Readers may have noticed recent speculation in the media (based on the wording of a press release) that Police Scotland had ended their investigations regarding Operation Branchform. As it happened we’d already submitted a Freedom Of Information request aimed at finding that out, and the response arrived this evening.
As alert Wings readers will know, we’re fond of a WW2 analogy from time to time. The conflict is so extensively documented, and so deeply embedded in British culture (for both good and ill), that it’s a reliable tool for getting points across concisely and clearly.
(It’s also one of the last major wars in which, overall, the good guys and the bad guys were pretty indisputably easy to identify.)
So let’s keep that in mind for a moment while we look at this.
For 10 years in Germany between 1935 and 1945, Jewish people were not legally human. The Nuremberg Laws, drafted in large part by Wilhelm Stuckart, established the principle in law that Jews were to be denied any rights on the basis that they were untermensch, a German word literally meaning “subhuman”.
It would be, to say the least, highly controversial for anyone to put forward in 2025 the idea that Jewish people had actually ceased to be human beings during that period, even though the various laws had been passed by a legitimately-elected government in peacetime and attracted little in the way of international condemnation.
The truth is that regardless of what the law said, Jewish people remained humans for the whole time, which is why Nazi war criminals were tried after the war for “crimes against humanity”. The passing of a law had had absolutely no effect on their biological reality. (Other than that it led to millions of them being murdered, of course.)
But anyway. Nicola Sturgeon.
Is the above how she imagined her feminist legacy, do you think, readers?
Robin McAlpine published a very important piece yesterday, detailing how the SNP is about to become even more of a leadership dictatorship than it already is.
You can read the article to see why this is a change of enormous importance, and a catastrophic one for the independence movement. It will make it just under 17 times harder for any sitting SNP leader to be challenged for the leadership – let alone defeated – and effectively turns the party into a private oligarchy every bit as total and unaccountable as that of Reform (which is not a member-directed political party in the conventional sense, but a limited company personally owned by Nigel Farage, who holds a majority of the voting shares and can do whatever he pleases with it).
We’re annoyed at ourselves, because we got sent the document revealing the change a month ago, but we missed it. And now we’re going to show you why.
Since it was founded back in November 2011, Wings Over Scotland has been solely financed by its readers. The site has never carried any advertising, we have no secret corporate backers, everything we do is funded by transparent voluntary donations and subscriptions, mostly of a few pounds a month.
We have the freedom to write what we believe, thanks to you, our readers. And since those earliest days, opponents have tried to end that freedom by blocking our funding.
Just a quick bit of housekeeping here with regard to the new Wings comments section, which offers far more functionality but has also attracted a few complaints because it’s no longer a straight chronology of oldest-to-newest tweets.
(We could actually change that back, but the cost would be losing the ability to reply directly to individual comments, which is a big loss, so we’re leaving it as it is for now.)
To those beefing because that means you can’t now immediately tell which comments are new, a couple of helpful pointers. The easiest way to fix the problem is a simple one: keep the tab open.
If you keep the most recent page open in a tab on your browser, the Comment Bubble (visible at the bottom left of that pic) will keep track of all new comments – it refreshes every 30 seconds – and highlight them for you in yellow until you’ve read them.
(The little orange circle should take you to the first unread one if you click it.)
Sadly the Bubble stops working if you close the tab or navigate to a new page from it, but since most people have scores of tabs open at a time that shouldn’t be a problem. So there you go.
Thanks to the dedication of our legal team in working over the Easter holiday, Wings has unexpectedly received the formal Opinion of legal counsel (hereafter called “the Opinion”, capitalised to avoid confusion with the ordinary use of the word in the article) with regard to the standing of the site in the light of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, which comes into force tomorrow.
We publish the Opinion below, partly to assist those worried about the Act’s impact on them but unable to afford their own legal advice.
But we also do so to place Police Scotland on notice that anything published by Wings Over Scotland is done in the light of the greatest possible care having been taken to ensure compliance with the law, and that in such a context any future attempt/s to improperly interfere with our rights of free expression under Article 10 of the European Convention On Human Rights (ECHR) will be viewed with regard to pursuing the maximum available recourse for wrongful restriction of our lawful activities.
We have both funds and the will to pursue such action.
So, it being Good Friday, we’re definitely not going to receive our legal opinion before Monday now, so Wings Over Scotland will be shutting down, at least temporarily, on Sunday evening. No posts will be visible on the site and our Twitter account will be either locked down or deactivated while we await advice on whether either can return.
In the meantime you can hear of any developments, or get in touch, on my personal account @RevStu or on @TheGhostOfWings, both of which have had, or are about to have, all their old tweets wiped.
We’re not going to overdramatise, because we hope this is only for a few days. We’re optimistic that the Scottish Government’s abysmal, sinister and totalitarian Hate Crime Act, opposed across every sector of Scottish society and even by the police charged with implementing it, will not put an end to 12 and a half years of political journalism.
The great unknown in the SNP leadership contest is an extremely significant one: who are the voters? Nobody but Peter Murrell really knows how many members the party has, but almost nobody believes the claimed number of over 100,000. (Our guess, based on pretty much nothing but a gut feeling, is 75,000 plus or minus 5000.)
But more to the point, nobody knows who they are. The average member age in most political parties is over 50, and according to figures published in 2019, more than 80% of SNP members are over 40, with half of those being over 60. There’s also an almost 3:2 bias in favour of men.
(We haven’t had any contact from Twitter about it, people just noticed the account was live again last night and told us about it, so we don’t know what the reason was.)
