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Wings Over Scotland


The forgetful ones 188

Posted on February 05, 2015 by

Only a few diehards in the press are still clinging this morning to the Labour fiction we exposed yesterday, namely the flat-out empirical falsehood that “the biggest party gets to form a government” in the event of a hung Parliament.

hunglie

The Daily Record’s hapless political editor Torcuil Crichton desperately fought against the proven facts on Good Morning Scotland as an incredulous Iain Macwhirter looked on, and a few of the party’s more unhinged supporters battle on on social media, but after some diligent battering away with evidence it looks like we’ve finally managed to get the message through to most of a reluctant media.

But why was it ever in doubt?

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A thousand miles of stupid 233

Posted on February 04, 2015 by

Even we can’t quite believe this one, readers.

Good grief, where do we even start?

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Panic on the streets of London 212

Posted on February 04, 2015 by

As that’s where Scottish Labour is led from, of course. The Ashcroft polls leaked late last night have, it’s fair to say, caused a certain degree of furore among politics types.

hotherballs1

Contrary to some expectations, the figures could scarcely have been worse. Of 16 seats polled – 14 held by Labour and two Lib Dem – 15 would go to the SNP on staggering swings of over 20%. Labour’s Glasgow heartlands would be all but wiped out, with only Willie Bain in Glasgow North East barely clinging on.

The SNP will undoubtedly be cock-a-hoop, but will almost certainly also be feverishly warning activists that polls don’t win seats and reminding them of the party’s own spectacular recovery in the 2011 Holyrood election from what looked like disaster just a couple of months out from the vote.

Lord Ashcroft himself points out (as we did ourselves on Twitter last night) that the seats he polled were mainly in areas that voted Yes last year, and so may be unduly flattering the SNP. But it’s worth seeing them in context.

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Informing and educating 142

Posted on February 04, 2015 by

By now we imagine most readers have already seen the alleged leak of the Ashcroft polling results which aren’t due to be officially released until 11am today [EDIT 00.47am: out now], and which suggest some jaw-dropping SNP gains.

We’re not going to go off half-cocked until those have been confirmed, so instead here’s something sent in by an alert reader. It’s an extract from the autobiography of former Radio 1 DJ Liz Kershaw, and describes events around the funeral of Princess Diana. We think you’ll find it enlightening.

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You’re gonna need someone on your side 179

Posted on February 03, 2015 by

From the latest YouGov polling. Ooft.

svoice

Remarkably, 26% of people planning to vote Labour in May, and an astounding 54% of likely Tory voters, say the SNP are the best guarantors of more powers, while 21% of Labour voters and 37% of Tories also answer “SNP” to the second question.

We wouldn’t want to be in Scottish Labour’s shoes if they were made of diamonds.

28 Vows Later 258

Posted on February 03, 2015 by

We pondered long and hard over how best to analyse Scottish Labour’s bewildering, oh-my-God-they’re-really-calling-it-that “Vow Plus” fiasco from yesterday, readers.

vowplus

We contemplated noting the absurdity of Gordon Brown being its frontman when he’s not standing in May and won’t be in Parliament to deliver it. We considered a forensic deconstruction showing how it’s just the same old reheated, uncosted rubbish they’ve been waffling around for the past years.

(“Give Holyrood control of housing benefit, separating it out from the rest of the UK’s Universal Credit by mumble mumble! Increase pensions using the extra cash freed up by mumble mumble! Devolve workfare, which somehow magically ‘creates jobs’ by mumble mumble! Pretend we just said ‘1000 nurses’ all along, not the demented ‘1000 more than anything the SNP say’!”)

We thought about pointing out all the comical flapping the party’s done around its devolution proposals, presenting the weary and confused Scottish people with feeble, grudging, underwhelming plan after feeble, grudging, underwhelming plan – at least five different ones since 2009 – and resentfully upping the offer by the bare minimum they think they can get away with every time.

And we wondered if it was worth drawing attention to the fact that the latest effort is actually basically the Strathclyde Commission blueprint from the Conservatives with a red sticker hastily slapped on it.

But in the end, the truth is a lot simpler than that.

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Those who would rule us 345

Posted on February 02, 2015 by

There’s currently a fake “petition” on the Labour website.

faketition

Ostensibly it’s gathering signatures representing opposition to the bedroom tax, but in fact its only purpose is to harvest email addresses so that Labour can then bombard unwitting recipients with dodgy, untruthful solicitations for cash. (What would actually be the point of a petition about the bedroom tax at this stage?)

That’s not the terrible thing about it, though.

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The Super-Duper Mega Vow Deluxe Plus 126

Posted on February 02, 2015 by

We’ve already said all we’ve got to say on this one.

Too busy for quitting 192

Posted on February 01, 2015 by

We haven’t done a monthly stats post for a few months, partly because naturally traffic’s been down after the insane spike of last September, partly because we had two weeks off in October (and a semi-break over Christmas and New Year), and partly because we’ve moved to new, more accurate and more detailed figures direct from our webhost and January was the first full month of them.

So here, for those of you who like to keep track, are the headlines:

trafficjan15

We’re pretty blown away by that, to be honest. A tiny fraction shy of 300,000 unique readers (in what’s traditionally a very slow month for politics, and one we didn’t really start until the second week) is 157% up on a year ago, and nearly 50,000 higher than last May, which was the all-time high until the mad last few weeks of the referendum campaign. (It’s the 3rd-highest ever, after September and August 2014.)

If you’d told us we’d be anywhere near those sorts of numbers four months after a No vote (or indeed if we’d even still be going four months after a No vote), we’d have said you were missing a few marbles. But as long as you’re still here, we will be too*.

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A slow politics day 65

Posted on February 01, 2015 by

Blah blah Jim Murphy blah blah idiot something.

tennis

The way this match is going, we’ll see you sometime in April.

The lost art of keeping a secret weapon 272

Posted on January 31, 2015 by

Kate Devlin of the Herald has been a political journalist as long as we can remember.

secretweapon1

So it’s quite surprising that she’s apparently never heard of Gordon Brown before.

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The Pushmi-Pullyu Party 83

Posted on January 31, 2015 by

pushmi

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    • twathater on According As We Need Them: “TBQH Sarah I would disregard ANYTHING that Bastard Tax MOAN and his wee Scotland Hating sidekicks like Aydun Corporal Batshit…Jul 16, 01:58
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