“If voting made a difference they wouldn’t let you do it” is one of many quotes that are regularly misattributed to Mark Twain.
However, the sentiment could very much be used to sum up the current management of the Scottish National Party.
When we saw this a few days ago, we wondered what they wanted to hide.
And now we know.
In the sometimes-heated trans debate, it’s always nice to hear from Owen Jones.
If we ever find out who it feels, we’ll let you know.
Approximately 40,000 people have left the SNP in the last five years – among them hundreds (at least) of women who quit because of the party’s total lack of action against its abusive, misogynist transactivist wing.
Many of them had been members for decades and wrote pained letters explaining their reasons, only to be waved away with an automated form reply. But half a dozen of the party’s most obnoxious scumbags flounce off in a huff and this happens.
Kirsten Oswald is a brainless knife-and-fork operator and always has been. But Keith Brown must go home at night and drape towels over all the mirrors so he doesn’t have to look at himself after putting his name to that.
This site spent a lot of the indyref documenting the Scottish media’s obsession with “SNP accused” articles, in which they’d make a big deal out of any random nobody accusing the SNP of some absurdly trivial misdeed.
But today, curiously, absolutely none of them have covered this:
Which is weird, because that seems like, y’know, quite a big story.
We’ve got to try to write an article today about developments in Scottish politics in the last 24 hours, and it feels like someone’s just asked us to empty the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon. Bear with us for a bit, okay?
We know that many of you were quite upset by our revelation a couple of months ago that the Scottish Government has had absolutely nobody at all working on the case for independence for most of the last five years.
But readers, we wouldn’t want you to think that time had been wasted.
Way back in December 2019, when the SNP were once more returned triumphant, the mantra chant was of an independence referendum the coming autumn. Of course, coronavirus consumed 2020 but the reality was a referendum was never coming that year, irrespective of rhetoric. Neither planning, policy nor even funding was in place.
And those leading the chant, in Parliament or in public, knew it.
Now there’s come a new year, but sadly not a new dawn. The mantra chant simply moved on to the referendum being autumn this year. Again it was dutifully proclaimed in Parliament and public, long beyond the point of any credibility. And once again, the likelihood of it being held is all but nil unless strategy changes.
We’re not entirely sure why the SNP’s charade of a “National Assembly” over indyref strategy is still going on today at all, since the party pre-announced the outcome of it on Friday night. But just in case you were wondering:
This morning on the Andrew Marr show, Nicola Sturgeon had accused Boris Johnson of being “frightened of democracy”. We hope the members of her party who spent six quid on a pass to be allowed to attend an online rubber-stamping session they weren’t even allowed to comment on appreciate the irony.
If you were to poll us on which of the two signs below we preferred, we’d definitely vote for the one on the left. It’s a lot more eye-catching, it’s easier to read and the strong use of red makes it much clearer that a prohibition is in place.
But here’s the thing: we wouldn’t go to jail over the choice.
All we can say is that the other nine points better be amazing.
Because this, readers, is ZZZ-grade donkey fodder.
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
Wings Over Scotland
