Life my dad used to work for billy wolfe the former leader of the s. N. P. In bathgate because i want to make a contribution obviously i couldnt go knocking on doors and stuff so i thought to somebody could knock on the doors and buff well yeah it was interesting to say theres not not all of whats to be won there though unfortunately so yeah so i decided to do it online and i tried very brief i looked for other scottish politics websites and there werent really any very good ones i briefly wrote for one that was run by a variety of people from the various parties but i wrote one article for them and i made a sort of joke in one of the comments and was immediately ostracized and they saw and i thought dont go on im going to do this myself are annoying so yeah i just thought it up wings as a it was just a little originally just a short digest of things that were in this coalition unify wings that was scotland coming a bit in the middle of the symbolism behind some people said the symbolism of the. Wings this year the name just sort of almost happened by accident id always written my very 1st website when i was a videogame writer was called world of steer and ever since then ive had blogs that were that w. Or x. As the initials were there were various apparently stations all but the most recent one night had was wings over seal and which you may know is the little kind of independent nation just off the off the coast of britain by itself an old world war 2 for its always find a fascinating place so when i came to write the politics blog it just kind of seemed an obvious progression from wings over city one to wings were scotland and what do you consciously pursue your blog was to. Rebalance media in the sense that the written play scotland some people do the television as well as pretty woman only biased against Scottish Independence so what was your explain to some of the union this press as well as pervading the the ordinary information that depend the support is needed yeah i mean its still is a ridiculous state of affairs where you have a political viewpoint held by roughly half of the country represented by essentially and certainly at the time nor media told there were no newspapers in favor of independence in 2011 when we started but yeah the thing that really drove it was when i started to take more of an interest in scottish politics which was initially in 2007 and really in 2011 i was watching these things being or in the newspapers things on the telly that i knew for a fact where in truth im watching and im waiting for the journalists or the presenters to go hang on thats not true and it never happened and i couldnt understand why these these obvious false hudes werent being challenged and it became obvious that you know almost all. Going to have to do it myself i mean the most obvious one is the the myth that labor can win a u. K. Election without scotland and its just not true its never been true its there have been almost no points in history where labor needed scottish m. P. s to have a majority so this whole thing that scotland becoming independent would somehow be tree the rest of the u. K. And condemn it to tory governments forever there is no the tiniest grain of truth in it and i couldnt believe that this thing was just being repeated over and over on state broadcasters on National Television and all the papers always describe the as the controversial. Sometimes a lot worse than. Im used to people point the use of language but at least bad language which im trusting of us i can see is not only the state itself its not you thats right yeah we dont know where its on the issue firstly how do you how do you defend. Firstly the use of the flag and that we as a distraction from the serious message on the site i almost always find it comical and ridiculous that scottish people pretend to be offended by a bit swearing who is the most famous the most celebrated the most beloved Scottish Cultural export of all time its Billy Connolly a man who not only isnt ashamed of swearing a man who has turned swearing into an art form and who makes a very strong case case for doing it or most probably our biggest current cultural. Certainly entertainment world figure is Frankie Boyle who is is very much the same we we celebrate fictional characters like Malcolm Tucker written by the the wonderful Armando Iannucci who is the most magnificent creative sweeter and in the history of youre not right if youre going to point your rev a bushel. You know having read reviews i dont believe that the we should practice going to. Apartheid socalled swear words but not in a special sealed section at the back of the dictionary with a warning this is not to be used theyre just words theyre words which have a purpose and they use and if you want to express a certain view if you. Protech say particularly angry about government policy that is going to cause by these means of people to die like the most recent welfare reforms which are beyond any reasonable doubt caused thousands or tens of thousands of people to die an early death how can you express i knew or an adequate and sufficient level of anger about that without using these what was also these words for lets go on to the last and then the broad clear sight that something which quite extraordinary when you look back on it you published a book so i mean i think its extraordinary because the 5. A very successful web site a very popular Political Blog and they decided to issue a bouquet. Of 5 what we have a we blew up from the we were it was kind of a was basically always the goal from from the very early on what i realized is that youre going to have a hard time actually winning anyone over with a Pro Independence website because before the read ever read your arguments theyve got to come theyve got to want to come to your website and read it and that people tend not to do that kind of thing if they are opposed to your if there arent a lot people just arent interested in it so why i realized very early on was that i was going to have to produce something