The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland



But what does journalism matter? 167

Posted on July 25, 2018 by

The BBC front page headline for this is actually just the alarming-sounding “Scottish prescription costs rise by 25%”, without even the qualifier about the timespan.

It’s worse than that, though.

Read the rest of this entry →

How you make a lie 191

Posted on July 02, 2018 by

Yesterday we reported on the Sunday Herald’s bizarre and blatant reversal of the plain facts about OBFA prosecutions in its front-page lead. But it wasn’t the only paper pulling that trick this weekend.

The Sunday Times ran a major piece on results from a poll it conducted at the same time as our most recent one, spinning the outcome as voters rejecting the SNP’s plan to boost the Scottish economy via more immigration.

But as so many stories in the press do, the article simply disintegrated before readers’ eyes almost immediately after the headline.

Read the rest of this entry →

Black-Is-White World 111

Posted on July 01, 2018 by

One of the uglier facets of opposition to the hugely-popular but now-repealed Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act was the 100% uniform stance against it in the Scottish press. Despite the Act being backed by a large majority of voters across every demographic and political divide, not one print or broadcast journalist ever stood up for the public.

The reason, of course, is that bigots (and lurid stories about them) are a large part of what keeps the Scottish media’s life support machine functioning, and so the media panders cynically to the extremist sections of the Celtic and “Rangers” support who still buy papers for the latest transfer gossip and soft-soap interviews with ex-players.

And so it is with a remarkably mad front-page lead in today’s Sunday Herald.

The paper reports that “over half” – 44 out of 86 – outstanding OBFA charges have been “converted” into other types of offences and are still being prosecuted by the independent Crown Office, claiming without explanation that this is “an embarrassing move for the SNP Government”.

But it rather seems like the opposite is true.

Read the rest of this entry →

To have and to have not 171

Posted on June 24, 2018 by

The Sunday Times puts some poll results in an interesting frame today:

And readers who’ve learned anything at all from this site over the last six years will be looking at that tweet and immediately wondering “what AREN’T we being told there?”

Read the rest of this entry →

The false starters 544

Posted on June 16, 2018 by

Although this site is blacklisted by the press regulator IPSO and therefore unable to file complaints about inaccurate and misleading newspaper articles, our alert readers sometimes pick up the baton from Wings articles and do the job themselves.

We reported one such example a week ago.

But the reader who took up that complaint has furnished us with a bit of interesting background to the story, and also news of a rather more alarming outcome.

Read the rest of this entry →

Logic in reverse 134

Posted on June 07, 2018 by

We’re having a lot of trouble with this one, to be honest.

The Record, along with Scottish Labour and a lot of the left of social media, are up in arms that a mystery benefactor has donated a £230,000 Rolls Royce to Glasgow City Council for the use of the Lord Provost. But nobody can quite manage to explain why they’re so angry about it.

Read the rest of this entry →

Anatomy of an embarrassment 186

Posted on May 31, 2018 by

And no, we don’t even mean the FOUR spelling mistakes in this 42-word tweet.

We mean the bit that we’ve highlighted above in blue. Because what Scottish Labour’s lowest-watt bulb was gloating about earlier today was that Lord Bracadale concluded there’d been no gap created in the law by the Kelly-driven abolition of the OBFA.

And that’s… well, that’s not quite what Lord Bracadale said.

Read the rest of this entry →

Nicola Sturgeon: a clarification 273

Posted on April 30, 2018 by

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

The gloom hunters 292

Posted on April 11, 2018 by

The accountancy firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers – last seen charging the taxpayer an eye-watering £20.4m for just eight weeks’ work during the collapse of Carillion – today published a report into the declining number of high-street retail outlets in the UK.

BBC Scotland was keen to put a regional slant on it.

According to the article, Scotland had put in the worst performance in the country. But that didn’t appear to be what the report said at all.

Read the rest of this entry →

The wrong end of the telescope 184

Posted on April 08, 2018 by

This was the front page of yesterday’s Scotsman:

As is often the case with Scottish newspapers these days, the story was based entirely on a fantasy – IF a certain number of people did a certain thing (flee to England to escape a 1p income tax rise), which the story doesn’t provide a shred of evidence to suggest they’re going to do, then a bad thing would happen.

But that wasn’t the weird bit.

Read the rest of this entry →

The tracks are always greener 250

Posted on April 02, 2018 by

Stuck for any actual news at the tail of the Easter weekend, today’s Scottish Daily Mail reaches once again into the bag marked “Emergency Barrel Scrapings” and comes up with that old faithful beloved of all newspapers, a shock-horror “OMG LOOK HOW EXPENSIVE THE TRAINS ARE!” story.

It’s always an easy hit – partly because since a shambolic, fragmented privatisation the UK does have pretty much the most expensive railways per mile in the civilised world, but also because regular train users tend to mainly travel in the same area all the time, and are easily persuaded that they have it worse than people anywhere else.

So let’s ignore all the Mail’s ridiculous cobblers blaming the SNP – who have very limited control over the fare policies of Abellio (the Dutch state-owned company who run ScotRail) and who have been prevented by successive UK governments from nationalising the network – and just see if that’s true.

Read the rest of this entry →

With a weary sigh 219

Posted on March 27, 2018 by

This is a grim and dispiriting time to be monitoring the Scottish political media, even by its normal low standards. So little is happening that Unionist newspapers desperate for any kind of SNP BAD story are scraping the residue from the scrapings from the barrel that they scraped away to splinters months ago.

