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Wings Over Scotland


What’s your point, caller? 288

Posted on March 17, 2015 by

For those of you who missed it, me ringing in to the Kaye Adams show this morning.

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Cross-vortex perspectives 105

Posted on March 17, 2015 by

Editorial in today’s Scottish Sun:

sunscot1

The Scottish Sun is around 80% the same newspaper as the English edition (with the bulk of the difference being accounted for by football coverage) so presumably the south-of-the-border version has a broadly similar view, right?

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The old hand 195

Posted on March 17, 2015 by

If we’re honest, readers, we almost never bother with BBC Scotland’s televised political coverage any more. We suspect the viewing figures for Scotland 2015 are down to fingers-and-toes territory now, and if last night’s edition – which we gritted our teeth and watched after noting the incredulous response on social media – is anything to go by, the state broadcaster is now using it to try out work-experience kids.

But we can cut fresh-faced new boy David Henderson (who suffered the indignity of being billed as Sarah Smith) a bit of slack for being outmanoeuvred by an experienced operator like Jim Murphy, who at one point in the show was actually interrogating the presenter rather than the other way round.

Kirsty Wark, regular anchor on the Corporation’s current-affairs flagship Newsnight, on the other hand, has no such excuses whatsoever.

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The squishy floor 146

Posted on March 16, 2015 by

Alert readers will have to decide for themselves whether bravado or sheer desperation is to blame, but Scottish Labour just can’t seem to stop themselves from lying to the people of Scotland about the formation of the next government.

Mindbogglingly, the party has just released a video in which Jim Murphy repeats the lie again, and in today’s Daily Record its Ayrshire candidate Sandra Osborne openly admits that “We are talking to people on the doorstep explaining that whoever ends up the biggest party after the election will form the next government”, despite it having been proved beyond the tiniest shred of dispute that that’s simply not true.

Fortunately, reinforcements have arrived.

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Putting [INSERT NAME HERE] first 134

Posted on March 16, 2015 by

When someone sent us a link last week to a picture of an Anas Sarwar election leaflet, we were immediately struck by the fact that it had the weird characteristic of being ostensibly handwritten but underlining every word in a sentence individually, which reminded us of one we’d seen from Douglas Alexander back in January.

So after a busy weekend of saving stray cats from going blind, we went to dig the two leaflets out, in the modest hope of getting a quick cheap joke about them both using the same fake-handwriting font. But instead we got a bit of a surprise.

puttingxfirst

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Spoken in jest 266

Posted on March 16, 2015 by

From today’s Sun (English edition only, natch).

image

This is how Scotland is seen in the largest part of the UK today. There’s nothing at all new about Scots being portrayed as “stealing” money rightfully belonging to England, of course, nor in the stereotype depicted by the Jimmy hat. It’s the word on the placard that tells the story: “immigrant”.

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The lemon pledges 92

Posted on March 15, 2015 by

A lot of people this week quoted a line supposedly from the former Labour cabinet minister Roy Jenkins, which runs “a statement is only interesting if a sane man could say the opposite”. We haven’t been able to verify if he ever really said that or not, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s true either way.

pledgecard

So where that leaves this mess is anyone’s guess.

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What Ed Balls didn’t say 124

Posted on March 15, 2015 by

If you ask them on social media, Labour MPs and activists will all hotly deny that the party signed up to the Conservatives’ plan for £30bn of austerity cuts in the next five years. It’ll be interesting to see whether they try to continue doing so in the light of Ed Balls’ appearance on the Andrew Marr Show this morning.

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So, yeah, this happened 274

Posted on March 14, 2015 by

ig2015

More than two weeks still to go. We don’t really know what to say, readers.

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The missing monkeys 163

Posted on March 14, 2015 by

Alert readers will have noticed that this week we’ve been fascinated by the differences between the mostly-identical Scottish and English editions of The Sun. For example, the editorial below from today’s English edition doesn’t make it across the border.

suncrazy

But that’s not the most interesting discrepancy.