that we could get physically in peoples hands people who would come to a Pro Independence website people who wouldnt want to read stuff by me and also partly because of the stuff that you say about being vilified by the meanest press they are you know they were the enemy they werent going to give us a fair show so we had to put something directly in peoples hands that we could target and just give the normal man and woman in the street our argument the best way we queued so the website has always. Only ever really been a tool for the production of that we believe i believe that was i said to me look you know the argument in modern politics like the likes of teals and. In the referendum and 2016 we should keep you know the message is short and simple as possible in the sale of a bus but. Totally the opposite direction you know how many pages how many will issue yeah and wonder 72 pages. Between us and some other people over 300000 physical copies there were about 800000 copies downloaded on peoples i pods and will be bootlegged all over the earth for you we firmly encourage people to do it every really cute people some people print home some people print giant variations it was translated and gallic there were all your books over it we absolutely encourage people to get any possible way we could to as many people as we possibly could so that at least hundreds of thousands of. Political books will be released do you think that had an impact. Where in the start the world spring of 24 we didnt really start getting the print ones in peoples hands until the start of september and what i got told by people over and over again in unsolicited emails and letters and all kinds of stuff is that we really genuinely changed peoples minds they were saying i gave this to my my mom she was never ever going to vote yes and then 2 days later she was like knocking doors with me. And i know seems to thats what people tell me emil you know i wasnt there it wasnt i didnt i had no part in the distribution my mind my kind of right Lindsay Bruce put together just an unbelievable Distribution Network where we go to every corner of scotland from selkirk to store in a way in the bering. Absolutely everywhere and but the fact that that feat was never recognized anywhere really is something im still going to be in my bonnet about to that day the fact that nobody that wasnt considered newsworthy by the mainstream media. Its ludicrous. What do you do if we came here where did you work before you came here when you lived well death row and in many us States Capital punishment is still practiced convicted prisoners can spend years waiting for execution but most of the time the victims families they are very much in favor of the Death Penalty there are some people that because of what they did have given up the right to split them up this summer even proven innocent doctor years on death row and how many more exonerations is it kind of take before we as a society realize that this is not working and we actually do something about. This hard to take some from somebody if you know have some to replace. The want to do this interview today and i want to use the market in that they take me. For years off the area. So how can i tell you stop selling drugs if well hire somebody because the money in it back. Then just means the way in life has almost been basically mccullers peaceful for the worst to you as it would secure any security positions ive been in that day or jack me again. You see people get all their cars and ill see you coming in the harness seems like theyll hurry up and run into the house like they dont want to they dont want to talk see her get your mail or anything like that. I just want to go. And do it. Right just try reading. I mean. Give me. 1 what is bitcoin point is magic internet money a new type of Digital Currency the centralized digital scarcity chancellor im bringing a 2nd bailout for a bank thats called the genesis blog for reason because being a civil disobedience a source of optimism because i can control my own financial destiny its just a new way of coming to consensus its a game changer in the Human History and this is columbus discovering a new world this Paradigm Shifting Technology that transforms economics and finance in a heartbeat the apollo 11 landing on to the max and stacy. Welcome back alex is interviewing top 10 Political Bloggers to a combo of wings over scotland we take up the story with the website originally designed to help they guess cause in the 2014 referendum making the decision to keep on blogging in the aftermath of their hisself. No the referendum had famously you predicted the result of the estimated the support 45 percent so the referendum was held. To a skull and had been formulated with the cause of progressive independence referendum the us will so the yes get beaten but went to a scottish continues why i hadnt really considered if we were going to continue afterwards. It wasnt until i think it was the day after when everyone was was absolutely and broken everybody was in pieces and dying and all of those loyalist orange thugs appeared in George Square and i think that galvanized the us movement more than that i think any amount of sort of talking to ourselves about picking ourselves up and getting back into the fight could have been i think i think that huge number of people just when we are not going to be beaten by the people and there was a massive growing saw from wings weve seen cant stop night got to carry on doing this we are we are still in this fight this is this has not been put to bed and yet ive been up there was just no kind of option but the but to keep going so has carried on the go and from success the success in terms of is how many dedicated readers in the town the use of the do you get any reader if you leak. About everything unique rebuilt but no i mean it fluctuates its been yeah you know im dying from it peaked around almost a 1000000 in the couple of months weve got to the referendum but our average over the over the periods about a quarter of a 1000000 unique readers every month which from a country of 4000000 adults is a phenomenal reach its the kind of i still cant quite believe my big go or no imagination that ever when im looking back over the many many postings as a one year luke but youll see that i should have said that wasnt i. I didnt get it right. Your mistake shouldnt know of immediately springs to mind the 11. 