Wings Over Scotland

So here’s a thing.

But that’s not how the Hate Crime Act is supposed to work.

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This is from the Financial Memorandum prepared by the Scottish Government for the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.

And here’s the reality after ONE DAY.

So that went well.

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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.

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Bookmark the links in this article, readers, because Wings might not be here tomorrow and it’s important. According to the Scottish Government, our beloved country is in the grip of a terrible epidemic of hatred. That’s plainly an unacceptable – one could also say intolerable – situation, and every last one of us must play our part to end it.

Even if that causes some administrative difficulties.

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When we read this, our instant reaction was “Well, that’s total horseshit”.

And of course, it is.

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Wings has been regularly pointing out for the last 11-and-a-half years that by far the most reliable indicator of who’s going to win an election isn’t voting-intention polls, but “Who would make the best Prime/First Minister?” polls.

So the SNP should be really really alarmed about this.

Because those are some shocking numbers.

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Everyone’s having a lot of fun with the farcical Hate Crime Act that will finally come into operation in Scotland in just a couple of weeks’ time, fittingly on April Fools’ Day.

Even by the Scottish Government’s abysmally rank standards of legislation over the last decade it’s an embarrassing binfire, with citizens being urged to rock up at fishmongers, mushroom farms and demolished tower blocks to report “hate crimes”.

And you’d have to laugh, except that might be a crime soon too.

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There’s a Calvin And Hobbes cartoon we like to post on social media when someone’s got themselves in such a pickle that they’re just flailing around desperately firing off every slogan, argument or insult they can think of to get themselves out of it.

And so, wearily, to the SNP.

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This whole clip is worth watching. It appears to be an evidence session at the Scottish Parliament featuring several members of the Scottish Government’s Expert Advisory Group On Ending Conversion Practices, with which Wings readers will be familiar.

Many things about the session are disturbing, not least the incredibly one-sided nature of both the witnesses and the committee, none of whom seem to have even a token interest in challenging the claims of the witnesses, however absurd or contentious (eg that praying for someone is basically a form of torture).

But one thing in particular leapt out at us.

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It’d be nice if the Scottish Government could make up its mind whether it wants booze to be more expensive or not.

If only so we could all stop having our intelligence insulted quite this crassly.

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More than three months have passed since Alex Salmond launched a lawsuit against the Scottish Government for its grotesquely botched handling of false allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

With Scottish politics currently in a completely moribund state, as the party of government disintegrates shambolically and the main opposition party keeps its mouth shut and its head down in an attempt to not destroy its newfound and extremely fragile status as a credible alternative, one might imagine that the political media would be desperate for the case to get under way and provide them with some juicy content.

So it’s slightly surprising that none of them has noticed the latest development.

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As the long-running police probe into SNP finances continues, Wings received some slightly surprising news today in the form of an FOI response.

Based on reports from various trustworthy sources we’d expected to hear that the police side of the investigation was by this point winding down somewhat, with most matters of fact already established, detectives assigned to other duties and the ball now largely in the court of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS).

But it seems that isn’t so.

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