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The Red Face Gang 93

Posted on November 29, 2013 by

We saw this graphic on the “Better Together” website yesterday, but we dismissed it as uninteresting even by their playground-propaganda standards, amounting as it does to nothing more than some startlingly feeble carping along the lines of “These are their forecasts, but we’ve made different forecasts so theirs must be wrong!”

checkmaths

But an alert reader observed that it was MUCH stupider than that. Can you spot why?

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For use as required 69

Posted on November 29, 2013 by

With our compliments and best wishes.

djletter

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Free subbing service available 135

Posted on November 29, 2013 by

Alert commuters using Scotland’s railway stations may this week have received a “newspaper” from the official No campaign containing a splendid crossword and a recipe for raspberry brownies, amongst some political rubbish.

10lies

We haven’t tried it ourselves, but we hope the recipe was a bit less inaccurate than the political sections, or a lot of people might die of food poisoning.

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A tonic for the troops 125

Posted on November 29, 2013 by

As a living embodiment of the posh, braying public-school Tory-boy stereotype, Fraser Nelson of the Spectator used to reside in our “Zany Comedy Relief” links bar until we kicked him out for rarely lowering himself to write about Scotland.

fnelson

But his guest appearance in today’s Telegraph we enjoyed at least parts of.

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What Mariano Rajoy didn’t say 234

Posted on November 28, 2013 by

In “breaking news” during a dull ding-dong of a debate on Wednesday’s Newsnight Scotland, we were breathlessly told that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had made an important intervention in the debate about whether Scotland should keep paying for railway lines between London and Birmingham, weapons of mass destruction and Ian Davidson’s expenses. (We paraphrase.)

rajoy

Stopping just short of a drum-roll or mariachi band (yes, those are Mexican, but are you telling us BBC Scotland would know the difference?), viewers were dramatically informed that in a major new development Mariano Rajoy had said… exactly what he’s been saying for most of the last two years. 

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About last night 279

Posted on November 28, 2013 by

If you missed it, Nicola Sturgeon’s extraordinary cross-examination demolition job on Alistair “Crybaby” Carmichael can now be seen on the STV website. And if you’re pushed for time and can’t spare the full 19 minutes, here’s the gist of it:

You don’t know what you’ve got 40

Posted on November 28, 2013 by

…until it’s gone. Wings Over Scotland is normally protected by a brilliant spam filter called Akismet, which blocks the constant flood of fake comments that assails every website on the internet. Akismet has filtered out 1,496,404 of these attempts to sell you counterfeit fashion, hardcore porn sites and attempts to steal your bank details since we started, in amongst the 120,297 real comments we’ve published in that time.

akismet

Last night it suffered a temporary outage, with the result that the four or five “pending” comments we usually wake up to in the morning – ones Akismet thinks are spam but isn’t 100% certain about, and so puts in a queue for us to look at manually – have been replaced today by 1,877 (and rising – an hour ago it was just over 1,000).

Here’s what this means for you.

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Suppressed Memory Lane 87

Posted on November 27, 2013 by

It’s been quite the week, so to celebrate smashing our all-time one-day pageviews record twice in succession, here’s a wee And Finally… bonus extra.

You’ve probably already seen this on Twitter today, after alert reader “Corstorphine Craig” knocked up an inventive graphic from some old material and sent it to us, whereupon we retweeted it and it went rather viral. But it deserves a front-page spot.

bt1979

Viewers of a certain age will of course recall how well the coal mines, Ravenscraig, Linwood and Bathgate all flourished in the safe hands of the UK when Scotland was swindled out of its Assembly despite voting in favour of it.

But as the parties of the Union and their tame media fall over themselves to rubbish the sensible, achievable vision laid out in the White Paper this week, it never hurts to remember how their scare stories usually end.

The best answer ever 92

Posted on November 27, 2013 by

Comes at 1m 43s, courtesy of the You Couldn’t Make It Up Department:

“Let’s have a debate” – Labour’s solution to all ills.

Welcome to the debate 250

Posted on November 27, 2013 by

Dear Yes Scotland,

Please immediately contact Channel 5 and ask them how much they want for this:

Pay any price they ask, and show it on September 17th. 100% Yes, in the bag.

(Download links 1 and 2.)

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A touch of deja vu 70

Posted on November 27, 2013 by

No, we haven’t accidentally put up this post again.

bbcfoi1

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The parameters of failure 75

Posted on November 27, 2013 by

One of Labour’s key allies in Scotland is solicitor Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre. Best known for his attempts to force the Scottish Government to subsidise the bedroom tax by cutting services elsewhere, he’s a venomously anti-SNP figure who rarely passes up the chance for a bit of Nat-bashing.

daillyt1

(It would, we’re sure, be overly cynical to suggest that Mr Dailly wants the bedroom tax propped up because if it was abolished he’d suddenly be out of the public eye.)

Today he’s published a blog angrily contesting the claim made in yesterday’s White Paper that the UK is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

We thought we’d take a look.

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