Wings Over Scotland

A week ago, readers, I had not the slightest interest in bringing Wings Over Scotland back full-time. I had my Twitter account again and was having fun and I was happy with that. It scratched the itch of being able to engage with politics (and people) without the depressing business of wading in it for work.

Having enjoyed a summer of long sunny walks feeding the swans and refreshing lager shandies in riverside pubs, I was preparing to hunker down over the cold dark winter and finally get some much-delayed writing for the Wings memoir done.

And then I witnessed the quite extraordinary sight of an elected member of Parliament, in the shape of the SNP’s pico-witted ambulant brain vacuum Karen Adam, publicly gloating about having managed to shut down the voice of someone critical of her party.

At the same time, an extremely minor blogger (the word “rival” would be to over-dignify them) re-opened hostilities in his campaign of self-declared “open warfare” against this site, with a rapid succession of posts (just a few of dozens) forming such a demented scattershot tirade that to patiently debunk all of it would have taken until Christmas.

And I’ll be honest, folks, it all pushed my buttons a wee bit. It really shouldn’t have, but it was properly outrageous and I’m occasionally human, so I thought “Sod it, if I’m going to have to put up with all this crap anyway I might as well make it worthwhile”.

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The response to yesterday’s post was pretty unanimous. So let’s find out for real.

Wings Over Scotland has been produced for free for the last three and a half years. Our last operational fundraiser was in May 2019. Then again, we’ve been retired for nearly half that time, with only occasional new posts.

But Scottish politics has never been in a more dire state than it is now, with the SNP stolen from its members by a tiny cabal not interested in independence but only in power for its own sake and the “queering” of Scottish society, while the opposition is a worthless ragbag of hapless incompetents and the media is a national embarrassment.

And since Wings stood back from the fray 18 months ago, absolutely nothing has stepped up to take its place. So if you want the job doing, it looks like we’ll have to do it ourselves again.

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Right, as promised, one last piece of admin. (This post will be removed in due time.)

We left yesterday’s piece and the associated poll up for two full days to make sure the people who don’t read Wings at weekends saw it and had the chance to vote in it too. But in truth it was pretty obvious how the vote would go from about 20 minutes in.

Like, that’s not even a little bit close.

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Well, this just got silly.

We’re absurdly touched by your response to the daft wee joke fundraiser we set up this week to raise £50 over a court case. We’re going to have to drink a LOT of fancy gin now. Thank you so much to everyone who donated, at a time when a lot of very good causes are also raising money. We’ll help some of them out from the proceeds.

We can’t help thinking, though, that at a very stressful time for the Yes movement a lot of people were just enjoying the chance to have a bit of much-needed fun. So allow us to offer our extra-special thanks to some unexpected benefactors.

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There’s currently a rather large and somewhat embarrassing vacancy at the top of the Yes movement. You may wish to be part of an organisation which includes some very good people seeking to do something about it.

In which case you should click on the image above.

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Alert readers from last night will notice that we’re currently running our first fundraiser since June 2019. It’s not one of our proper annual ones, in fact it’s basically just a joke at the expense of the Twitler Youth, but if anyone does want to kindly buy us a small treat of some sort it’ll be most appreciated. Click the pic to donate, if it would amuse you.

(The fundraiser is also to mark the one millionth reader comment on Wings. Jings.)

We’ll be back with some normal Scottish politics news shortly after noon, when we’re expecting to know the outcome of Martin Keatings’ court case over Section 30 powers. Should be a pretty interesting day.

As we all know by now, the active Yes movement is split into two camps. On one side are the whiners (mainly but not solely from the fringe far left), who are always full of destructive criticism and abuse for their own side while contributing nothing of any value themselves, other than to promote their own media careers.

On the other are the hard workers who actually get things done, quietly producing materials and work that reach out to voters and make a real difference.

These people have no interest in getting their faces known by appearing as tame Nat pundits on TV and radio, no desire to get their foot in the door at the BBC or grab a lucrative seat in Parliament. All most of them care about is bringing about a Yes vote so that they can get back to their normal lives in a better country.

So let’s see if we can help a few of them out.

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Click the image or here to go to the fundraiser page.
Click here to donate directly by other means.
.

Total at 9am, 18 June: £169,266. Last 24 hours: £6,357
(Includes donations from all sources)

.

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Politics in 2018 is almost impossible to satirise, and nowhere more so than in Scotland, where at least two of the main parties are currently campaigning on the principled policy of “any referendum we lose should be re-run, and any we win must never ever be held again because the decision was final”.

So it’s quite understandable that the Dateline 2018 team – Scotland’s only currently operating satirists of any kind (which is, madly, true) – opted not to bother with any Scottish content in their last series. But they’ve totally promised that they’ll absolutely definitely do some this time, honest, if you fund them for another one.

Yeah, we’d be sceptical too. But they only need £7,500 by tomorrow to carry on, and if they don’t reach the target you get your money back, so if you just got paid and can spare a couple of quid then fire it their way by clicking on the pic, because frankly we don’t like to think about what they’d get up to if we don’t keep them occupied.

As we’re writing this, our YouTube channel remains dead. We’re still trying to navigate through YouTube’s awful maze of robotic guards to reach a human being, and while at least two newspapers – The National and the Scotsman – have asked the BBC for a comment, none has been forthcoming.

The mainstream media’s attacks on this site in the last couple of years have included getting our Twitter account shut down in 2016, getting me arrested, having all of Wings’ electronic equipment confiscated by the police and now killing our YouTube channel full of crucial documentary evidence, most of which isn’t available anywhere else. (On top of an endless catalogue of smear stories and hatchet jobs, of course.)

Now, we’re not planning on going anywhere, but in the face of such a concerted and increasingly sinister assault aimed at silencing us, we also can’t make any guarantees that Wings itself will continue to survive. WordPress may prove as fragile in the face of malice as Twitter and YouTube have.

So in case we fall victim to another unexpected technical/censorship catastrophe, or suddenly commit “suicide”, you might want to strengthen the rest of the team.

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So, yeah, this happened:

The new crowdfunding platform we used this year is a curious and arcane beast, and as a result the honest truth is that we’re still not quite 100% certain what the precise final total (including “offsite” donations and a few that squeezed in after the technical deadline) is. But as best as we can make out, including everything, it’s this:

£153,215

And, y’know, good heavens.

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With 14 hours to go:

Like, wow, readers 🙂