The Cost Of Truth 497
The Scottish Government just issued another response in the long-running Freedom Of Information battle with alert Wings reader Benjamin Harrop over its conspiracy to frame and imprison the late Alex Salmond on false charges. Here’s a genuine extract.
Yeah, definitely nothing to hide here.
Keeping the fire burning 66
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The Wage Thief 385
6 November 2024 was a normal sitting day in the Scottish Parliament, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Nicola Sturgeon spent the previous evening in London, watching a special screening of a dreadful BBC Three sitcom about – of course – drag queens.
But remarkably, though she must have been puffy-eyed and weary, the 6th was one of the few days when she did actually manage to turn up at Holyrood to do her job.
The New Britain 562
So things are getting pretty strange.
Polling in Scotland, the UK and Wales in the last few days has shown Great Britain taking a fairly heavy swerve to the right after just five months of Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Labour now lead Reform (who have five seats to Labour’s 411) by just three points in the UK and are even more remarkably now in THIRD place in Wales, a country where the party has won every single election for over 100 years.
Scotland, meanwhile, is heading for a hung Parliament in 2026 in which – as this site has been telling its readers for the last year and a half – the only possibility of a stable administration will be an SNP-Labour coalition.
We live, as they say, in interesting times.
What Went On 468
The proceedings at the Supreme Court this week were a tough follow even if you could get the court’s abominably bad livestream to work. They’re all archived here now, but non-lawyers will probably glaze over quickly during the nine hours of intense legalese.
We’re not allowed to clip up any illustrative sections, on pain of possible contempt of court, so perhaps the best way to explain the key parts of what happened in a vaguely comprehensible way is by showing you some commentary from social media.
A Personal Best For Kezia 255
Credit where it’s due:
17 months is the quickest she’s ever caught up with us.
Telling the truth by mistake 73
The Scottish Government has finally, and reluctantly, published its submission for next week’s crucial Supreme Court hearing on the definition of the word “woman”.
Many expert observers have already noted that the document flatly contradicts the Scottish Government’s previous repeated and strenuous assertions that a Gender Recognition Certificate confers “no new rights” on trans people, and have published extremely detailed assessments which are frankly all but impenetrable to non-lawyers but basically conclude that the Scottish Government’s position is a mess.
Our favourite line, however, is this one.
So if you’re obliged to have a 50/50 sex balance in your boardroom, you can do it by hiring a man with a GRC saying he’s legally female, or by hiring a woman.
We believe that the young folk nowadays call that a “self-own”.
The Long Unravelling 399
You’ve got to admit, that’s a zinger.
Craig Whyte is a man who knows all about financial doom looming on the horizon of a once-powerful institution. But it doesn’t take an expert with lived experience to spot what’s coming down the line for the SNP.