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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This site hasn’t had much nice to say about the former CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, Mridul Wadhwa, or the (incredibly) still-CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland, Sandy Brindley. But we’re going to thank them today, because it’s hard to see how anyone else could have been chiefly responsible for this.

Just four and a half years ago, every demographic group in the UK supported – either by a plurality or an outright majority – the presence of transwomen in women’s rape crisis centres. But today, eight out of 10 of those groups now oppose it, five by an absolute majority, with only 18-24-year-olds and (barely) Labour voters clinging on.

(Which is probably why ERCC has stuffed its board with children.)

Sometimes even awful people can trigger good outcomes. Cheers, sir and madam.

The below is an open letter from a rape survivor, Paula, to Sandy Brindley, CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland. It is reproduced unedited, with Paula’s permission.

Dear Sandy,

I’m writing to implore you to stop doing press interviews.

Each time you do, it feels like yet another slap in the face from Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and Rape Crisis Scotland.

To be honest, I didn’t even know who you were until a few weeks ago. When the report into ERCC came out and Mridul Wadhwa resigned, I thought I could put this whole experience behind me.

Last week however, I heard on BBC that you “unreservedly apologise” for the failing at ERCC. It is honestly laughable. I have had no such apology. In fact, quite the opposite.

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As we write this article, Sandy Brindley (on the left of the picture below) is still in post as the CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland.

For as long as that remains the case, rape victims in Scotland will not be safe.

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Astonishingly, there isn’t a single word of apology anywhere in this statement.

There isn’t a scintilla of contrition, not the tiniest glimmer of admission of culpability or responsibility. There isn’t even a weasel-worded expression of “regret”.

Rape Crisis Scotland is unfit for purpose, and its CEO must resign.

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The judgement in the case of a support worker constructively dismissed by Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre in 2022 is one of the most excoriating we’ve ever read.

Mridul Wadhwa, a man with whom Wings readers have been familiar for some years, was found by the tribunal judge to have been “the invisible hand behind everything that had taken place” as Roz Adams, a conscientious, caring and highly professional woman with a long history in the sector, was systematically and methodically hounded out of her job for holding, privately and sensitively, the belief that biological sex is real.

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15 years ago this week (today if you’re counting strictly by date, Thursday if you want to go with election days) the SNP came to power in Scotland for the first time ever. The media operating in Scotland is full of retrospectives and polls on the period, but as usual they’ve missed the real story, as a reader pointed out to us a few days ago.

So for old times’ sake, let’s do their job properly for them one more time.

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Yesterday the SNP released their 2021 election manifesto, and on the divisive subject of gender reform it was as bad as we feared. Yes, there is obfuscation to mask intent, but the intent is crystal clear all the same. Especially if we judge the SNP by their record and all the things they have failed – and continued to fail – to address.

The manifesto commits to reforming the GRA while ensuring that it will not affect the rights or protections women enjoy under the Equality Act.

But what, in reality, does that mean?

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Every Yes supporter in Scotland dreamed of having our own Mandela to lead us to freedom. Unfortunately, we wanted Nelson but we got Winnie instead.

And now our country is no longer a safe place.

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When Nicola Sturgeon is finally held to account for the charred, twisted and shattered ruins that she’s made of Scottish political and civic society in her desperate attempts to save her own neck, the complete discrediting of ostensible support organisations for victims of rape will be near the very top of the charge sheet.

But before we talk about that you really need to read this.

Because if you live in Scotland you can only rationally be one of two things at this moment in history: (a) terrified, or (b) an idiot.

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The Scottish Government and Nicola Sturgeon have tonight embarked on a last-ditch desperate throw of the dice to undermine and sabotage the already-compromised and endlessly-obstructed Fabiani inquiry in its impossible quest for the truth.

Having previously deployed her paid mouthpiece Rape Crisis Scotland last week, the First Minister – who’s spent the last six months insisting that she’d save her comments for her appearance at the inquiry – suddenly popped up on BBC and STV (but not, curiously, Sky News) to issue a challenge full of gunfighter bravado to her predecessor.

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We’re feeling a bit confused this morning, readers. Maybe someone can help.

Below is the key part of the letter sent by the Clerks of the Scottish Parliament, acting on behalf of the Fabiani committee, to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) a week and a half ago, requesting material for their investigation into the Scottish Government’s botched handling of false allegations against Alex Salmond.

As we’d told you at the time, the request was a sham, designed to produce nothing of any value, because it carefully excluded the only person whose communications with Sue Ruddick were actually of relevance – SNP chief executive Peter Murrell.

(Murrell being an employee of the party, NOT a member of the Scottish Government, a civil servant or a special adviser.)

But yesterday it all went really weird.

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