space lord over 308 that isn't one of these points apply of course to scotland's most popular and often most controversial blogger stewart campbell of way over scotland often under forced attack from the mainstream media and engaged in what can best be described as vigorous debates on twitter this hasn't stopped wings over scotland rising to number 3 in the u.k. political blogging charts others caught up with spirit campbell in the beautiful city. so most of that were certain though tell me about this revenue business under dog collar what's what's that all about yeah that's an old one i mean partly it's just a it's just a bit of fun it really winds some people up but i direct generally star in doing it because firstly just to make myself easier find on the internet because obviously camels are a really common name there are millions of people if you search just your camel there's there was a scotland rugby player a footballer there's

a famous canoeist there's a famous game called just of all sorts of people so by becoming reverends to come on the only one of the let's dispense with the dog food of the universe press that you were in past meeting a good revenue. thing we've got quite often with them as had the wings or were scott would get started well yeah i mean you see after the after the s.n.p. majority in 2011 it was obvious there was going to be a referendum on a member of them and i've been here and i've been independents guy all my 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 couldn't go knocking on doors and stuff so i thought to somebody could knock on doors and buff well yeah it was interesting research there's not know or votes to be won unfortunately so yeah so i decided to do it online and i tried i'm very brief i looked for other scottish politics websites and there weren't really any very good ones. i briefly wrote for one that was run by

a variety of people from 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 don't go on i'm going to do this myself or 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 the scottish new fly wings that was scotland tell me but 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 i'd always written my very 1st website as a videogame writer was called world of steer and ever since then i've had blogs that were that w. or x. as the initials of there were various apparently stations over the most recent one night i was over see you 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 it's

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 back of the television as well was pretty womanly biased against scottish independence so what was your explain to some of the unionist press as well as providing the the ordinary information that in the pen the supporters needed yeah i mean it's still is a ridiculous state of affairs where you have a political viewpoint held by roughly half of the country represented by essentially sat me at that 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 the i knew for a fact where in truth i'm watching and i'm waiting for the journalists or the presenters to go hang on that's not true and it never happened and i couldn't understand why these these obvious false hudes weren't being challenged and it became obvious that yeah i was 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 it's just not true it's never been true it's 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 couldn't believe that this thing was just being repeated over and over on state broadcasters on the national television and all the papers your site is always described. as controversial. sometimes a lot worse than. i'm used to people point the use of language but at least bad language which i'm trusting of us i can see is not only the state itself it's not you're right yeah we don't know where it's on the middle firstly how do you how do you defend. firstly the use of huge and isn't a distraction from the serious message on the site i almost always find it comical when ridiculous scottish people pretend to be offended by it but swearing who is the most famous the most celebrated the most beloved scottish cultural export of all time it's billy connolly a man who not only isn't 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 are. biggest current cultural. certainly entertainment world figure is frankie boyle who is it 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 swager and in the history of you're not credited for trying to point your revenue. having read reviews i don't believe that we should practice going to. apartheid. so-called swear words are not in a special sealed section at the back of the dictionary with warnings as not to be used they're just words they're words which have a process and they use and if you want to express a certain view if you're. protected 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 know you're an adequate and sufficient level of anger about that without using these words while also these words for let's go on to the lesson and the. clear sight that something was quite extraordinary when you look back on it you published a book so i would say it's extraordinary because the fact. a very successful website a very popular political blog and they decided to issue a boot a written form of a 5 what we have the we blew the cup that we were it was kind of was basically always the goal from from the very early on what i realized is that you're going to have a hard time actually winning anyone over with a pro independence website because before the read ever read your arguments they've

got to come they've 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 are a lot people just aren't 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 people's hands people who would come to a pro independence website people who wouldn't 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 weren't going to give us a fair show so we had to put something directly in people's 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 the we believe the evil the fed did you know the argument modern politics likely 30 years and in the referendum in 2016 they should keep you know the message is short and simple as possible in the sight of

a bust went totally the opposite direction you know how many pages how many wishes yeah and when the 72 pages. well between us and some other people over 300000 physical copies there were about 800000 copies downloaded on people's i pads and with a bootleg there was a line and all you we firmly encouraged people to do it every way they could people some people printing them at home some people print no giant a for variations it was translated into gallic there were audiobooks of it we absolutely encourage people to get out any possible way they could to this many people literally possibly could so that leaves hundreds of thousands of this political book which will be released do you think that had an impact on the people it was issued when in the stop the world spring of 2040 we didn't really start getting the print ones and the people's hands until the start of september and what i got told by people

over and over again in unsolicited e-mails and letters and all kinds of stuff is that we believe really genuinely change people's 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 quite a little was and i know it seems to that's what people tell me emil you know i wasn't there it wasn't i didn't i had no part in the distribution my mind making a right hand man lindsey bruce put together just an unbelievable distribution network where we got it every corner of scotland from selkirk to stornoway and larry to barack. absolutely every. but the fact that that feat was never recognized anywhere really is something off they'll go be in my bonnet about about the fight that nobody thought wasn't considered newsworthy by the mainstream media is ludicrous.

