It’s already getting hard to keep up with the string of well-kent faces and veteran indy campaigners leaving the SNP to join Alex Salmond’s new Alba Party.
It might be an idea to start maintaining a list.
Dear Friends,
Following considerable reflection, I am writing to tell you of a decision I have reached and to set out my reasoning.
My primary focus is and always will be achieving our shared ambition of independence for Scotland.
There’s a lot of this going around from SNP and Unionists alike this weekend.
Because, as we may have mentioned before, they really do think you’re stupid.
Okay. So we hate the name and the first half hour of the online press conference was a complete shambles. But none of that matters.
There is now a pro-independence party with a serious chance of winning a significant number of seats that sane people who believe in science and women’s rights and civil liberties (and actually meaningfully pursuing independence rather than just using it as a carrot to generate pension contributions) can vote for.
Wings Over Scotland has never told its readers who to vote for. But what we can say is that if we lived in Scotland we would be voting for it without a moment’s hesitation. We don’t believe it’s at all an exaggeration to say it’s the last chance to save Scotland as a country that we’d want to live in if and when it finally does achieve its independence. A country worth winning.
If you feel the same, click the pic above.
It’s now official that blogger and former diplomat Craig Murray has been found guilty on several charges of contempt of court (although also cleared of several others).
It is of course not for this site to question the judgement of Lady Dorrian (while noting that the verdict may well be subject to appeal and is therefore not yet final), although we do find some aspects of it somewhat troubling – particularly paragraph 74 in which the fate of a defendant appears to be held hostage to the speculative “imagination” of a hypothetical observer.
But it’s not the conviction (NB we are not lawyers and the strange civil/criminal hybrid that is the offence of contempt of court makes the correct terminology somewhat uncertain) of Craig Murray that’s the true cause for concern in this matter.
What’s alarming, as this site has noted previously, is the highly selective and partisan eye with which the Crown Office appears to be pursuing the offence.
Alex Salmond’s spokesperson has issued the following statement this afternoon. We present it to readers unedited save for added emphasis of two sentences.
Hey folks, remember the happy days when indyref 2 was going to be in “the first half” of the next Parliament? Well, here comes the totally surprising and unexpected news.
This was Ian Blackford on Sky News yesterday, quietly confirming that at best we can expect it in the SECOND half of the Parliament, ie 2024 at the earliest. (And that’s with all the usual waffly evasiveness about how it could be achieved.)
So if readers were wondering why Blackford had quickly released a squirrel to distract from the appearance, perhaps now they know.
One month ago, writing a mild political slogan on a wall in Scotland in chalk – which washes off instantly at the first sign of a damp cloth or a small shower of rain – was enough to have uniformed officers of Police Scotland turn up at your door on suspicion of hate crime, conspiracy and breach of the peace.
Of course, that depends wholly on which views you’re expressing.
This isn’t just a massive middle finger to justice and every voter in Scotland.
This is an act of sabotage.
We were reminded this week of the amount of stick we got when we wrote these words almost five years ago, right after the 2016 Holyrood election:
(The rest of our post-match analysis wasn’t too shabby either.)
But readers, we have to grudgingly admit: we’re only NEARLY always right.
Nicola Sturgeon’s progressive New SNP, for people who celebrate punitive rape.
Do give them both your votes, won’t you? #BeKind.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
