Wings Over Scotland

In politics, readers, evil and stupidity aren’t the same thing.

But nor are they exclusive.

Before we ask you to consider which of the terms applies to the Scottish Government led by John Swinney, we’d like you to read this letter sent to Wings by the auntie of two women imprisoned in Scottish jails.

“I have two nieces who have had to share prison space with men. I used to visit niece 1 in Saughton in Edinburgh and Greenock where men were housed, including Paris Green, Melissa Young and Alex Stewart. She got released in 2024 but then her sister (niece 2) was imprisoned and I would visit her in Polmont (Scotland closed Saughton for women and sent them all to Polmont in Falkirk (although Alex remains in Greenock). She was released last week. Both nieces gave testimony to FWS in their current court case against Scot Gov.

The first time I visited my niece in Saughton in Edinburgh I was wearing my WOMEN DON’T HAVE PENISES sweater. I had no idea she was sharing the estate with men. My sweater was something I would wear around town on a daily basis. As I was in the waiting area with other visitors, a guard told me I would need to take my sweater off if I wanted to visit my niece.

I asked him where is the lie in stating women don’t have penises. He told me, ‘that’s a matter of opinion’. I turned to the room and asked, ‘hands up, all the women here who have penises’. They all laughed, but I still had to take my top off in order to go visit my niece. That’s when I realised she was sharing the estate with men.

She told me of Melissa Young. He has had the operation, but my niece said his room was always ‘stinking’. Presumably because of the vinegar douche he needs to use, and because of the fact that the intestine is used to replicate a vagina.

She also said that he made the female inmates perform humiliation rituals in order to access his codeine tablets. He would make one woman, Mary, suck on his breasts, and my niece said he would show people his ‘vagina’ at every opportunity. He also battered a woman, and it was the woman who got sent to a different prison so that he wouldn’t be inconvenienced.

Paris Green would walk around with stretchy leggings on, showcasing his penis. Both he and Melissa have been guilty of assaulting prison guards (Google it). Paris Green also entered niece 2’s cell and started stroking her hips. This was ten years ago (my nieces have had a very violent and abusive upbringing and have been in the system since the ages of 15).

Both of my nieces are caught in a cycle of poverty, crime and addiction. When this happened, years ago, it was the case that trans prisoners had to sit at the door of their cell. They were not allowed to mingle freely because the prison recognised that they were a risk. But when the ‘screw’ wasn’t looking, Paris made her way into my niece’s room and started stroking her.

In Greenock, in order to take a shower, females have to go through Nyomi Fee who killed her child. Inmates are given jobs, and it’s Nyomi’s job to hand out towels. Nyomi is in love with Alex the trans man. My niece hates a ‘beast’ and so she would wipe herself down in her room rather than have to go through a man, Alex, in order to get a towel. Alex and Nyomi are inseperable. Nyomi was in charge of distributing towels for women to enter the communal shower area.

Niece 2 is a lesbian, and in Greenock it is communal showering. I imagine most women don’t want to see a man in their washing area, but for lesbians it is particularly relevant.

The prison guards do not allow lesbian relationships. My niece’s lover was also in jail and they separated the two of them by putting them in different jails, but with Alex and Nyomi the guards allow them to freely interact with each other. My niece said the guards would often hang out in their rooms, laughing it up with the both of them.

Laws changed and most of the women were put in Polmont. Alex stayed at Greenock. My niece said Paris was always on a ‘rule’ (locked in his room) because he was always flashing his cock to the guards and the women. She also said that he is a very tall man, and can look over the cubicle when women are showering. She also said that she had to sit in the waiting area with him when waiting for a doctor’s appointment, unsupervised.

Both nieces were battered and abused by their father, but niece 1 went on to have a relationship with an abusive man who would hit her and handcuff her naked to a radiator. In her own words he ‘kicked babies out of me’. She miscarried twice because of the severity of the beatings he gave her. And yet Scot Gov are putting her in an estate with men guilty of the most violent crimes.

Lastly, there is a woman who is living as a man in Polmont. She has had top surgery and takes testosterone and has a beard and looks like a man. When she was charged, she was sent to a man’s prison. But when she got there they discovered she is a biological female and so they returned her to a women’s prison.

Women’s prisons are a dumping ground for the gender confused. If men who think they are women are allowed to be in the female estate, why can’t women who think they are men be housed in the men’s estate?”

Readers will doubtless already have their own opinions about the merits or otherwise of the Scottish Government’s apparent desperation to ensure that men like those described above continue to be housed among vulnerable women. But we’d also like you consider something else.

Because even if you think that putting violent men in women’s prisons is a simply super idea, you must be aware that the majority of Scots do not.

And so even if you agreed with the policy, you would presumably still be able to understand that there was a less moronic way to try to achieve it than the one the Scottish Government is currently pursuing.

Because the government’s core argument in the case heard at the Court Of Session last week is that it HAS to continue to allow the Scottish Prison Service to flout the Supreme Court ruling in the For Women Scotland case, because if it doesn’t it might find itself sued by a hypothetical transwoman who murdered or raped someone and then found himself locked up in a men’s jail.

Such a man, the Scottish Government’s counsel argued last week, might kill himself in such circumstances, which a great many people might consider no great tragedy but which would apparently upset the government sorely.

The First Minister was therefore faced with a choice between two options:

OPTION 1

 – continue to house male prisoners in the female estate if they say they’re women.

 – spend a bucketload of public money fighting for that position in court against For Women Scotland, causing the vast majority of the Scottish electorate to think you’re a bunch of scumbags who have lost their minds.  

OPTION 2

 – obey the Supreme Court ruling and immediately ban all males from women’s prisons. 

 – wait and see if at some point in the future, a transwoman prisoner assigned to a male prison did indeed bring a court case about it. (If they don’t, problem solved and it didn’t cost you a penny!)

 – fight that case in the court, arguing for the Supreme Court ruling, with the backing of the vast majority of the Scottish electorate. 

And here’s the thing, readers – it makes no difference to the eventual outcome. Whichever side you fight, the court will make the decision.

If you choose Option 1, almost everyone thinks you’re sewage whether you win or lose. If you choose Option 2, you win either way – you get all the benefits of taking the position that voters want you to take, and if you lose and the court rules in favour of the murderers, you’ve got someone else to blame it on.

(And if that’s the outcome you secretly want, you can always choose an idiot for your KC and send him in to throw it.)

Try as we might, even assuming the worst of motivations, we can think of no sane or sensible reason for doing as the Scottish Government has done and choosing Option 1. It’s not only evil, it’s also political suicide. The level of staggeringly obvious stupidity it requires stretches the bounds of credibility even for an administration as packed full of utter boneheads as this one.

Option 1 guarantees wasting yet more taxpayers’ money, enraging voters and getting terrible headlines in the months immediately preceding a general election. Option 2 not only gets you a lot more support, but it almost certainly kicks the issue down the road beyond the election where it can’t do you nearly as much harm.

Literally the ONLY halfway-logical explanation we can think of for what they’ve done is if the First Minister wants to make absolutely sure he doesn’t win a majority in May. And the reasons he doesn’t are rather easier to discern.

Making sure Swinney doesn’t have to try to secure independence in the next five years is just the latest in a long list of reasons why the SNP are willing to throw women under the bus, and subject people like our reader’s nieces to the grotesque suffering they’ve been made to endure at the hands of the state.

We don’t know about you, folks, but it makes us sick to our stomachs. We honest-to-God wish we could believe that our leaders were merely morons.