Wings Over Scotland

Step 1: Write an offensive, provocative piece of trollbait for the Daily Mail, describing your opponents as “kilted bum-barers who bellow ‘freedom’ whenever an English person hoves into view” and suggesting that a Yes vote is an abdication of morality.

(If you can then somehow get the Guardian to reprint it, bonus!)

Step 2: Whine like a baby when you get the response you wanted all along.

Read the rest of this entry →

Yesterday saw one of the odder incidents to date in the Scottish media’s coverage of the independence debate. Both the Herald and Scotsman ran almost word-for-word-identical articles reporting the findings of a Glasgow University study into the nature of the debate on Twitter, which concluded (in line with previous research) that Yes campaigners were far more active on the social network than No ones, and that the Yes campaign was far more grassroots than its “top-down” opponent.

We were pleased to get a namecheck in both pieces, but the curious aspect was the length that the articles went to in order to provide a couple of examples of “unofficial” No advocates. It’s now over a year since we first observed the death of Unionist blogging, so it’s understandable that the study had trouble digging anything up, but the representatives they settled on boggled quite a few minds.

Read the rest of this entry →

Experienced readers will know that it’s a rare and special day when the BBC deigns to open up a Scottish story on its website to reader comments.

The results are invariably to be cherished, as our friends elsewhere in the UK share their considered, informed and thoughtful views on why we’re all better together.

Read the rest of this entry →

We’ve highlighted some truly gruesome displays of anti-Scottish bigotry on this website over the last couple of years, the large majority of them from right-wing English newspapers. But today sees perhaps the worst case we’ve ever seen, and we’re sad to report that the blame for this one lies squarely at Scotland’s own door.

We hope you have a strong stomach.

Read the rest of this entry →

This is the entrance to the municipal offices of Stirling Council (“Scotland’s Heart”), visible from the monument to William Wallace that looks over the former Scottish capital. The figures guarding the doorway are Wallace and Robert the Bruce.

The building’s flagpole is flying a Saltire (specifically the city’s own modified coat-of-arms version, which features a Lion Rampant and explicitly represents the Battle of Bannockburn), as you might quite reasonably expect it to.

Enjoy this patriotic sight while you can. It might have barely 48 hours left.

Read the rest of this entry →

If you hate listening to audio or watching video (as opposed to reading the printed word) as much as we do, or if you’re just at work and can’t, here’s a complete transcript – courtesy of one of our splendid readers – of this morning’s BBC Breakfast appearance from UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom.

Once again, the very last line of the transcript is the killer.

Read the rest of this entry →

Looks like someone had this problem at the online flag shop.

Remind us again why it’s “cybernats” we’re meant to be ashamed of.

Scottish nationalist style:

Read the rest of this entry →

If we’d seen this 15 minutes earlier, we’d have made it the And Finally… story instead of the GTA V picture. To be honest, we’re still kinda rubbing our eyes and not quite believing it. Did we just get invaded before we were even a country?

We don’t often have cause to praise the actions of Tory councillors, so allow us to take the opportunity to salute Cllr David Meikle of Pollokshields for this intervention against braying Spectator idiot (and former star of our Zany Comedy Relief section) Fraser Nelson:

Ooft! Oddly, Nelson hasn’t rushed to also claim Gordon Reid as “British”, despite his being so in just the same way Andy Murray is – perhaps because Gordon and his Dutch doubles partner in fact lost their semi-final yesterday against the top seeds.

We’d previously dismissed the complaint as a tired old nationalist chip-on-the-shoulder hobbyhorse, but it seems that – to BritNats like Nelson at least – it really IS true that sportspeople from Scotland are British when they win and Scottish when they lose.

We won’t do any more of these after this one, honest. But we couldn’t help noticing the Director Of Research for “Better Together” posting this sorry whinge of a tweet last night, unable to resist a chance to have a snipe – however petty – at the First Minister of Scotland for wishing a Scottish sportsman well on behalf of the people of Scotland:

Mr Aikman might want to poll a little wider before repeating that claim.

Read the rest of this entry →

Blimey. We were going to write about devo-max or something this evening, but we’re more emotionally drained than Ivan Lendl after a night at Riverdance from watching that incredible Andy Murray match at Wimbledon.

With Andy playing like a blind monkey flailing at moths for the first two sets and Fernando Verdasco hitting the ball like he’d found it in bed with his wife, the tension was almost unbearable for the whole three and a half hours before a magnificent display of character and skill finally saw the No.2 seed through to the semi-final.

Luckily, the watching-through-our-fingers pain was eased just a little by the knowledge that our fellow Brits from south of the border were suffering through it along with us.

Read the rest of this entry →