A case in point is today’s FRONT-PAGE piece in the Herald containing the shocking revelation that someone connected with the SNP registered – in their own name, not even the party’s – an internet domain called organise.scot last summer.

Even though the domain is still unused eight months later and there isn’t a shred of evidence about what it might ever be used for, a couple of opposition benchwarmers speculating that a private individual registering a web domain must somehow prove that the sneaky SNP are plotting a new independence campaign was considered by the Herald to be not just news, but front-page news.

(It’ll certainly come as a massive shock to everyone in Scotland who assumed that the SNP had given up on seeking independence after pursuing it as their primary reason for existence for a mere 85 years or so.)

And alarmingly, it wasn’t even the stupidest piece of Nat-bashing to appear in the Scottish press in the last 48 hours.

Read the rest of this entry →

  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,786 Posts, 1,221,849 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • Confused on Just Good Friends: “Deviants are blackmailable. Makes them easy to control. They go to “young leaders” shindigs all round the world and are…Jul 11, 22:40
    • Dunx on Just Good Friends: “The SNP might also like to consider whether sixteen year old children are mature enough to vote in any future…Jul 11, 22:01
    • Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “” I think that any kind of extreme dehumanizing and/or hatred of any group of people is a form of…Jul 11, 20:31
    • Mark Beggan on Just Good Friends: “Craig Murray? wasn’t he one of the Merry Pranksters in the Koolaid Acid Test.Jul 11, 19:26
    • Lorn on Just Good Friends: “I absolutely agree on the alignment. Both groups utilize the exact-same tactics and their aims are very similar. The official…Jul 11, 18:31
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: ““continually displayed abhorrent behaviour and used derogatory language to describe other fellow humans” Check out the synthetic outrage from Dan.…Jul 11, 18:15
    • agent x on Just Good Friends: ““Scottish Government to consult on changing minimum marriage age THE Scottish Government has confirmed it will launch a consultation on…Jul 11, 18:14
    • Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “Manipulation, divide and rule, paternalistic colonialists, and finally partition when all else fails – all are part of the colonizer’s…Jul 11, 18:12
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “That’s blethers, TH, even for you. If we have a People’s Assembly to sack politicians who don’t do as the…Jul 11, 17:56
    • Dan on Just Good Friends: “@Lorn says : “I think that any kind of extreme dehumanizing and/or hatred of any group of people is a…Jul 11, 17:50
    • twathater on Just Good Friends: “And THAT is where a REAL people’s assembly would EXPOSE and destroy the REAL purpose of these deviants and perverts…Jul 11, 17:39
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “You still here, TH? I thought you were near the head of the queue for “assistance”.Jul 11, 17:38
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: ““partly to make the Scottish government look good (just being different even if that amounted to nothing at all)” Damned…Jul 11, 17:35
    • twathater on Just Good Friends: “I very seldom agree with anything you post Mark unionist Beggan but that comment is right on the moneyJul 11, 17:27
    • twathater on Too Tight To Mention: “OH no someone else has unveiled Bastard Tax MOAN’s real agenda,undermine and deride everything about Scotland and Scots and beg…Jul 11, 17:21
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “That’s a very fetching picture you conjure up there 🙂 It’s 4-5 years until Chairman Murray returns from the UN…Jul 11, 17:04
    • Lorn on Just Good Friends: “Hatey: you are absolutely correct. It was never about the women and girls. Always about the men in frocks. Personally,…Jul 11, 17:03
    • Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “@Lorn That’s another reasoned, eloquent and sane post from you. Beats me how you manage to post on here without…Jul 11, 16:54
    • Mark Beggan on Just Good Friends: “The Royal Navy saves the Scottish government. Bastard English! Coming up here and saving the shipyard. I hope we don’t…Jul 11, 15:24
    • Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “The reality of a colonial society such as in the Scottish context provides for a more complex picture in regard…Jul 11, 14:46
    • Mark Beggan on Just Good Friends: “Once the Yoons and the rest of the world stop laughing at your well planned strategy…. Let’s just recap shall…Jul 11, 13:41
    • Lorn on Just Good Friends: “Hatey: It is because they believe that independence will come only via the SNP. They are entirely wrong. Independence will…Jul 11, 12:53
    • Lorn on Just Good Friends: “David: why would so-called ‘trans’ identified people of either sex feel unsafe? They have been offered gender neutral toilets and…Jul 11, 12:37
    • James on Too Tight To Mention: “Amen to that, brother.Jul 11, 11:56
    • Duncan Strachan on Just Good Friends: “I agree Sarah. I think that we could have a check on the politicians by using a citizens assembly as…Jul 11, 11:06
    • 100%Yes on Just Good Friends: “I been stating this for months now that next years election isn’t going to be about Independence and even if…Jul 11, 09:39
    • Alf Baird on Too Tight To Mention: ““The old Scottish parliament members entered the Westminster parliament of England” Aye James, lest they had no shame, I suspect…Jul 11, 09:26
    • Callum on Just Good Friends: “People tend to gravitate towards those who share similar values, interests, and prejudices.. They choose to surround themselves and give…Jul 11, 09:12
    • Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “I reply to P3nisbreath @5.05pm “We” the “Scots”.. Yer having a laugh.. There’s no-one on this site that has put…Jul 11, 03:42
    • Young Lochinvar on Too Tight To Mention: “In reply to Penisbreath @ 4.48pm Hmmmm.. At what point then, if not already, do you want Brown people to…Jul 11, 02:43
  • A tall tale



↑ Top