The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland



The teachers are afraid of the pupils 72

Posted on January 15, 2014 by

It’s always a concerning state of affairs for any society when newspaper journalists appear less well-informed and less capable of intelligent analysis than their readers.

pupils

So we felt a letter published in today’s Herald deserved a wider audience.

Read the rest of this entry →

The myth of the borders 162

Posted on December 28, 2013 by

As the No camp and Scottish media cycle diligently through their three favourite scare stories (EU membership-currency-border posts, round and round and over and over), they regularly alight on the one that has the most bearing on normal people’s lives.

bluff1

That is, that because the current Scottish Government proposes to undertake differing immigration policies to those of the UK after independence, Scotland would “pose an open-border threat” to the rest of the UK, and that therefore you’d need to go through border checks to visit your grandpa in Penrith.

Clearly we haven’t debunked that one in sufficient depth yet, so let’s go.

Read the rest of this entry →

The reverse apology 188

Posted on December 26, 2013 by

We weren’t going to post today, but we couldn’t let this one just sneak past under the cover of Christmas, because the way the story has evolved this week says so much about how the pro-Union media operates and what we’re up against.

frasernelson1

That’s the delightful Fraser Nelson, unfathomably-accented editor of right-wing commentary magazine The Spectator and the living embodiment of our own Sir Jock Finlay-Urquhart-Duncan in his youth. A couple of days ago Mr Nelson wrote the most extraordinary leader column for the magazine, and then things unfolded.

Read the rest of this entry →

When you’re in a hurry 71

Posted on December 19, 2013 by

…and you haven’t got time to think of a misleading headline or laboriously rewrite a “Better Together” press release into something that might just about pass for actual news reporting if viewed fleetingly in poor lighting conditions, you can do nearly as good a job of distorting the truth with just a quick C-switched-for-W keypress.

wouldcould

It’s a real Scottish-media time-saver!

Read the rest of this entry →

All the small print 39

Posted on December 19, 2013 by

Ask anyone who knows about such things and they’ll tell you that not only is the headline the most important aspect of an article, but often it’s the only part of it that people read at all. It’s a fact worth bearing in mind when you scan the media coverage of the main Scottish politics story of today.

barnettscotsman

Read the rest of this entry →

The thin veneer of pretence 206

Posted on December 14, 2013 by

The Scottish media often complains that the supporters of independence attack it as biased merely for reporting news that they don’t like. It’s sometimes justified in doing so – it’s foolish to indulge the delusion that amid the constant avalanche of “Major blow to SNP/Yes campaign” headlines, there aren’t some actual blows now and again.

rompuy

Of course, the media has only itself to blame that nobody listens when it cries “Wolf!” for the 20th time that month. There are times when a “story” is so nakedly a piece of agenda-driven propaganda rather than journalism that in publishing it the press abandons all right to expect to ever be treated as an impartial chronicler of events.

Today is one of those times.

Read the rest of this entry →

Celebrity endorsement 90

Posted on December 09, 2013 by

We don’t normally set a lot of store by them, but this one’s a peach:

palin

Read the rest of this entry →

The Captain’s Abyss 190

Posted on November 30, 2013 by

The realisation that the No camp’s reaction to the independence White Paper has been based on a massive, scarcely-believable misunderstanding/misrepresentation of reality has thrown a new light on all sorts of things from the past week.

bhole12

The most recent “BLACK HOLE!” story is a case in point.

Read the rest of this entry →

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?

Read the rest of this entry →

Contractual obligation 102

Posted on November 19, 2013 by

We weren’t going to bother even tackling the Institute for Fiscal Studies report from yesterday on the economics of an independent Scotland, because, y’know, our readers aren’t idiots and it’s all a bit “file under B for Bleeding Obvious”.

economics

But we suppose we ought to at least outline a quick one-stop list of bullet points.

Read the rest of this entry →

Applying topspin 145

Posted on November 18, 2013 by

There’s a fascinating piece in today’s Daily Record about Andy Murray, and we’re not talking about the gormless expression Andrew Marr pulls in the accompanying photo.

murraymarr2

It’s fascinating because it’s a gold-medal example of the art of reporting exclusively true facts while simultaneously saying flatly untrue things about them.

Read the rest of this entry →

The words of weasels 92

Posted on November 10, 2013 by

It’s always nice when the Scottish media takes the time to illustrate one of our points for us. Earlier this week we attempted to distil this site’s core work of the last two years into two simple rules, elegantly pictured below.

mediafordummies

Imagine our unrestricted delight, then, when this weekend’s Scotland On Sunday chose to generously provide us with some prima facie evidence of the phenomenon.

