Wings Over Scotland

The second weekend in June played host to the Selkirk Common Riding, the oldest of the Ridings events in the Scottish Borders. For the uninitiated, this centuries-old tradition incorporates a series of festivities in the town, the centrepiece of which is a cavalcade of several hundred horses galloping around the perimeter of the Royal Burgh, ensuring the town’s ancient boundaries are in good order (ie that no pesky Sassenachs have invaded the territory).

Despite being raised in the nearby village of Ashkirk and attending Selkirk High School, I was never interested in the Riding. Even in primary school whilst being taught the lyrics to “Auld Selkirk” and “Hail Smilin Morn” it didn’t seem relevant – I only went to my first ride-out last year because my Polish girlfriend was intrigued.

That’s when the penny dropped.

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(Story, just in case you missed it in this week’s media “cybernat” horror orgy.)

And welcome. If you’ve come to our humble little site to see the nasty man at the head of the “highly controversial cyber organisation” described in this hilarious article, there’s a couple of things you should probably know. Because – and we apologise if this comes as a shock to you – the Daily Mail doesn’t always tell the truth.

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If you’re not on Twitter, readers, you’ve been missing ALL the fun today.

Above are just the creepiest two of a series of tweets posted this morning by “social justice campaigner” Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre – previously known to those of this parish – to the effect that he’d really rather prefer if people stopped following my personal Twitter account, @RevStu, because I was so all-around awful.

It didn’t work out quite as well as he’d hoped.

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Europe Direct is the official information service of the EU. A reader recently contacted them with a query. Their reply seems significant. We’ll let you read it for yourself.

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“…make sure you keep a place by your side for us.”

Now that’s what we call lovebombing.

The other day we highlighted a really good piece in the Scottish Sun, which while not perfect was a pretty decent stab at the sort of evidence-based journalism Scotland’s media should have been doing throughout the referendum campaign.

Today, not so much.

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Labour MP and nuclear weapon enthusiast Jim Murphy is out and about this week, flitting bat-like across Scotland as part of his “100 Corners” tour where he stands on a box and tells wide-eyed Ordinary Members Of The Public ™ about the splendour of the union. Some of Jim’s pals have been proudly tweeting shots of the packed crowds.

But our eagle-eyed viewers couldn’t help spotting something.

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Kerry Gill in the Scottish Daily Express, 19 June 2014:

“Think back to the Second World War, as we have all been doing this month in commemoration of the D–Day landings. The BBC was foremost in selling the rightness of Britain’s eventual victory to the rest of the world.

It was most certainly not unbiased or objective. If it had been, the German Gestapo and their Axis colleagues would not have spent all their days and nights trying to stop anyone from listening to BBC broadcasts.

Of course, you will say, the independence referendum is entirely different. We are not at war with each other. We are discussing the merits or otherwise of separation in a, mostly, sensible and grown–up manner.

It is the BBC’s duty to report all that is said and done without bias, and without favour to either side whether Unionists or Nationalists. But, for the reasons above, I don’t believe this should be so.”

Yes, you really did read that in a “Scottish” national newspaper, folks: the BBC should be biased against independence because it was biased against the Nazis. You can go ahead and follow that wee gem through to its logical conclusion yourself.

A number of papers today report a manufactured furore concerning some comments we made on Twitter a couple of days ago about Tory MSP Alex Johnstone while watching Scotland Tonight. The Herald, astonishingly, makes it the second-lead story on its website, with political editor Magnus Gardham gleefully seizing the opportunity to stick the boot in after being the subject of much criticism on this site.

The Times also has a large piece about the tweet and it gets a quarter page in the Daily Mail, while the Scotsman’s coverage is more muted – which is perhaps out of embarrassment at coming on the same day the paper had to grudgingly publish a belated correction and “apology” for two grotesque and utterly false smears about us last week. Even Holyrood Magazine gets in on the act, as does the Courier.

That’s all fine and good. Getting monstered by Unionist newspapers isn’t exactly a new experience for us, after all. But there’s something odd about all of the stories.

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We suppose, then, that we’d better deal with the UK government’s bizarre propaganda booklet that’s about to slither through every letterbox in Scotland at taxpayers’ expense whether they like it or not. We’ve been having some fun with the cover image in the last couple of days, but astonishingly enough this is the real version:

To be honest, readers, we’re still kind of rubbing our eyes in disbelief at that one. But the McTrapp Family above (who are these implausibly happy children? Where, who or what are they running from? Are they trespassing? Where are their parents?) aren’t even nearly the weirdest thing about the pamphlet.

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