Wings Over Scotland

Wings Over Scotland is 12 years old today. And since absolutely nothing is happening in the world of Scottish independence – and hasn’t for, frankly, years – we thought we’d take you on a trip back to the day we were born, since when things DID change.

Remember when we had a leader who could get the UK government to do stuff it didn’t want to do, readers? AND actually increase support for independence? Good times.

With the shock defection of Ash Regan from the SNP to Alba last week, followed by councillor Chris Cullen, Alex Salmond’s party now has representation at every level of Scottish politics – Westminster, Holyrood and local.

But it still awaits a mass breakthrough, either in politicians crossing the floor or in the polls. In the meantime the SNP is plunging to new lows, recording just 32% in two polls last week, one of which saw them trailing six points behind Scottish Labour.

It seems reasonable to assume that the SNP’s fall is going to continue, with lots more bad news looming in its future – Operation Branchform, the likely humiliating loss of the Section 35 challenge in the wake of Lady Dorrian’s judgement this week, the ongoing ferries and trams inquiries and now the already-damaging COVID inquiry.

The party and its media cheerleaders are pumping out increasingly desperate “please don’t leave us” messaging, ironically only drawing attention to its stricken state.

So the future of the political side of the independence movement appears to be very much up for grabs and open to debate. With that in mind, Wings sat down by Zoom with Ash Regan to quiz her about where she saw it going.

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We held back from writing about yesterday’s judgment from Lady Dorrian in the Court Of Session in the hope that if we stared at it for long enough we could get it to make some kind of sense. But it does not. On the face of it, the country’s second-most-senior judge is simply a drooling imbecile.

Because that submission is not the least bit difficult to follow.

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Maybe he thinks Ash Denham and Ash Regan are two different people.

Still, consistency, honesty, decency and integrity: no great loss.

We were interested to read about this earlier this evening:

Not least because it was the first we’d heard about it. At the time of writing this post we’ve still had no communication from the Standards Commission to alert us to the judgement, which is frankly a bit of a poor show. We might file a complaint with the Standards Commission about it, depending on whether we can be bothered to wait another year and a quarter for the result.

We are of course pleased that the odious Cllr Joji has finally been formally censured for her obnoxious behaviour, but frankly she’s gotten off very lightly.

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We expected nothing better from Mhairi Hunter, of course, a once-decent human being corrupted by Nicola Sturgeon into an unthinking party drone.

But the reaction of the First Minister of Scotland to Ash Regan’s defection to Alba today is a sour, ugly and childish thing that would have been unworthy of the leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party, never mind a serious grown-up in a position of power.

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It’s taken longer than we hoped and urged. But the SNP, having already lost one Parliamentarian to the Tories and kicked another one out for actually trying to achieve independence, has now lost one to a pro-indy party, with Ash Regan’s defection to Alba this afternoon.

(Which as far as we can tell is the first direct switch in Scottish Parliament history. Others have stood down to become independents, and subsequently stood for other parties, but nobody has moved straight from one party to another.)

We hope she’s only the first of many. Because the SNP is over. It has no credibility left either as a party of independence or a party of government, and anyone who stays on board the smoking wreck can have no complaints when they go down with it.

Our apologies for the lack of recent activity here, readers, but there’s just been nothing happening worth talking about. Meanwhile, here’s some more music.

See you soon, hopefully.

The average prison term for rape in Scotland is just under seven years. So we really don’t want to think about what Andrew “Amy George” Miller did to the poor young girl he abducted to get 20. (Indeed, strictly speaking 28.)

Miller wasn’t charged with rape, the 11-year-old was described as “safe and well” when the police found her and she was missing for just over one day. Miller also entered a guilty plea. So our blood runs cold at the thought of what must have happened in those 27 hours to nevertheless attract such a huge sentence, and we hope never to know.

But there are some things we DO want explained.

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This really is grim, folks. Remember the days when there had to be overflow rooms for the leader’s speech at the SNP conference, in venues holding thousands? Now they can’t come close to filling 750 seats in a 2000-seat arena.

The reception afforded to Sturgeon yesterday, who left the party in the pile of wreckage that the hapless Yousaf is still trying to stumble through, was a symptom of desperate people clinging forlornly to the shadow of better times, like an abandoned dog seeking the last bits of warmth and scent from its owner’s chair.

But those days are gone, never to return. This is the barren, foreboding autumn of the SNP, the cold ground thickly carpeted in the lifeless, crumbling and silent remains of lost members fallen from branches.

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We thought this was overdue an update. It’s got about 16 new front pages on it, one whole new row and a handful of newly-rediscovered replacements. It really is worth taking a few minutes to peruse it properly (click on the pic to enlarge it) to get the full effect of eight wasted years of deja vu disappointment.

It’s not even The National’s fault. They’re a business, they’re simply trying to sell a few papers to a diminishing audience of endlessly gullible eejits. The real fault lies with the halfwitted SNP members who just keep on doggedly failing to learn a single lesson, and repeatedly vote to carry on doing what they know doesn’t work and never will.

Ach weel, as they used to say.