuff, NC. Do The Collected Speeches Of Nicola Sturgeon next.Jul 13, 00:30
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Stick around, Dave, all will become clear. OK, maybe not the posts in Scots.Jul 13, 00:10
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Ah kent ye’d say that, Alf. Remarkable, no?, hoo muckle fowk pick up ootside o formal education when they’re interested…Jul 13, 00:07
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Epic fail there, YL Sah! Mind and keep your UK passport and your UK driving license safe. It’s the “logical”…Jul 13, 00:02
    • Young Lochinvar on Just Good Friends: “🙂Jul 12, 23:05
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