Archive for the ‘comment’
The Deep-Fried Banana Republic 171
It’s 18C today in Bath, readers, so after the dentist we went out to enjoy the sunshine for the afternoon. And you know what happens when we go out.
But really, what even is there to say?
Meet The FILTH 83
The evolution of fairness 63
Some of our more alert readers may recall the events of four years ago this month, when a mob of SNP representatives all suddenly raged against the idea of (perfectly legally) “gaming” the Holyrood electoral system to produce a pro-indy supermajority.
Voters try to organise themselves to maximise their desired outcomes all the time (see various tactical-voting campaigns), and so do political parties – witness John Swinney’s current plans for a grand anti-Reform coalition. And of course, the SNP never objected to indy voters voting for a different party on the list if it was the Greens. The entire thing was just a poorly-disguised attack on Alba.
But even so, guess what? The rules just changed again.
Tartan Messiah 2 80
The message on an ill wind 62
It’s one of the most profoundly disappointing things about the last decade of Scottish politics that for about five minutes in 2015 we all thought that this awful dunderheaded foghorn was a bright new hope for the future.
But you live and learn. At least, some of us do.
The tint of rose 91
What with this poll apparently being such terrific news for John Swinney’s runaway popularity with the people of Scotland, readers might be wondering why SNP MSP Graeme Dey has apparently forgotten to include the actual figures or link to the source so that people can find out for themselves.
Or, y’know, you might not.
For Mridul And Sandy 293
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 Front On The Volga 91
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.
And then let’s talk about Stalingrad.
The End Of The Reich 219
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?