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Calling the tune 129

Posted on March 14, 2015 by

hamishpiper

The Huffing Post 242

Posted on March 13, 2015 by

Last night: yes.

glasgowguardianglue

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    • Willie on Push The Button: “The charges relate to three incidents: a vehicle fire in Kentish Town, a fire at the prime minister’s private home…Apr 27, 22:52
    • TimePilot on Push The Button: “You are missing the point of what is otherwise a straighforward rational logic puzzle by imprinting it with your own…Apr 27, 22:30
    • Alf Baird on Push The Button: ““oddball ragtag of misfit Yoons” The colonialists aye noo suffer fae anxiety near every Scottish election, because they ken fine…Apr 27, 22:01
    • Southernbystander on Push The Button: “It was and I’m a Ronnie fan. Great match and Higgins came on really good towards the end of the…Apr 27, 19:44
    • Dan on Push The Button: “CC says: “B.O. that could make a grown man weep – and breath that could strip the fur from a…Apr 27, 19:23
    • agentx on Push The Button: “Great win by the “Wizard of Wishaw” today 🙂Apr 27, 19:23
    • Lorncal on Push The Button: “I meant that ‘suicidal empathy’ must be excised, not liberalism and tolerance. The ‘suicidally empathetic’ regard all old-style liberals (small…Apr 27, 19:18
    • Lorncal on Push The Button: “All the -isms do that, Captain: Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Stalinism, Maoism, Nationalism, Britishism, Americanism… They all demand that we make…Apr 27, 19:12
    • sarah on Push The Button: “Rev, we need a reprint of the Wee Blue Book so that all the people who couldn’t vote because under…Apr 27, 18:59
    • James on Push The Button: “Adrian; see post above, petal. Away back to your glossy mag.Apr 27, 18:52
    • Captain Caveman on Push The Button: “Exactly Aidan, maybe “more to be pitied than scorned”. He hasn’t exactly been spoilt has he? Penniless, porcine, B.O. that…Apr 27, 18:52
    • Lorncal on Push The Button: “‘Suicidal empathy’, Confused is almost entirely the preserve of the middle class/political class and is not bull of any kind.…Apr 27, 18:50
    • Aidan on Push The Button: “Exactly CC – the whole time I’ve been posting I don’t think I’ve seen “James” post a substantive comment or…Apr 27, 18:31
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    • Grog on Push The Button: “No I meant if your statistical confidence in the blue vote being between 78-82% was 99% let’s say. That isn’t…Apr 27, 18:12
    • Sven on Push The Button: ““Who would press it ?” Probably the same people who have to test, “Wet Paint, don’t touch” signs and stroll…Apr 27, 18:09
    • Northcode on Push The Button: “I am cancelled… by a unionist here whose sparkling wit I have long admired! Yes, folks, set aside my heavy…Apr 27, 18:02
    • Mark Beggan on Push The Button: “I think this question could have been made a lot easier if there was just one button saying: Do Not…Apr 27, 17:35
    • Captain Caveman on Push The Button: “Yeah…. as opposed to you randomly spouting “Prick” in response to posts, eh Fatso. I’m sure we’re all in awe…Apr 27, 17:31
    • Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: “@Aidan Relax. They’d deploy the F16s. They’d never get aff the groond!Apr 27, 16:31
    • James on Push The Button: “The comments section on Wings is poor with the repetive, accumulated shite from the likes of Chas, Adrian, Wilma Flintstone…Apr 27, 16:28
    • James Che on Push The Button: “Now we know that the UN is not independent as it claims to be, and it will never be allowed…Apr 27, 16:23
    • James Che on Push The Button: “Not a rational thinker I note, having difficulties achieving thinking links that join a to b and b to c,…Apr 27, 16:03
    • Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: ““There’s no objective evidence that being alive is better than being dead” I believe the Romans had a saying that…Apr 27, 16:00
    • Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: “Occam’s Razor says it’s because Independence is but a matter of weeks or months away at most. 7th May. That’s…Apr 27, 15:53
    • Athanasius on Push The Button: “You accept it as a foundational assumption. There’s no objective evidence that being alive is better than being dead, but…Apr 27, 15:20
    • Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: ““Socialist Norway is one of the richest countries in Europe and regularly voted one of the best countries in the…Apr 27, 15:19
    • Chas on Push The Button: “The comments section on Wings is poor with the repetive, accumulated shite from the likes of Northclown, Baird, Confusused etc…Apr 27, 15:15
    • Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: ““This is not a black and white dilemma” No, it’s a red and blue dilemma. That means there’s a great…Apr 27, 14:22
    • Hatey McHateface on Push The Button: “There are more Scots with their hands out grifting than there are with their hands dirty, grafting. But then you…Apr 27, 14:12
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