Her Master’s Voice 279
Posted on
December 24, 2016 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
The Scottish Brexit FAQ 888
Posted on
December 20, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’ll be honest with you, readers, we’re not looking forward to 2017 one little bit. It’s going to be the most tedious year in Scottish politics since we started this website, and perhaps since the advent of devolution.
Other than the mild distraction of the council elections in May – which are likely to be a bit of a damp squib due to the deadening effect of STV and the propensity of Labour and the Tories to do deals to keep the SNP out of power – pretty much nothing even a little bit interesting is going to happen.
All we ARE going to hear about is Brexit and the EU, over and over and over and over again, and everything we’re going to hear is the same empty, pointless, space-filling speculation we’ve already been hearing since June. So let’s just get it down, and then we can link to it every week and go and do something useful with our time instead.
The eternal opposition 134
Posted on
December 19, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The chap in the picture below, holding a placard with his name on it so that he doesn’t forget it, is Scottish Conservative MSP Jamie Greene.
He could probably do with writing a few other things on there too.
News just in 136
Posted on
December 19, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is a picture of the Sun, which reports confirm became visible in the skies above parts of the Northern Hemisphere earlier today.
A similar event is widely expected to take place around the same time tomorrow.
All the people, all the time 358
Posted on
December 17, 2016 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
In your free and fair press today 246
Posted on
December 16, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Let’s have a quick round-up, shall we?
This is a lie. There are in fact no “tax hikes” in the budget at all. The threshold for the higher rate of tax is increasing with inflation, ie in real terms it’s staying the same as it is now. Councils are being ALLOWED to raise Council Tax but not FORCED to.
But the Mail lying is a reflex action. What about the rest?
All news is bad news 339
Posted on
December 14, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Figures released yesterday indicated that the number of full-time teachers employed in Scotland had risen by 253 over the past year, despite budget cuts imposed by the UK government’s austerity programme. This obviously presented the Scottish media with a dilemma: how could such statistics be presented as an “SNP BAD” story?
Luckily, we’re dealing with experienced professionals here.
The missing numbers round 261
Posted on
December 13, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We often say here on Wings that our job is to teach people to instantly recognise the sneaky tricks used by the media to try to create false impressions without saying things that are technically untrue. (Because despite the tiny size they’re allowed to print corrections at, they’re still rather embarrassing.)
A key technique is to look at a headline or story and immediately ask what you’re NOT being told. So here’s an easy example from today’s Scottish Daily Mail.
What’s been left out there, readers?
Court circulars 173
Posted on
December 12, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Just a brief update on some legal shenanigans. Having received no response to TWO lawyers’ letters, I’ve filed a court claim against Express Newspapers over false and defamatory claims made in an article by Siobhan McFadyen (sourced by JK Rowling) on the Sunday Express website of 30 October, as detailed in this Wings article.
The court fee was partly funded by popular politics pundit John McTernan.
The ratio of truth 194
Posted on
December 11, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Alert readers will remember that last month we debunked a front-page story from the Scottish Daily Mail about SNP MPs’ expenses, which made the spectacularly untrue claim that they were more expensive than their Unionist predecessors, when in fact they cost significantly less and did far more work.
A couple of days ago the Mail finally ran a “clarification”. And we thought you might like to know exactly how much more the Mail values lies than truth.
The highlighted areas on the picture above occupy 440,107 pixels.
Red, white and blue 215
Posted on
December 10, 2016 by
Chris Cairns
Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.
At the top of the dial 299
Posted on
December 09, 2016 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’ll be honest, there are some bits of this that make us wince, and unfortunately most of them come in the first two minutes where they’ll do the most damage in terms of getting a persuadeable voter to watch the rest of it. But it’s an important piece of work, containing stuff even we didn’t know about, and it should be seen.
If you want to show it to people who aren’t already Yes, though, we’d suggest giving them a link that starts 123 seconds in.
