Navel-gazing stats post: Scot Goes Pop solidifies its position as Scotland's third most-read political blog

When I changed this blog's masthead a couple of months ago to say "one of Scotland's three most-read political blogs", I thought it would be a one-month wonder and that I'd quickly have to change it back to "one of the five most-read", but in fact Stuart Campbell's favourite comparison site has shown further progress for Scot Goes Pop since then.  Now, to be clear, that comparison site may not be especially accurate - a couple of years ago it claimed that Wings was based in Glasgow (as opposed to, say, Bath), had around 15 "employees" (as opposed to, say, zero), and had an "annual turnover" of around £15 million (as opposed to, say...well, I'm not sure if the exact figure is publicly available, but even Stew's crowdfunding doesn't extend to the multi-millions).  However, as the Wings disciples treat the stats as gospel, I may as well embrace them when they're favourable, and here's how they stand at the moment...

Estimated visits for the 28 days up to 21st March:

1) Wings Over Scotland: 221,110

2) Wee Ginger Dug: 89,576

3) Scot Goes Pop: 60,830

4) Grouse Beater: 38,042

5) Talking Up Scotland: 26,721

6) Robin McAlpine: 25,824

7) Bella Caledonia: 23,558

8) Munguin's Republic: 14,586

Now, I realise that anyone who hasn't kept an eye on these numbers will probably think that's still quite a healthy lead for Wings, but in fact it's come down dramatically.  When Stew last mentioned the numbers himself in November, the monthly visits for Wings supposedly stood at 559,284 - so his readership appears to have fallen by well over half since then.  That in itself is a good reason to be sceptical about the estimates, but Stew has repeatedly insisted in the past that they're extremely accurate, so if he still believes that, I suppose it's up to him to explain why his site's popularity appears to be collapsing at lightning speed.  He also used to repeatedly boast that the non-Wings blogosphere was essentially irrelevant because Wings had more visits than all of the others combined - as you can see for yourselves, that's no longer the case (if it ever really was).  And he specifically used to boast about having around ten times as many visits as Scot Goes Pop - that's now come down to less than four times as many.  So I'm delighted to say we appear to have a somewhat healthier and more balanced blogging ecosystem these days.

Incidentally, I left Craig Murray out of the list because since October his blog has been almost exclusively about international affairs, and he's only mentioned Scottish politics once.  However, if he was included in the list, he'd be in fourth place with 55,660 visits.  In practice that may give a slightly false impression because he now duplicates his blogposts on a Substack site, so that might be artificially reducing the numbers on his main site.

To get back to the subject of Stew, he actually posted a screenshot of one of my entire blogposts on Twitter the other day - 

It really is hard to adequately convey how catastrophically stupid you have to be to believe any of this. pic.twitter.com/dz6UcOBoGY

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) March 21, 2025

If he carries on like this, I'm going to have to start charging him for royalties.  But I suppose I should be grateful to him for bringing such a cracking blogpost to a slightly wider audience, even if they're mostly comprised of bots.

What does take the biscuit, though, is that within 48 hours of the above tweet, he was back to his usual schtick of "I don't stalk James, James stalks me".

(And also, if you call someone who's tweeted twice about you all year "utterly obsessed", you're wandering into James Kelly territory, and that ain't a healthy place to be.) pic.twitter.com/RPbKjncady

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) March 23, 2025

Twice all year, Stew?  Well, let's look at the evidence, shall we?  Exhibit A - 

James Kelly, of course.

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) January 11, 2025

Exhibit B -

Oh lord, please let James Kelly stand as an independent in the 2026 Holyrood election. pic.twitter.com/lN7xPcrSa3

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) December 8, 2024

Exhibit C -

James Kelly. You're missing nothing.

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) November 6, 2024

Exhibit D (with added paranoia) -

I see my Wikipedia page has been the subject of some vandalism - happy birthday to me! - with some s**t about how I "oppose transgender rights" and "no longer support independence" and apparently vote Tory (so I expect James Kelly did it). I've corrected these falsehoods, under…

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) October 27, 2024

Exhibit E -

James Kelly will be beside himself with delight that he's my "associate" now 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/9SGNSwUTCO

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) May 1, 2024

Exhibit F -

Can't stop f***ing laughing at this 😂 pic.twitter.com/Is7GkjJV7R

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) January 13, 2025

Well, you get the picture. On and on and on and on it goes.  And let's not forget about "Scot Goes Pop Night" on the main Wings site back in January, when Stew lovingly archived and annotated no fewer than sixty-four posts from this blog.

It's stalking, Jim, but exactly as we know it.