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Wings Over Scotland



And telling you it’s raining 236

Posted on December 28, 2020 by

If this site seems to spend most of its time being angry at the SNP these days, that’s because we are. And a large part of that is because there’s very little that hacks us off more than people insulting our intelligence.

Smith’s tweet is just a crassly offensive flat-out lie. This week’s vote is NOT about “EU membership”. The United Kingdom hasn’t been a member of the EU since 31 January. We’ve already left and there’s no going back. The vote is about whether we leave with a sliver of a trade deal slightly reducing the self-inflicted harm, or the total catastrophe of no deal at all, and it’s just crushingly embarrassing for all concerned that Smith thinks so little of his own supporters as to believe he can “frame” it otherwise.

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Deny the flesh 232

Posted on October 13, 2020 by

We’ve just received the most extraordinary Freedom Of Information response from the Scottish Government, readers. Trust us, you want to go and make yourselves a strong cup of tea before you read it. Or get this guy to bring you one.

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This is what a liar looks like 524

Posted on October 11, 2020 by

We’re grumpy this morning, readers, because it’s Sunday and we were planning a long lie and then someone told us about this. It’s the First Minister appearing on the Sophy Ridge show on Sky News at around 8.45am and you need to see it.

It was quite the performance.

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The comfort of lies 197

Posted on June 09, 2020 by

More great news, right?

Except, sadly, it’s completely untrue.

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The Oracle Hole 357

Posted on July 24, 2019 by

Yesterday we reminded you of how Wings predicted Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister of the UK several years ago. But of course, other soothsayers are available, like this confident chap from August 2014:

In news that will come as a shock to absolutely no readers at all, McDougall wasn’t just lying, and wasn’t just wrong about one thing, but was both wrong and lying about pretty much everything he said.

Both of the Yes camp’s “scare stories” which were sneeringly mocked by McDougall during a BBC debate in Inverness actually came true – the Tories DID win the next election, and Johnson DID end up as leader of the party and then as Prime Minister.

(McDougall burst into tears at Scottish Labour HQ on the night of the 2015 election as his party lost 40 of its 41 seats despite his services as Jim Murphy’s speechwriter and adviser, his powers of chortling seemingly having deserted him.)

And it’s interesting to revisit the debate.

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Lying to the death 86

Posted on May 28, 2019 by

The Daily Record today carries a piece by Scottish Labour MPs Ian Murray and Martin Whitfield (no, us either) bitterly attacking their leadership over the Euro election results.

The two men complain that Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Leonard won’t listen to them, and insist that the party must “heed the people” if it ever wants to wield power again.

So it’s a bit ironic that they won’t take their own advice.

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How to be goodest at numberology 128

Posted on May 16, 2019 by

Ruth Davidson led on numeracy (or as Tories call it, “numberacy”) at FMQs today.

And we can see why she’s concerned.

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David Mundell is a liar 372

Posted on May 04, 2019 by

This was the Secretary of State for Scotland on the BBC’s coverage of the Scottish Conservative conference earlier today.

The broadcaster’s political editor Brian Taylor gets uncharacteristically indignant with Mundell’s response, and well he might.

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When Fact Checks Fail 381

Posted on March 21, 2019 by

Wings Over Scotland isn’t the only website dedicated to scrutinising the truthfulness of things claimed by politicians and media pundits. There’s the widely-respected and diligent FullFact.org, there’s Scotland’s own The Ferret, and there’s the BBC’s Reality Check (which frequently takes the more unconventional approach of, er, not making a finding either way about what the reality of things is).

And then there’s Channel 4’s FactCheck, which we’re going to generously assume had a liquid lunch yesterday and was a little under the weather.

Because not only is the conclusion that it reached on the subject of an independent Scotland having to use the Euro utter nonsense that’s been debunked roughly 1000 times in the last six years, it doesn’t even agree with itself.

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A beginner’s guide to stupid 55

Posted on March 10, 2019 by

Michael Glackin of the Sunday Times is the only serious contender to the Scotsman’s demented Brian Wilson as the most poisonously, blindly instinctive hater of anything even passingly connected to the SNP or independence in the Scottish media. His weekly bilious rants in the paper make even Scottish Daily Express hacks wince and say “Blimey, that’s a bit strong”.

But even by those standards, this week’s column is quite something. So let’s take a little look at just how much of an idiot you can make of yourself if you never allow facts to get in the way of your rage.

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The Prime Minister is a lying idiot 53

Posted on January 14, 2019 by

The extremely sharp and perceptive New Statesman writer Stephen Bush buries some of his political insight in a daily email newsletter (because, we assume, his fax machine doesn’t work, you can’t send telegrams any more and London flats don’t have enough room to keep a lot of messenger pigeons or let you send smoke signals).

And it’s a lot easier just to quote you a chunk of today’s than it is to rewrite the same observations into a new article ourselves.

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Meanwhile in the Scottish media 197

Posted on January 13, 2019 by

Nicola Sturgeon attended a meeting of the SNP NEC yesterday.

Or maybe she didn’t.

One of these people/publications, inescapably, is flat-out lying to their readers about the event in question. Given the Scottish media’s ingrained habit of lying about pretty much everything almost all of the time, we honestly wouldn’t like to hazard a guess as to which one of them it was.

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