The compromise 95
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(It’s nearly Christmas! Buy cartoon books for your friends, unless you’re a vile monster.)
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The Lesson 251
The media is aflame this morning with discussion of the agreement between the UK and EU with particular regard to Ireland, in which the UK essentially concedes just about everything including free movement, the thing most Brexiters voted Leave for.
We’ve largely avoided analysis of the Brexit negotiations here on Wings up until now, because there’s been a raft of people who are far more expert on the subject than us doing it at enormous length, very little of it directly concerned Scotland, and so nobody really needed our tuppence-worth. But this one’s big.
Everyone’s a loser 141
Yesterday at Holyrood the Scottish Liberal Democrats, in the name of Orkney MSP Liam McArthur, brought forward a motion of no confidence in Police Scotland, which was calmly but stingingly rebutted by Scottish Police Federation chair Calum Steele on Twitter. A debate went ahead in the chamber, of which the outcome was the below:
So the Lib Dems lost, Labour lost, the Greens lost, the Tories lost and the SNP lost. We’re glad that’s all cleared up and was a valuable use of everyone’s time, then.
Scotland is dead 268
What’s even the point any more?
Even if you don’t buy into any of the persistent health concerns about aspartame, there are already TWO chemically-sweetened Irn Bru brands (Sugar-Free and Xtra) for the people who can stomach the foul taste of fake sugar. But now nobody will be able to choose a version without it.
Alongside whisky, Irn-Bru is arguably THE iconic branded product of Scotland but now 120 years of history have just been casually crapped on and thrown aside in the name of the nanny state and corporate greed (aspartame is dirt-cheap compared to sugar, and Barr – having ruined Tizer, Red Kola and its other drinks the same way years ago – also wants to avoid the UK government’s sugar tax taking a bite out of its profits).
Let’s just shut down Holyrood, rebrand as North Britain and be done with it.
From the archives 400
On today’s news that support for independence is back up to 47%, and that Henry McLeish is calling for federalism again, whatever that is.
(NB In 2009 apparently “home rule” actually meant “independence”. Keep up.)
The faithful pet 390
(It’s nearly Christmas! Buy a cuddly Hamish The Lion toy here! Plus maybe some cartoon books.)
Minor roadworks alert 406
Scotland has 2,174 miles of trunk roads, of which 1.7 miles (that’s just under 0.08%) comprise the Queensferry Crossing. For the next few days those 1.7 miles are going to be subject to some partial lane closures on the southbound side for maintenance.
They’ll cause almost no disruption, because as it happens there’s another very similar bridge conveniently located just a couple of hundred yards away – linked directly to all the same roads – that traffic will use instead.
Not much of a story, is it? We don’t know how many miles of Scotland’s roads have roadworks on them on any given day of any given week, but we suspect it’s quite a lot. It tends not to make the news beyond a few seconds on the traffic bulletin at the end, but today was different.
The powers they have 205
Return of the classics 337
One letter too many 141
(It’s nearly Christmas! Buy a cuddly Hamish The Lion toy here! Plus maybe some cartoon books.)
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The National FAQ 416
Back in the summer we sang the praises of one of Scotland’s tiny semi-handful of pro-independence print organs, the splendid iScot. So it seems only fair that we should offer the same courtesy to the other one we mentioned at the time, The National. It’s three years old today – how the time’s flown – and its editor Callum Baird wants your support. Over to him.

























