Wings Over Scotland

It’s increasingly common now for the Scottish news to feature another prison scandal or employment-tribunal judgment highlighting the extent of gender-ideology capture in the country’s public authorities.

But it’s normally quite hard to get an overall picture of just how captured any particular public body really is, so we should offer some thanks to the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) who’ve helpfully provided us with a comprehensive primer in the form of a briefing for a board update later this week.

Innocent readers might have thought that the people managing a national park would be most concerned about attracting visitors, protecting wildlife, repairing paths and keeping local businesses sustainable, that sort of thing. But that’s not how things work in Scotland any more.

Because the CNPA are about to present the organisation’s 19 board members with an 91-page report and annex detailing all their vital work on… equalities issues.

Y’know, in case Ben Macdui isn’t queer enough.

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As he often does, Robin McAlpine has an interesting blog post up.

Now, as alert readers will know, we’ve been calling for that on Wings for at least the last couple of years. For sane people any credible hope of reforming the SNP is long gone, by the deliberate design of its leadership, and so has almost any real pretence at pursuing independence at all. The party now exists solely to milk another few years at the gravy trough off the backs of the hopelessly gullible.

But there’s a problem with the idea.

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It’s 18C today in Bath, readers, so after the dentist we went out to enjoy the sunshine for the afternoon. And you know what happens when we go out.

But really, what even is there to say?

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So as promised, and having now spent 11 months trying to get answers any other way, this afternoon we had a live chat with controversial charity LGBT Youth Scotland.

Below is how it went.

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In April last year we wrote to LGBT Youth Scotland asking them to explain why they were conducting activities in primary schools (and even with pre-school children) about sexual matters despite only having a remit to work with young people aged 13-25.

We received no reply, so we contacted the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, who sent a rather sniffy acknowledgement saying:

“If your concern leads us to making inquiries with the charity, we are unable to update you on the status of those inquiries. For more information about what to expect after you submit a concern, read our guidance on how OSCR deals with concerns and inquiries.”

That link, you’ll be amazed to hear, leads to a dead page.

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You know what, Surrey Live, we think you’re probably right.

We DO think people will remember him.

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It stands for “Failed In London, Try Holyrood”, of course.

So enjoy The March Of The Rejects next year, as the SNP explains to you why you were wrong not to elect these candidates last year and gives you a chance to atone for your shameful error. You lucky people.

The Presiding Officer has finally reluctantly deigned to allow the Scottish Parliament to discuss the issues arising from Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife, in the shape of a debate taking place in the chamber this afternoon brought forward by the Scottish Tories.

We suspect that watching it will be profound waste of time and a grave danger to our monitor screens, but we’ll certainly at least tune in for the votes at the end, because which motion/amendment the Parliament puts its name to will be a revealing moment.

Let’s quickly run those through a translator.

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Some of our more alert readers may recall the events of four years ago this month, when a mob of SNP representatives all suddenly raged against the idea of (perfectly legally) “gaming” the Holyrood electoral system to produce a pro-indy supermajority.

Voters try to organise themselves to maximise their desired outcomes all the time (see various tactical-voting campaigns), and so do political parties – witness John Swinney’s current plans for a grand anti-Reform coalition. And of course, the SNP never objected to indy voters voting for a different party on the list if it was the Greens. The entire thing was just a poorly-disguised attack on Alba.

But even so, guess what? The rules just changed again.

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We don’t need a cartoonist today. How could he be funnier than this?

Please let us one day discover who the wailing colleague was.

It’s one of the most profoundly disappointing things about the last decade of Scottish politics that for about five minutes in 2015 we all thought that this awful dunderheaded foghorn was a bright new hope for the future.

But you live and learn. At least, some of us do.

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