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Wings Over Scotland


A sour taste 223

Posted on September 23, 2015 by

Alert readers may recall an incident last year in which the Scottish media got itself very worked up about some independence supporters threatening to boycott holiday company Barrhead Travel after its owner sent a barking-mad letter to staff about how the company would go out of business if Scotland voted Yes.

The Telegraph, Express, Times, Daily Mail and Scotsman were among those covering the story at length – with the latter going so far as an extraordinary comparison to the Nazi atrocity of Kristallnacht – and someone called Jim Murphy opined that it was “a new low” and “the worst type of negative politics”, despite the SNP having discouraged and disassociated itself from any boycott.

So we’re sure that you won’t be able to move later today and tomorrow for newspaper articles about something similar, but significantly worse, that happened this weekend.

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At first glance 102

Posted on September 22, 2015 by

A story in the Scotsman tonight reports how the Scottish Parliament’s independent research body SPICE has found – contrary to long-running claims from Labour – that the Scottish Government has OVER-funded the eight-year Council Tax freeze.

scotct

And that’s all very well, but not exactly stop-the-presses stuff – nobody reading this site is going to be terribly surprised at Scottish Labour being caught out in a lie. But the party’s house newspaper the Daily Record went for a subtly different angle on the story that did manage to provoke us to raise an eyebrow.

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Separatists and their squillions 140

Posted on September 22, 2015 by

So we weren’t expecting this. The Telegraph have sent us a reply after we complained to IPSO about this. It’s worth a read, so we thought we’d let you see it.

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There’ll always be a Britain 177

Posted on September 22, 2015 by

Kezia Dugdale on the BBC’s “Good Evening Wales” yesterday.

(Good Evening Wales, BBC Radio Wales, 21 September 2015)
.

“Wales and Scotland are so much smaller in size than the rest of the… the rest of England.”

The impressive bit is that that’s what she said AFTER she paused for thought.

A cautionary tale 250

Posted on September 21, 2015 by

So today we read this:

pfearjp

And it was good.

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A short intermission 320

Posted on September 21, 2015 by

We’ve got a book to read today, folks, so we’ll be with you later.

mbacon

We expect it to be in the top three funniest things we read today, but to be honest with you we wouldn’t like to commit to anything more specific than that.

Kezia Dugdale Fact Check, part 673 216

Posted on September 20, 2015 by

Kezia Dugdale talking to Gordon Brewer on BBC Scotland today:

“I’m astonished that you’ve spent 10 minutes in this interview talking about independence and Trident when almost 50% of the poorest kids in the country can’t read […] I’m sure you’d be shocked to know that 50% of the poorest kids leave our schools unable to read.”

We suspect he would too. Because it’s total cobblers.

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A tale of two rallies 188

Posted on September 19, 2015 by

Hope Over Fear in George Square today:

hopeoverfear

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Why we won’t give up 161

Posted on September 19, 2015 by

One year ago today.

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The Two Or Three Stooges 49

Posted on September 19, 2015 by

threestooges

Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.

The rest of the story 142

Posted on September 18, 2015 by

Alert readers of The National will have noticed an article by me in it today. It reads slightly weirdly, jumping from subject to subject, because it was originally done as an interview but they then decided to cut the questions out to get more text in.

tnrsc

That’s all absolutely fine – they okayed it with me first – but some readers may be interested in seeing the full original piece, which is about twice as long. If you are, you can read it below. If you’re not, um, do what you like. I’m not your mum.

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The Persuader 258

Posted on September 18, 2015 by

Nobody else is going to do this, so we’ll do it ourselves.

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