Wings Over Scotland

Okay, folks, time to put our hands up and admit it: we got this one wrong.

We thought they’d be subtle.

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A few months ago, we all had a good chuckle at Pete Wishart’s screeching 180-degree turn on the subject of using a plebiscitary election for independence, a strategy which switched overnight from “suicidal, disastrous fringe lunacy with no hope of success” to “genius plan Nicola herself came up with”.

But after that crude ad-hoc field patch, we’re delighted to be able to report that Pete has submitted himself to SNP HQ for a full operating system update and is now fully compliant with the New Truth.

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The release of some early 2021 census statistics relating to gender was greeted with glee and elation by Nancy Kelley, CEO of Stonewall in the UK. Vindication at last!

(Kelley declined to mention that her figure of 262,000 was substantially less than half the number of trans and non-binary individuals – 600,000 – that her organisation has habitually claimed for years.)

The census suggested that England and Wales are home to 48,000 transwomen (and 48,000 transmen), from the total who’d answered No to the voluntary question asking if their gender identity aligned with their sex at birth.

(The largest number that said No, around 118,000, didn’t tick the boxes of either transwoman, transman or non-binary, nor wrote in their own. An unknown number of these may have been rejecting “gender” altogether. 30,000 ticked “non-binary” and 18,000 wrote in a gender because they were REALLY special.)

But, as we’ve been told times out of number, we must accept what people say about themselves. So 48,000 transwomen it is. So few. So vulnerable. And that number got me thinking.

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Alert readers of Wings will know that I have a fondness for sweet and fruity things, and a particular favourite of mine are Tropical Vibes still lemonades. (NB Other drinks are available, this site is in no way sponsored by or financially affiliated to Tropical Vibes.)

I especially like their Ocean Blue variety, a deliciously sharp and tangy refresher which contains real blueberry juice.

Just not very MUCH real blueberry juice.

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The response to our post of last night has been astonishing.

(Although we’re not sure how “new followers” is being calculated there. We actually have more than 500 extra followers since 8pm – we can only assume that it’s only counting those who right-clicked and followed from that specific tweet.)

And part of the reason is that it’s plain that almost nobody knew about the report, even though it came out three months ago (when Wings was still in retirement). We had to dig deep to find any media coverage of it at all, and what there was was cursory at best, and sometimes a lot worse.

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As a journalist, readers, sometimes you want to pep a story up a bit. From time to time, it’s perfectly legitimate to sensationalise a relatively minor aspect of something in order to draw attention to a worthwhile but intrinsically dull subject.

At other times, you find yourself in the strange position of having to talk a subject down as much as you can, because if you simply report the facts calmly and neutrally it’ll sound so outrageous and ridiculous and deranged that everyone will think you’ve gone full-on, tinfoil-hat, pencils-up-the-nose insane.

Today is the second kind of day.

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It’s manifestly obvious to anyone paying any amount of attention to Scottish politics that the current Holyrood chamber is stuffed to the gills with otherwise-unemployable dum-dums. When we recently had cause to go through the entire roster of 129, the number who leapt out as either vaguely honourable or even just halfway-competent didn’t require us to take our shoes off to count.

(Indeed, speaking as a professional Scottish politics website about a thousand times more interested in this stuff than normal people, the number of expenses-guzzling seatwarmers we’d never even heard of was more than a little disturbing.)

So these figures from a Panelbase poll this month – which was conducted BEFORE the grim scenes around the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform bill – can only be explained in two ways: either people have become accustomed to very low standards, or (more likely) people don’t pay that much attention to politics.

But there’s a much more interesting story in the numbers.

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This is a most peculiar intervention.

Religious figures normally restrict their political commentary to matters within their obvious remit, such as poverty and inequality, for which they can cite plentiful scripture about rich men and the eyes of needles and whatnot. We’re unaware of any passages in the Bible relating to the constitutional implications of the Scotland Act 1998.

Moderator in the Church Of Scotland is a ceremonial role lasting only 12 months, but Dr Iain Greenshields has attempted to put his stamp on it (one for the folks at home, there) by opining that a UK general election – and he was quite specific about meaning a UK one – is not an appropriate means of achieving Scotland’s independence.

From his quoted comments in the Times piece it’s not clear whether he’s some sort of ecumenical Kenny Farquharson who just wants Scots to shut up and vote Labour again, or a radical Yes supporter attempting to subtly influence the SNP towards a Holyrood plebiscite instead. But either way, for such a traditionally-neutral figure to come out with such an unexpectedly blunt political opinion is perhaps a sign of just what a terrible idea using a Westminster election to decide Scotland’s future is.

The newest Panelbase poll, which shows a narrow lead for independence, was an “omnibus” one with questions provided by multiple clients, including Wings and the Sunday Times. The questions we’re about to show you were asked by the ST rather than ourselves, but their results are deeply disturbing on multiple levels.

The first one is perhaps predictable but still unsettling. (Click all pics to enlarge.)

A huge 2:1 majority of Scots believe the Scottish Government’s proposed new “gender recognition” laws pose a safety risk to women. Tory voters think so by almost 9:1, Lib Dem voters by almost 6:1, and Labour voters by nearly 2:1.

That can only partly be explained away by partisan party loyalty – Labour and the Liberal Democrats both support the bill, but their own voters are still strongly against. More noteworthy is the fact that (excluding Don’t Knows) even slavishly loyal SNP voters agree with the statement by a smaller but still clear 12-point margin, 56 to 44.

So let’s say it unambiguously: most SNP voters think the SNP’s gender reforms pose a danger to women’s safety.

But that’s not the disturbing bit.

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The SNP is now almost entirely incapable of telling the truth.

Let’s just check the above by way of example.

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The National must have been enormously proud when it successfully fought off all the other newspapers to secure this stunning exclusive today.

We must admit, when we had a good look in the “Pete Wishart Victories” section of our extensive archives we drew a blank. So we were excited to read on and find out.

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So it’s now official: in Scotland the words “sex” and “gender” mean the same thing, except when they don’t, and if you give a man a piece of paper because he’s asked for one, with no sort of checks whatsoever, then it literally turns him into a woman, except when it doesn’t, unless it does.

Or put more concisely: the word “sex” in Scotland now has no meaning at all.

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