just driving the trump administration's around policy is confusing contradictory and given incoherent would be an understatement as members of his administration beat the drums of war the president suddenly injects themselves into the conversation with words to the conquer what is the world thing. seemed wrong. just don't hold. me. to shape out to stay active. and engaged in equal to trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

birds or head. go. for the feel good but so. far good. service is the real. fish city the commercial there. is so much moves. put them in a few fish you know not just go from. the meat. of a articles from. god since we. need. to move the name of. the scared or. the learned. look over the conditions in. minnesota in our news to him.

when the whole make us manufacture come sentenced him to a public wells. when the running clubs assume protect themselves. when the crime and merry go round certainly the one percent told. to ignore middle of the room signals. is. the world. welcome back alex is interviewing top 10 political blogger stuart campbell 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 the result. no the referendum had famously you predict 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 progress in the pen this referendum the us will so the yes get beaten. to a scottish continues why i hadn't really considered if we were going to continue afterwards and it wasn't until i think it was the day after when everyone was was absolutely and broken everybody was in pieces and dying and all 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 in the fight could have been i think i think 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 we've seen can't stop night got to carry on doing this we are we are still in this fight. this has not been put to bed and yet i've 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 this one how many dedicated readers as in the term the use of the do you get any 3 do if you delete. everything unique rebuild or old home week but no i mean it fluctuates it's been you know don't vary from it peaked around almost a 1000000 in the couple of months we 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 it's i still can't quite believe i begin to go on in the imagination that everybody looking back over the many many postings as

a one year luke but you'll see that i should have said that wasn't i. i didn't get it right. your mistake shouldn't know nothing of immediately spring from and the 11 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 we're. the lottery winners and s. and p. dollars and i yeah i called him a quite unpleasant names in the article is the only time we've kind of ever really been rude on the website rather than on twitter account which i regard as a sort of separate entity i don't really really direct such and i think it was absolutely fair comment and i don't particularly feel bad about the language either because for the reasons i said earlier on the subject of a common case it doesn't deal famously one case you brought together for defamation

is accepted by the. judge that. you had been defeated because you're not total fool dick but nonetheless she won the case on the globe is a fair comment it was a da thing to do for the controversial blogger someone who least. pretty strong on offense of. to take a politician to task for me my argued doing something similar to you. would firmly disagree that something somewhere i mean if you don't bill had written an article saying she thought i was a horrible human being on i would be perfectly entitled to hold up and you know i have no beef with that if you again you'll know better than i do that how much abuse you get if you're involved in politics i get called awful things 100 times a day but there is a there's a difference not only morally but in all 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 that i wasn't tweeting homophobic things and that people cannot save some people see that the association with of controversial blogger and controversial language actually harms the little dependence cause you're only allowed to think of billy sympathy with the bit can you see what people are driving or do you think it's just part of the tactics of politics certainly is that it's certainly an attempt to divide and rule but mean we've 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 don't see how it can. damage the s.n.p. nicholas origin is not responsible for me and i've never suggested it should be i mean if anyone responsible for me it's probably will you any because i've always been a lib dems bore. and this is

a revolution you're making in the excitement you. from the start with. tory marginal and i came down here when chris patten was the m.p. when i arrived here and the 1st election i ever voted in we kicked him out and bath has been. with the exception of the 2015 election tory go in but then we take him 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 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've got yourself as a practitioner making a contribution or are you a commentator whose principal purpose is to debunk unionism and the unionist press

obviously both of those are primary. we do see myself as a participant i'm you know wings makes no pretense of being a neutral observer in the independence campaign we are pro independence website so our zapruder bears website there for you must either of you on the election the independence campaign should well i mean i've said on wings for for some time that the s.n.p. probably the scottish government ever you want to put it should probably have been more proactive in the last few years i personally would very much of liked 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 lair unload legal opinion on both sides of the argument as in norway being the edinburgh agreement which you signed as you know did not say issue it kind of moved it to one side and said we will we are having a referendum and they wish based on what you believe the mood is in scotland or

is it based on the saudi and westminster again it's a little of both i mean it's 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 government's 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 haven't been taken to prepare ourselves for when that becomes but surely the s.n.p. leadership's points are a very fair one that. the. gift for section 30. local started was ruled out an official method and. catalonian style the initiative. up the options. the leadership pathway can act as if we just have to