It’s still quite a shocking read even half a decade down the line.
We’ve only actually had 93 posts on trans issues in those five years, or an average of about one every three weeks. We know it feels like more. And we know that some of you thought we’d gone mad when we started warning about it.
But hopefully some of you have realised just what’s at stake, and even if you don’t care about that, how much it might cost the cause of independence. We really hope we can stop talking about it soon, if only so we don’t keep getting banned from Twitter.
A week ago, readers, I had not the slightest interest in bringing Wings Over Scotland back full-time. I had my Twitter account again and was having fun and I was happy with that. It scratched the itch of being able to engage with politics (and people) without the depressing business of wading in it for work.
And then I witnessed the quite extraordinary sight of an elected member of Parliament, in the shape of the SNP’s pico-witted ambulant brain vacuum Karen Adam, publicly gloating about having managed to shut down the voice of someone critical of her party.
At the same time, an extremely minor blogger (the word “rival” would be to over-dignify them) re-opened hostilities in his campaign of self-declared “open warfare” against this site, with a rapid succession of posts (just a few of dozens) forming such a demented scattershot tirade that to patiently debunk all of it would have taken until Christmas.
And I’ll be honest, folks, it all pushed my buttons a wee bit. It really shouldn’t have, but it was properly outrageous and I’m occasionally human, so I thought “Sod it, if I’m going to have to put up with all this crap anyway I might as well make it worthwhile”.
James on According As We Need Them: “Funny how the unionist rag describes the removal of the stone from a thief as ‘notorious’….” Jul 14, 21:48
Gribble on According As We Need Them: “On the subject of intimidation on the stump, the impression as often given that this is a worsening problem. But…” Jul 14, 21:39
Northcode on According As We Need Them: “Excellent article about a young Martinican psychiatrist’s time studying with the great Francesc Tosquelles at the Saint-Alban psychiatric asylum. Thanks…” Jul 14, 21:30
Breastplate on According As We Need Them: “John Main, You Unionists seem to routinely register your disapproval on the reliance of 300 year old documentation, but accept…” Jul 14, 20:43
agent x on According As We Need Them: “@ Northcode I notice there has been minimal, or maybe make that no support or encouragement for your poems on…” Jul 14, 20:15
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Just Good Friends: “In case you are unaware (and for comparison): WAR O THE WARLDS By H. G. Wells – Owerset intae NOR-EAST…” Jul 14, 20:11
Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Enjoying your use of iambic quadrameter, NC. And your random departures from it too. If you’re taking requests, highlights from…” Jul 14, 19:49
Northcode on According As We Need Them: “I posted one of ma braw poems recently about the demon Nuckelavee being cawd up fae the depths o’ the…” Jul 14, 19:38
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: ““trying as usual to undermine anything about Scotland” You should read Rev Stu’s articles and not just jump straight to…” Jul 14, 18:06
Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “In this heat you need to be eating salads.” Jul 14, 17:55
twathater on Just Good Friends: “Wow the yoonies are out in force trying as usual to undermine anything about Scotland ,they’re like wee yapping dugs…” Jul 14, 17:35
Dan on According As We Need Them: “In a bid to disrupt mental Main’s posting stream… Related to this article, there’s a fair few quid being spaffed…” Jul 14, 17:14
Mark Beggan on According As We Need Them: “The Gravy boat is just a woke away. Just a woke away Just a woke away Just a woke away.” Jul 14, 16:55
Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: ““can a thief be robbed?” Now I’m confused, Confused. You have stated on here many times that when it comes…” Jul 14, 16:48
Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: ““nothing of the colonizer’s is appropriate for the colonized” Stand out post from Professor Baird. Anybody with him on calling…” Jul 14, 16:20
Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Nice try, NC, but easily discounted, as you have failed to provide any evidence for your assertion that Scotland’s high…” Jul 14, 16:01
Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: ““Scotland as a Lunatic Asylum” When Confused writes on a subject so aligned with his own, lived experience, it behoves…” Jul 14, 15:51
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Another post from Confused enthusing over the idea of a bankrupt and socially fractured England just south of our unprotected…” Jul 14, 15:47
Confused on According As We Need Them: “mythology – when Edward 1 stole the stone of destiny it was to make himself legitimate, for a “true king”…” Jul 14, 15:21
James Cheyne on According As We Need Them: “Northcode. The trouble with ignorance is that it can, if left unfettered become an indoctrination of the mind. Even if…” Jul 14, 15:01
Insider on Just Good Friends: “James at 2:34 If you know “exactly what they mean” why do you misuse them ?” Jul 14, 14:58
James on Just Good Friends: “I also recognise the scratchings of a supercilious c**t when I see them…..” Jul 14, 14:43
James on Just Good Friends: “I know exactly what these words mean, smart arse. Knew that highers exam would come in handy someday.” Jul 14, 14:34
Insider on Just Good Friends: “James 12:47… Do you know what the words “refute” and “bespoke” mean ??? Apparently not !” Jul 14, 13:50
sarah on According As We Need Them: “I am not quite as pessimistic, Lorn! If enough good people get into Holyrood they will tell the civil servants…” Jul 14, 13:41
Lorrn on According As We Need Them: “Caveman: because we allowed our common decency and sense of fairness to dominate our older, more innate and evolutionary senses…” Jul 14, 13:32
Lorn on According As We Need Them: “It is not only the candidate who have to be selected very carefully to weed out the incompetent – and…” Jul 14, 13:14