Wings Over Scotland

Welcome, readers, to what may be the final week of Wings Over Scotland.

We’ve been covering the Scottish Government’s horrific, draconian Hate Crime Act for almost four years now. But until this month, we hadn’t felt directly under threat by it. Wings is – sorry if this comes as a shock to anyone – based in Bath, in England, and we couldn’t see how the Scottish police could come after us.

And then we read this.

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I make no apology for what I am about to write because while I’ve said it before, the time to do so is running out.

In a couple of weeks, the Scottish Government’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 will come into effect and my world, and that of women up and down Scotland will enter a very dark place.

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We’ve just submitted this Freedom Of Information request to Police Scotland:

I seek the following information with regard to Police Scotland’s programme of materials surrounding the implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021:

(1) What was the total cost of the “Hate Monster” campaign?

(2) Of that, how much was spent on the production of the “Have you met the Hate Monster?” video (below)?

(3) Which pronouns should be used when referring to the Hate Monster in reporting of the campaign? Does the Hate Monster have a sex and/or gender? Were any full-body images of the Hate Monster commissioned, or only its upper body? If the former, please supply any such images held by Police Scotland.

(4) Would the reference on this page to “young men aged 18-30 […] with ideas about white-male entitlement” constitute a possible hate crime or hate incident, under the protected characteristic of race, since it seems likely to stir up hatred of young white men as being disproportionately bigoted and violent on the basis of their colour and lead to their victimisation?

(5) If so, is there a particular third party (such as a sex shop or mushroom farm) to whom this crime/incident should be reported, as when the alleged offender was the police a person might for obvious reasons not “feel comfortable reporting the incident to the police”, as noted on the campaign website?

(6) Which organisations, if any, were employed to provide suitable training to the staff of Third Party Reporting Centres and how much, if anything, were they paid?

(7) Are Third Party Reporting Centres required to accept any report, or can they use their discretion to refuse some reports if they find them objectionable or offensive?

(8) Are there circumstances whereby a report of a hate crime/hate incident could itself constitute a hate crime/hate incident?

Rev. Stuart Campbell
Editor
Wings Over Scotland

We’ll keep you updated with developments as they occur.

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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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Hopefully most of you will have seen this yesterday, but if not, here it is:

So let’s have a chat about Alex’s closing comments.

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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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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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The Scottish Government have just launched yet another nanny-state “healthy eating” intervention, and to be honest, readers, the cheap-shot open goals just queued up.

Our first instinct was to do a simple picture gallery of some of the insatiable pie-hounds squeezing their expenses-fed backsides onto the groaning, creaking benches and chairs of the Holyrood and Westminster parliaments, such as Kirsten “Elbows” Oswald (pictured above, slumped back under the sheer weight of her neck) – so known to other MPs because you get between her and a buffet at grave peril to your ribcage.

(And no, we’re not telling you which ones told us that.)

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