There was one revealing moment in what was an otherwise nauseatingly sycophantic interview with Nicola Sturgeon by Adam Fleming on BBC2 last night.
And the thing it revealed is what Sturgeon’s book is really about. Because as more and more extracts have found their way into the public domain this week, the overarching theme of “Frankly” has become impossible to miss.
As more and more of Nicola Sturgeon’s memoirs ooze out into the public sphere like pus leaking from a burns-victim’s blisters, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of rank, festering untruth spreading out in all directions.
First she audaciously attempted to blame Alex Salmond for supposedly leaking the news of his own arrest on false sexual-assault charges to the press, a laughably mad allegation totally derided by everyone involved including the journalist the story was leaked to (by Sturgeon’s own chief of staff, Liz Lloyd).
For good measure she then accused the MSPs investigating her conspiracy against him of being mere puppets controlled and directed by Salmond, an obvious nonsense immediately refuted by them directly, in case the idea of Murdo Fraser taking orders from Alex Salmond wasn’t already too idiotic to contemplate.
And her spewing sewage cannon still wasn’t done, managing to dredge up another smear that Salmond had been secretly opposed to equal marriage in 2012, an assertion so laughably obviously disproved by entire truckloads of evidence that making it can only have been a result of the gravest desperation.
(Or perhaps pure jealousy that Pink News never made HER their “Ally Of The Year”, as they did with both Salmond and David Cameron.)
But even so, this might be the boldest Hail Mary attempt of all.
Because even for Nicola Sturgeon, trying to rewrite time itself is an ambitious move.
Say what you like about Nicola Sturgeon, but she’s not stupid. Releasing her memoirs when the Scottish Parliament is in recess has ensured acres of media coverage for what so far have been extremely anodyne “revelations” bundled up with barefaced and obvious lies of such startling audacity that it’s almost impossible to discuss them rationally. (Which is of course the point.)
But this extract from an interview to be aired on ITV tonight is actually interesting.
In it, Sturgeon doggedly continues to refuse to use male pronouns for multiple rapist Adam “Isla Bryson” Graham, despite admitting that he IS male, instead calling him “they”. But it was the bit before that that raised our eyebrows.
We’ve written a couple of articles about the media coverage of this already, but as the slow summer season continues it’s worth taking a little time to have a proper look at the source material, because it’s your cash that’s being spent on it, and used to shape public policy in Scotland.
And it’s very hard to overstate both what a waste of money, and what a colossal insult to every woman in Scotland, it represents.
A little over two years ago, three SNP MSPs contested the leadership of the party in the wake of the sudden resignation of Nicola Sturgeon. All were full of grand plans and dreams for the future of the party, the nation and the independence movement.
None of the three is leader now, and in nine months’ time none of them will be SNP MSPs. Indeed, it’s overwhelmingly likely that none will be an MSP at all.
And that, readers, is not a sign of a party – or indeed a Parliament – in good health.
At some point, we’re all going to have to have a discussion about the word “normal”.
Because suffering from a debilitating mental illness that supposedly causes you to commit suicide if medical professionals don’t pump you full of wrong-sex hormones and/or mutilate or remove healthy and functioning parts of your body, and which affects no more than 1 in 300 people, is NOT, in fact, “completely normal”. Nor is having a physical disorder affecting less than 1 in 5,000 people. They’re the exact opposite of that. They’re extremely abnormal.
(“Abnormal” is not an intrinsically pejorative term, it’s a simple neutral statement of fact, meaning something that’s uncommon or unusual.)
But that’s not the main problem with NHS Fife’s “LGBTQI+” website.
It seems like almost every time somebody gets accused of rape, sexual harassment or any kind of horrible creepy sex-based sleaze in Scotland these days, the same face is always lurking around grinning in the background somewhere.
Can you guess who it is yet?
So this snuck out quietly at the bottom of page 2 of today’s Daily Record.
And like, we suspect, most of Scotland, our response was “WHAT?”
And now for tonight’s headlines.
Police Scotland have nevertheless denied that prisoners in their custody are being excessively pampered, following reports that a man was hustled out of St Leonard’s station in Edinburgh with an electric blanket over his head.
Meanwhile, following the Supreme Court ruling in the For Women Scotland case, the force’s HQ at Tulliallan was burgled by a gang of militant transactivists who stole all the toilets. Officers say they have nothing to go on.
More comedy news as we get it, folks.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