00 of the 1st ones that we got a lot of criticism for was one of the. Deceased tory m. P. Alex johnson and he issued a horrible attack on a christian call and were. The lottery winners and s. N. P. Dollars and i yeah i called him a quite unpleasant means in the article is the only time weve kind of ever really been rude on the website rather than on twitter account which i regard as a separate entity i dont really really direct such and i think it was absolutely fair comment and i dont particularly feel bad about the language either because for the reasons i said earlier on the subject of the a common case it doesnt deal famously one case she brought together for defamation is accepted by the. Judge that. You had been defeated because youre not told before that but nonetheless she won the case on the globe is a fair comment it was a da thing to do for you controversial blogger someone who least a pretty strong offense of towns to take a politician to task for me my argued doing something similar to you i wont or would firmly disagree that something somewhere i mean if you dont bill had written an article saying she thought i was a horrible human being on i would be perfectly entitled to hold up any and i have no beef with that if you again youll know better than i do that how much abuse you get if youre involved in politics i get called awful things 100 times a day but there is a theres a difference not only morally but in law between being unpleasant about someone and defaming them by saying things that are factually untrue so i want to clearly have it established and have it in writing as it were. But i am not a homophobe but i wasnt tweeting homophobic things and the people cannot save some people see the association with of controversial bloggers and controversial language actually harms the. Dependence cause youre only allowed to think of billy sympathy with it can you see what people are driving or do you think its just part of the tactics of politics certainly is certainly an attempt to divide and rule but mean weve always been incredibly clear on wings that we have no connection to the s. N. P. Are never been in the s. N. P. Have never voted for the s. N. P. We have nothing to do with the s. N. P. So tell me i dont see how it can. Damage the s. N. P. Nicholas origin is not responsible for me and ive never suggested it should be i mean if anyone responsible for me its probably will you any because ive always been a lib ember war. And this is a revolution your make him eligible. We had little from the start with. Tory marginal and i came down here when chris patten was the m. P. When i arrived here and the election i ever voted in we kicked him out and bath has been lib dam with the exception of the 2015 election tory go in but then we came back in 2017 so you are basically saying is that if any Political Party reputation is at risk from the the more flawed it style of billions over scotland then thats the liberal democrat salute. On their hands you know you want to make a contribution to their for there and then you saw a continuing hope because of the closeness of the result and because of the desire of people to continue the argument but you know yourself as a practitioner making a contribution or a commentator whose principal purpose is to debunk unionism and the unionist press obviously is both of those are primary. We do see myself as a participant im you know wings makes no pretense of being a neutral observer in the Independence Campaign we are Pro Independence website so as a poor look theres web site there for you most of the view on the election the Independence Campaign should well i mean ive said on wings for for some time that the s. N. P. Probably the Scottish Government however you want to put it should probably have been more proactive in the last few years i personally would very much id like to have seen a Court Challenge with regard to whether we need a section there in order or not all the referendum because there is a great deal of leonard beagle opinion on both sides of the argument as in norway being the edinburgh agreement which you signed as you know did not issue it kind of moved it to one side and said we will we are having a referendum no and theres a wish based on what you believe the mood is in scotland or is it based on the saudi and westminster again its a little of both i mean its very much the mood that i detect in the Grassroots Movement from people who talk to me every day most people have understood that the Scottish Governments policy has to sort of essentially sit back and wait for breaks it unfold one way or another but the people i think are increasingly unhappy that more active steps havent been taken to prepare ourselves for when that becomes but surely the s. N. P. Leaderships points are a very fair one that. The. In the gift for section 30. A little study was ruled out an official there thought id. Catalonian style the initiative. Up the options. The leadership pathway can act as if we just have to buy time and we for Something Else to happen well this is the problem in if you if you rule all of those options and the u. K. Government just keeps saying no its not the time forever. Youve got nowhere theres nowhere else to go just it will never happen and we all grew old and die before we ever have a 2nd independence referendum so there are only 2 ive been used that i can see one of them being and an arrangement with perhaps a labor government that doesnt have a majority and would be prepared to concede a referendum in exchange for support or we go over the legal route i dont think the strategy or just asking over and over again until the until the cave of the c