buy time when we push 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 is not the time forever you've got nowhere there's nowhere else to go just it will never happen and we all grew old and die before we ever have a 2nd independent referendum so there are only 2 i've been used that i can see one of them being and an arrangement with perhaps a labor government that doesn't have a majority and would be prepared to concede a referendum in exchange for support or we go over the legal route i don't think the strategy or just asking over and over again until the until the cave of the canucks of their hearts is ever going to get anywhere so one way or another you determine that the game should be a food once again in scotland another referendum another test so can we anticipate another. oh you certainly can yeah i mean that's again that's still the whole point of going to wings over scotland is to get to a referendum and have another go another we believe we can people's hands there we

will be printing this time so 4 to 5 times as many as we did the last time because i think it's very powerful to give people facts that's the thing that we do when it was going above anything else you don't have to take our word for anything we admit up front that we are biased that we are pro independence but every claim that we make every fact that we are sorry we give you a source we give you the link we say here's here of the fact you go and look at them don't take our word for it decide for yourself whether we're telling you the truth or not have you thought of. success and post-independence will be back to scotland would you give up political controversy over to enter mainstream politics what we got in mind for mr campbell in the future yeah my home aside i would move home if we if we go independent or move home permanently and i'm torn from day to day about whether that would be to form a new political party or to go and live in

a cave with no internet for the rest of my life can be taken over from where the raimi are so convinced liberal democrat voters one thing somebody needs to. still cover i can assure you of a political career before i can do is present you with the other exam and create for the show you know the drill of those no even here can buy a few bill to get your hands for the good scotch and the risk of any liberal thank you very much on the pledge of. let us drill for a 2nd on the extent of the achievement of the 3 blogs we have covered thus far and the c.d.'s from bass is centered in scottish and northern irish politics wins over scotland slow growth too and the craig mundie bloc have generated huge interest to soar into the u.k. top 10 these 3 are very different in style and content craigmile is paying norms fired in white providing devastating critique of u.k. international policy sugru too has become the key source of impartial information

on the politics of the province while wings might scathing demolitions of the poor union mainstream media and scotland should be said that this does not endure wings of a scotland site to those on the receiving end of the seating and alice this and some particularly in the hierarchy of the national movement also find wing social media presence far too hot to handle sure campbell does point out that the wings over scotland blog should be the garters as a distinct entity from the wings twitter account but some do not accept this distinction and i q but it is kind of productive. of course political blows not the same thing as political parties as liberal voters sure can go by only points i don't want wings of a skull into stunned beyond argument as attract a dedicated readership of energized and politically aware achievements while the production of the 3 blue book how did to months ago public affect on the politics of the scottish independence referendum of 2014 a real impact transcending the verified virtual world of the online plates cool

campaigners the new edition promised exclusively on this show will be eagerly awaited by the guest movement in scotland under guard to the some degree of trepidation by the progeny and campaigners. next week return from featuring on line politics of today to feature filming of the past i guess mcfadden 1st shot to stardom in 1905 with his protégé of the scottish tito king robert the bruce and the multi oscar winning brief part. now with an expensive film or graffiti under his belt he's back at the edinburgh international film festival and i hope the proofs to pick up the broadsword one think this is not a sequel but tells the new story. join us next week to find out whether this news though will have the same dramatic impact until the end from alex in a 1000 although the show is good bye for now. good

food descriptions sound up the tasing even for the owners so how to choose the pet food industry is telling us what to feed our pets really more based on what they want to sell us than was necessarily good for the pet turns out may not be associate as people believe we have animals that have you know diabetes in arthritis they have auto immune disorders the cat allergies we are actually

creating these problems it's a huge epidemic of problems all of them i believe can be linked to very simple problem of diet and some dog owners so heartbreaking stories about their pets last treats the larger corporations are not very interested in proving or disproving the value of their food because they're already making it a $1000000000.00 on it and there's no reason to do that research. you know world of big partisan movies lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bath and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the

hawks. we had. 3540 years old. lost the struggles in the water. some 30 fisherman later in this lead. us to suddenly. going to move ahead of me i should take another minimal thought my feet were stubborn and hurt the machine and. i believe that this is one part of the therapy is. a little charm. absurd it's really harsh things that happen in life.

was active was. my back was. no trump isn't ruling out tonight a strike against a wrong following a us drone being shot down in the straits of foremost a further escalation comes in the europe makes a last ditch effort to save the iran nuclear deal. ek government suspends new almost sells to saudi arabia off the court of appeals rules that previous exports broke the law the case represents a significant victory for peace activists who say that way out there is using british made weapons to devastating effect in yemen. i am. back over bullets water cannon and tear gas.