Wings Over Scotland

It’s been a rough old week for the First Minister.

And next week’s not looking much better.

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More than a day on from our disturbing exposé of how the Scottish Parliament has been captured by a tiny, sleazy nest of pornographers, drug addicts, fetishists and abusers, there still hasn’t been a single comment distancing themselves from the group by any of the MSPs identified in the article, including Patrick Harvie, Ross Greer, Joe Fitzpatrick, Paul Sweeney and most notably Alex Cole-Hamilton, who made the remarkable public statement that MSPs were directly and specifically passing gender reform laws for the benefit of male sex worker and violent serial abuser Beth Douglas.

We’ve asked Alex Cole-Hamilton for comment several times without reply. (Although there has been an unverified third-hand answer via Willie Rennie and a Twitter user.)

Wings Over Scotland makes absolutely no assertions about why MSPs wouldn’t want to very clearly and unambiguously disassociate themselves from such an unpleasant character after information about him had been brought to light in a widely-read (over 200,000 views) article which was trending on Twitter all day yesterday.

For the avoidance of doubt, we have no information about any interactions between Douglas and any MSPs that we’re keeping secret. But we’re not the least bit surprised that people have started wondering what possible reasons a whole string of male politicians could have for not wanting to upset a male prostitute, particularly given the long and sordid history of male politicians and male prostitutes in the UK.

To quash such speculation, we once again urge all MSPs who have associated with Beth Douglas to clearly and publicly disavow him and assure voters that he will no longer shape or influence legislation passed in the Scottish Parliament.

It’s been hard to avoid the puffy, perpetually-smirking face of Edinburgh transactivist Beth Douglas, the co-convener of the Rainbow Greens, recently. He’s been all over the media, from Glasgow Live and Edinburgh Live to The National (print and podcast) to Penis News to various national TV bulletins, and interviewed by Owen Jones.

Last week he was prominent in a protest outside Queen Elizabeth House against the UK government’s S35 intervention over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. He spoke alongside MSPs including Patrick Harvie, Karen Adam, Ross Greer, Paul Sweeney and Alex Cole-Hamilton, who lavished fulsome and effusive praise on him, going so far as to say that it was for Douglas personally that MSPs had pushed the bill through.

But Douglas wasn’t always called Beth.

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Our favourite of many amusing responses on Twitter today to the string of SNP MPs, MSPs and assorted other apparatchiks falling over themselves to say that they walked around yesterday’s anti-feminist protest in Glasgow with their eyes wide shut:

Wings will have a major article related to the subject dropping tomorrow morning, put together in conjunction with The Glinner Update. Please do tune in from 8am.

Okay, folks, time to put our hands up and admit it: we got this one wrong.

We thought they’d be subtle.

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We’ve been meaning to talk about this for a few days, but other stuff kept coming up.

(Click pic to enlarge.)

Alert readers won’t have failed to notice a steady drip of stories being fed to the media in recent weeks from SNP figures talking down the idea of the next general election as a de facto referendum.

Many in the party, such as new Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, are clearly very uncomfortable about having been pushed into doing, well, pretty much anything to actually try to achieve independence, even if it’s still two years away, because having (in most cases only recently) acquired themselves some lovely lucrative Westminster careers and pensions they’re not keen on suddenly risking losing them.

But the column above is an illuminating one.

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A few months ago, we all had a good chuckle at Pete Wishart’s screeching 180-degree turn on the subject of using a plebiscitary election for independence, a strategy which switched overnight from “suicidal, disastrous fringe lunacy with no hope of success” to “genius plan Nicola herself came up with”.

But after that crude ad-hoc field patch, we’re delighted to be able to report that Pete has submitted himself to SNP HQ for a full operating system update and is now fully compliant with the New Truth.

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Alert readers of Wings will know that I have a fondness for sweet and fruity things, and a particular favourite of mine are Tropical Vibes still lemonades. (NB Other drinks are available, this site is in no way sponsored by or financially affiliated to Tropical Vibes.)

I especially like their Ocean Blue variety, a deliciously sharp and tangy refresher which contains real blueberry juice.

Just not very MUCH real blueberry juice.

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As a journalist, readers, sometimes you want to pep a story up a bit. From time to time, it’s perfectly legitimate to sensationalise a relatively minor aspect of something in order to draw attention to a worthwhile but intrinsically dull subject.

At other times, you find yourself in the strange position of having to talk a subject down as much as you can, because if you simply report the facts calmly and neutrally it’ll sound so outrageous and ridiculous and deranged that everyone will think you’ve gone full-on, tinfoil-hat, pencils-up-the-nose insane.

Today is the second kind of day.

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Things change very slowly, then very suddenly. Here’s to better days, readers.

Past and future.

I’ll be honest, readers, I’m so exhausted from despising the sickening nonce-panderers of the SNP this week that I can’t summon the energy to write any more about them. So I’m going to hand over to some other people.

All pics are links so that you can read full threads, see context and access any linked articles, and all these people are worth following.

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Last night this happened.

The events marked simply and unquestionably the most shameful and contemptible moment in the history of the Scottish Parliament since 1707.

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