Wings Over Scotland

I was going to write this article yesterday, but 2024’s miserable damp squib of a summer unexpectedly delivered a beautiful day – a perfect 20C of unbroken sunshine with a refreshing slight breeze – so I went for a nice walk instead.

Rather than my usual bird-feeding and bear-patrolling beat along the river and canal, I headed off on what used to be my standard summer stroll: up the long steep hill to Beckford’s Tower and its associated cemetery with stunning views over the city.

I’ll scatter a few pics from the walk throughout this feature, as otherwise I’m afraid it’s going to be a bit depressing and angering.

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There are now just 10 days until the general election. Wings has never told its readers how to vote and we’re not going to start now. Which is lucky, because if we were, we wouldn’t have a clue how to.

Just, y’know, not for any of these wretched, worthless shiters.

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When you’ve been watching Scotland playing football for 50 years of your life, you become accustomed to disappointment. You expect disappointment. Anything better than disappointment becomes a bonus.

You also come to expect injustice, like last night’s inexplicable failure of VAR – which has unfailingly spotted micro-infringements like a player’s toenail being offside – to even take a look at a nailed-on stonewall penalty in the last minutes of the game.

But because you’re so used to these things, you’re not expecting rage.

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Having solved cat hunger in Greece, the tireless Holiday Boy has now turned his hand to addressing Scotland’s crippling golfing shortage, so we’ve got a different sort of cartoon again for you this weekend.

The clip below is from a 1981 arcade videogame called Venture, by Exidy, in which you play a cheerful character called Winky on a mission to loot treasure from a series of monster-infested dungeons.

For the purposes of this article the treasure in the room above, which takes the form of a castle tower, represents Scottish politics. The room itself is the Union.

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This is one of the strangest political campaign videos we’ve ever seen.

Join us as we try to make sense of it.

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The SNP released their general election manifesto today. We’re not going to link you to it, because we don’t want to be responsible for wasting your time. This is everything it has to say on the party’s (cough) strategy for achieving independence.

It deserves much, much less respect than we’re giving it. Tomorrow, ice lolly reviews.

I’m a professional community organiser, and a tenant and housing activist for some 20 years. I saw the old Scottish Tenants Organisation get smashed by Jack McConnell’s government to make way for council housing privatisation, which in Glasgow created the Glasgow Housing Association.

I’ve long wanted to rebuild a national body to give housing schemes a political voice and to push to end the housing crisis. That’s why I got involved with Living Rent, organising my community to become their first branch. Little did I know that would lead to a brush with crazed gender ideology, and see Queer Theory used to try to destroy it.

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Holiday Boy is still off single-handedly feeding the cats of Greece, but the modern SNP is all the cartoon you need.

We’re still trying not to pay attention to the election because it’s so tedious and awful and pointless, but this is worth putting on the record because it’s in The National and otherwise nobody’s going to read it.

Short version: all the way back to surrender.

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Particularly alert readers may recall this from a few months ago:

An SNP pledge? About independence? Bound to be kept, then, right?

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Holiday Boy has of course chosen the general election campaign to spend the next three weeks feeding stray cats somewhere sunny, so here’s a cartoon by the brilliant webcomicname that summarises the Baillie Gifford story for anyone joining us late.

Because, y’know, idiots.

January 2018, with no general election due for four and a half years: “I very rarely talk about Scottish independence in the chamber, because I talk about things that matter”

June 2024, with an election in four weeks and a £91,346 salary, expenses and pension at stake: “ROBERT THE BRUCE! BANNOCKBURN! DECLARATION OF ARBROATH! FLOWER OF SCOTLAND! FREEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOMMMM!”

We suppose at least it distracts her from wondering what sex she is.

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