Questions To Which The Answer Is No 97
Posted on
February 09, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We know we were all traumatised at the time, but how on Earth did we miss this?
Last on the bandwagon 151
Posted on
February 09, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It gets clearer with every passing day that Scottish Labour’s chief election strategy is to assume that Scottish voters are goldfish. There’s no other explanation for a piece in yesterday’s Courier on the SNP’s Jamie Hepburn’s call for the implementation of a 2009 report into which sporting events should be protected from pay-TV broadcasters.
The article concluded with some comments from Labour.
Which is, y’know, bold.
The other kind of money 259
Posted on
February 08, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Still confused about the difference between an “oil fund” and a “resilience fund”, folks?
So were we, but no longer. We’ve had a breakthrough.
Fetch more hammers 146
Posted on
February 08, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Posted this morning, after a week in which it was so comprehensively proven to be a complete lie that even Torcuil Crichton of the Daily Record was forced to concede it.
You almost have to grudgingly admire the sheer bull-headed tenacity of their dogged determination to prove once and for all to the people of Scotland that Labour think they’re dribbling gullible morons.
Soapbox: Happy hours 371
Posted on
February 07, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
So, an experiment. Here on Wings we don’t tend to deal very much in specific political issues, other than independence. We’re not aligned to any party, and our primary goal is to see Scotland become a national democracy in which all voices can be heard. We happen to be on the left of the political spectrum, but that’s neither here nor there while Scotland’s politics are at the mercy of the whims of voters elsewhere.
But just for a change of pace at the weekends, when there tends not to be much happening, we thought we might try having a space where broader ideas can be debated outwith the framework of the constitutional debate or party politics. If there’s something you’d like to talk about in front of a sizeable audience, drop us a line.
To give you an idea of what we mean, we’re going to start off by outlining a personal pet idea we’ve had for years, and which is an attempt to tackle one of Scotland’s most toxic problems – alcohol abuse. It’s a simple concept, it’s cheap to implement, it doesn’t punish the innocent and it seems like it’d work. See what you think.
The enemy of their enemy 243
Posted on
February 06, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
A quick rhetorical question, readers: if, as Labour endlessly claim, the Tories want the SNP to win seats in Scotland in order to stop Ed Miliband being PM, why are most of the Scottish columnists in the right-wing press calling on Scots to vote Labour?
The Great British Elephant 276
Posted on
February 05, 2015 by
Douglas Daniel
One of the most interesting things about the recent Ashcroft polls is the flurry of articles they’ve provoked in the media, as London-based political commentators try to outdo each other in displaying their complete ignorance of Scottish politics.
It’s eerily reminiscent of the sudden surge of activity when the gaps in referendum polls reached margin-of-error levels, and metropolitan journalists suddenly realised that Scotland was taking the referendum far more seriously than they were.
Two of the most revealing have been in the Spectator, with James Forsyth saying the Unionist collaborations in the No campaign “marked a recognition that Great Britain is far bigger, and far more important, than party politics”, and Fraser Nelson becoming Scottish Labour’s most unlikely cheerleader, saying “Finally, a confession. I’d like the Tories to win the next election, but not as much as I want Jim Murphy to do well”.
But amid all the outpourings of grief and befuddlement, it’s startling how little analysis there really is into why the UK is in the situation it currently is. And it’s odd because the answer isn’t the least bit complicated.
The new line 84
Posted on
February 05, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The letter below is extraordinary, readers. See if it fits with what you remember.
The forgetful ones 188
Posted on
February 05, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
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.
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?
A thousand miles of stupid 233
Posted on
February 04, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Even we can’t quite believe this one, readers.
Good grief, where do we even start?
Panic on the streets of London 212
Posted on
February 04, 2015 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
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.
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.