Read the rest of this entry →

  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,787 Posts, 1,221,941 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Yes – if the English were forced to pay the highest possible retail rate (the figure you use is above…Jul 14, 08:10
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “You also of course exclude Finland, similar in population size to Scotland and around the same GDP, higher GDP per…Jul 14, 08:01
    • Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Ireland’s GDP is distorted by base erosion and profit shifting, and by the impact of depreciating assets (like aircraft) that…Jul 14, 07:54
    • Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: ““Ireland (no oil), Norway (oil), Switzerland (banking) have GDPs in the range of 600-800B USD. Ours is 200B USD. Liechtenstein…Jul 14, 07:32
    • Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “Scotland’s renewable energy production will soon be worth £100 billion a year, not that us Scots will see any benefit…Jul 14, 07:22
    • Andrew Kidd on According As We Need Them: “There is another article in the Herald where a female politician is complaining that people are disagreeing with everything she…Jul 13, 23:30
    • Young Lochinvar on According As We Need Them: “Unfortunately yes. Add in the DEI obsessed LibDems onto the list though, the shark lurking under the waves on this…Jul 13, 23:00
    • GM on According As We Need Them: “Very true. Nothing for it but to keep the faith and take the genuine option when it is on offer…Jul 13, 22:58
    • Captain Caveman on According As We Need Them: “@Lorn Excellent post, in my humble opinion. How did we get here?Jul 13, 22:39
    • Shug on According As We Need Them: “What is the Herald and National doing getting tied up with such a bunch of self serving weirdos Are there…Jul 13, 22:35
    • sarah on According As We Need Them: “@ GM: I agree. I can’t wait to see the back of them. We all know people in our own…Jul 13, 21:53
    • Lorn on According As We Need Them: “You still haven’t told us who these paragons of modern political action are, Dan. Actually, I read very widely and…Jul 13, 21:52
    • GM on According As We Need Them: “Aye Sarah, there are plenty of good people out there. That does not make the ‘Scottish’ elite any easier to…Jul 13, 20:41
    • Dunx on Just Good Friends: “And English consumers subsidise Scottish renewables. Your point is ?Jul 13, 20:28
    • holymacmoses on According As We Need Them: “A tweet from our Suzanne on journalistic integrity. Her kitchen is full of pots and kettles:-) “Suzanne McLaughlin @Suzemclaughlin Not…Jul 13, 20:08
    • Dan on According As We Need Them: “Maybe try being a bit more alert and receptive to actually reading and taking in what other folk have said…Jul 13, 20:04
    • willie on According As We Need Them: “The Scottish Government under the SNP and the Green is a quack quango Effijy. No one should be in any…Jul 13, 19:38
    • sarah on According As We Need Them: “@ Lorn at 6.34: “who are these paragons?”. I think Dan may be referring to the Independents for Independence who…Jul 13, 19:21
    • willie on According As We Need Them: “If they didn’t publicly fund these faux charities and their loon ball on line trolls to pump out their unwanted…Jul 13, 19:20
    • agent x on According As We Need Them: ““The Scottish National party has voted heavily in favour of introducing all women shortlists and “balanced” regional lists, reversing decades-long…Jul 13, 18:44
    • Lorn on According As We Need Them: “And who were these paragons, Dan? I have never in my life simply ticked a box because the candidate reflected…Jul 13, 18:34
    • Effijy on According As We Need Them: “So much tax payer cash directed to nonsense quangos. I’ve never yet seen one of these bodies produce anything worthwhile.…Jul 13, 18:33
    • Campbell Clansman on According As We Need Them: “Alba would have to “make a lot of ground” to get to 2% of the vote.Jul 13, 18:26
    • twathater on According As We Need Them: “ALL of this pish is our own fault because we stood by and allowed these fuckwits to gain power, and…Jul 13, 18:12
    • Frank Gillougley on According As We Need Them: “And so it goes. Incestuous faux academics shall speak unto incestuous faux academics funded by us the hoi polloi. The…Jul 13, 17:58
    • Dan on According As We Need Them: “Some did try to start electing decent ordinary individuals who weren’t the usual political clone dross, but youse weren’t interested,…Jul 13, 17:53
    • Bill Fraser on According As We Need Them: “I am wondering if this organisations status as a charity could be challenged under the “Charity Test ” it certainly…Jul 13, 17:51
    • Anthem on According As We Need Them: “Alba could make a lot of ground exposing these so called “charities “, on how much they cost the taxpayer,…Jul 13, 17:51
    • Captain Caveman on Just Good Friends: ““They’rrrrre grrrrreat!” 😀 https://www.frostedflakes.us/tony-the-tigerJul 13, 17:27
    • Lorn on According As We Need Them: “The one thing about politicians that I have discovered in my life is that, male or female, black or white,…Jul 13, 17:24
  • A tall tale



↑ Top