Wings Over Scotland

Goodness, are the Unionists THAT nervous already?

Yesterday was quite an eventful day, so it’s moderately possible you may have missed the alarming news that some shady Mafia-backed hedge fund or such has apparently funded these irresponsible and morally-suspect chancers (last seen shilling on air for literally Vladimir Putin and BBC Scotland, in that order) to produce an all-new series of scurrilous and dubious fact-grubbing for some inexplicable reason.

We have alerted the appropriate authorities. For safety, remain in your homes.

A little over five years ago.

Strengthen, destroy, what’s a little slip of the tongue between friends?

November 2009: “at the end of the day the banks will be paying money to the British people and not the other way round”.

Shall we take a look through the arched-eyebrows window, readers?

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Just before we (thankfully) stop talking about this insanity entirely, one last thing.

This month, just for fun and a bit of a change, we’ve commissioned a Panelbase poll NOT of voters in Scotland, but our neighbours to the south. English folk are always complaining that in a world of UK devolution nobody speaks for them and them alone – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own Parliaments, but not England.

So we polled 1020 English people (and we do mean English – we restricted responses to people who were both resident in England and were born there) about all kinds of things. Many were related to England’s relationship with Scotland and the rest of the UK, but while we were there we figured we might as well ask some other stuff too.

And as the UK parliament hotly debates Leveson 2 and press freedom in general, it seemed a pertinent time to re-ask a question which in polling invariably unites people of every colour, creed, class and persuasion across the entire UK, and which might be the only political policy anywhere in the UK which comes even close to matching the mass popularity of Scotland’s now-repealed Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act.

It’s this one:

English people love the Queen, but not as much as they love this idea. Men, women, young, old, rich, poor, Tory, Labour, homeowner, tenant, worker, student, it makes no difference. Overwhelming majorities of every single demographic support putting an end to the ridiculous situation that newspapers can get away with blaring an untrue story all over the front page (and pages 2, 3, 4 and 5) in gigantic screaming type, and then print the correction in a microscopic corner of page 23 two months later.

It’s just about the only thing that totally unites Remain and Leave voters – our poll found identical responses (79% for, 5% against) among those who want Brexit and those who want to stay in the EU.

It’s simple, practical and costs nothing. We can’t for the life of us work out why nobody is prepared to offer it to the nation. If any party wants to actually win the next election, we’d suggest sticking it on the front of the manifesto and preparing for a landslide.

We apologise if any readers were inadvertently given a misleading impression by any of these headlines, stories or claims.

The correct version of the report is below.

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You’ve got to give them credit for audaciously shameless timing.

3 April 1989

3 April 2018

Still, though 29 years (and counting) is quite a while, it’s not even nearly a record.

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For Jim – one of the greats – and for us, for now. RIP.

(More Twinstoons here.)

Not to discuss the UK government’s Brexit impact report on Scotland, of course. Not a single senior Scottish Tory will face the media about that, having all viciously rubbished the Scottish government’s assessment just last month as “scaremongering”, even though it turned out to be almost identical to the UK government’s version that we’re still not allowed to officially know about.

(Some hapless minor goon was dispatched to make a fool of himself today instead.)

But it seems she’s got plenty time to go on the radio if it’s something important.

Between that, Kezia Dugdale swanning off to the jungle for a few weeks in the middle of a Parliamentary session, and Douglas Ross squeezing the occasional bit of MSP work in between linesman gigs, it’s getting harder and harder to keep a straight face when the opposition go on about the SNP sticking to the “day job”.

Because sometimes you just can’t even.

Let’s all take a moment and imagine Labour stepping up to that situation, shall we?

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The past week saw the return to the public eye of the former Independent columnist Johann Hari, who vanished in disgrace a few years ago in a plagiarism scandal over claiming to have done things that he hadn’t.

It also saw the return of ubiquitous Scottish politics scribe David Torrance from a trip to San Francisco, the details of which he shared at stultifying length with the unfortunate readers of The Scottish Review.

Or at least, what he SAID were the details of where he SAID he’d been.

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Scottish people are the BEST at compliments 🙂