Wings Over Scotland

We know we’ve given you quite a lot to digest already this year, readers. But spare a thought for us – trying to keep on top of all the fast-moving developments in Scottish politics in the first 11 days of 2021 has been rather like trying to tunnel our way out of an avalanche while it was still happening.

We’ve had a bit of job even finding a spare moment to squeeze the cartoons in. But today’s task looked like one of the most challenging of all.

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This is a significant development. (Click to enlarge.)

Weirdly, we’re not actually sure how many members are on the Holyrood inquiry committee at the moment. There are normally nine – four SNP and five opposition – but with Andy Wightman having recently resigned from the Greens we don’t know if he’s still on the committee or not, since he was originally there as a Green nominee. If not, we don’t know whether, when or by who he’ll be replaced.

But the other four non-SNP members have tonight issued a formal request that James Hamilton, who’s conducting the other inquiry into Nicola Sturgeon’s actions relating to the Alex Salmond affair, be instructed officially to investigate the matter of whether she lied to Parliament.

This, of course, is a subject Wings has been covering for some time.

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You know everything’s definitely going swimmingly for Nicola Sturgeon when the white knight riding heroically to her defence is… [checks notes twice] Duncan Hothersall.

We’re very excited to find out what our secret plan is.

(We must apologise to readers at this point for the late arrival of this week’s typically splendid Chris Cairns cartoon, which in fact arrived entirely on time from our hard-working crayonist but which we’ve put on hold for a bit while we cover last night’s major breaking story and its immediate aftermath. Now on with the show.)

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Alert readers will undoubtedly have noticed a number of, to put it mildly, explosive-sounding developments this evening regarding the ongoing inquiries into the Scottish Government’s misconduct over false allegations against Alex Salmond.

Several reports have quoted extracts from the former First Minister’s submission to James Hamilton, who’s investigating the current First Minister over possible breaches of the Ministerial Code relating to the investigation of the allegations.

The submission – delivered on Mr Salmond’s birthday – has been widely leaked to the media but only selectively reported, and like others Wings has obtained a full copy.

We are advised that its contents do not contain anything which breaches or potentially breaches Lady Dorrian’s court order protecting the identities of the complainers against Mr Salmond, and as such there are no barriers to us publishing the entire document in the public interest, because its contents make some extremely grave and disturbing allegations against the current First Minister.

We therefore do so below.

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Poor old Blair McDougall. He doesn’t think Scotland can do anything.

What a dismally rotten, hopeless wee province he thinks Scotland is. It must be such a miserable experience to be him, constantly ashamed of your own nationality. (Except, of course, Blair’s nationality is British, not Scottish.)

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Hoo boy. Here we go again.

So, for the historical record: I have no belief whatsoever, earnest or otherwise, that I can get rid of Nicola Sturgeon in the next four months.

I’m an idiot with a website. I have no power. I haven’t been elected to anything and I’m not the commander of an army. Information to which I’m privy would get me put in jail if I published it, and would in itself have no power to remove Nicola Sturgeon anyway. The only people who can bring that about between now and May are Sturgeon herself or, collectively, the Scottish Parliament.

This site has for some time called for Sturgeon to resign because it is our belief that she’s going to have to anyway, on account of events over which we have no control or influence. Because of that it would be the responsible and conscientious thing for her to quit early enough that the SNP/independence movement had a chance to deal with the issue of her succession and regroup in plenty of time for this May’s election.

The remaining window of opportunity for that to happen is now getting very narrow. And the enemies of independence will be beside themselves with delight about it.

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Yesterday we noted that rational people arrive at decisions about things based on the facts, not the personalities of who else might support or oppose those things. But in the interests of balance, allow us to present the counterpoint.

Yesterday the SNP’s defence spokesman at Westminster cited the position of French National Front leader Marine Le Pen when arguing with someone who suggested that an independent Scotland should leave NATO.

As it happens, we agree with McDonald on NATO membership. It would be a pointless folly and an exercise in self-destructive virtue-signalling to leave an organisation which is willing to defend Scotland militarily for free because of its strategic location, and it would be extremely unpopular with the Scottish public (including SNP voters), no matter how much those on the left might wish otherwise.

His reasoning above, however, is a wretched embarrassment.

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With precisely the grim level of cynicism we’ve now come to expect as standard, the Scottish Government has released a key document relating to the Salmond inquiry two days before Christmas, hoping it’ll be buried in the ongoing coronavirus-and-Brexit-related implosion of the UK.

The document, which contains legal advice relating to the judicial review brought by Salmond regarding the Scottish Government’s investigations into false allegations of misconduct against him, is extremely heavily redacted. But a few interesting passages remain, so let’s have some fun.

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Oh just shut up you useless waste of space.

He DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. You can bleat at him for a thousand years and he won’t listen. You gave him his election and he has a majority and England has chosen its fate and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop them dragging us down with them because you’ve wasted the last four years whining about it instead of doing the thing we elected you to do, which is put us in charge of our own future forever.

Now either get off your worthless coward’s arse and do the only thing that’s actually in your power – a plebiscitary election – instead of grandstanding around the world stage achieving absolutely sod-all except getting your face in the press again, or get out of our damn way and let someone who can do the job take over.

(PS that also includes the job of handling the pandemic, which you’re making a pig’s arse of too, but gosh, doesn’t everyone love how telegenically you’re presenting the thousands of needless deaths? New Zealand has had just TWENTY-FIVE with near enough the same population, because their leader had the courage to make the tough calls you failed to because the Selfie Queen can’t bear to be unpopular.)

And no, we haven’t been drinking. Not a drop. We’ve just had enough.

As it happened, it was fortuitous that this story intervened and stopped us writing the story we meant to run yesterday, because now we’ve got a two-for-the-price-of-one on the increasingly farcical insanity running riot in the offices of the Scottish Government.

Alert readers will have noticed the above piece from today’s Times, revealing that the Scottish Government just can’t seem to stop breaking the rules (and squandering huge vats of taxpayers’ money in the process) when it comes to Alex Salmond.

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We woke up this morning intending to write about something else, readers, and then we saw perhaps the most horrifying thing we’ve ever seen in the two years since we first started taking an interest in transgender ideology.

It’s only tangentially related to this site’s purpose, but the truth is that as human beings we cannot stand by and watch this happening without at least trying to use whatever platform we have to raise awareness of it.

(The black bars on images in this article were added by us.)

Last week the High Court in England ruled that children under the age of 16 were not medically competent to consent to treatment with so-called “puberty blocker” drugs of the type that were used to “chemically castrate” the computing pioneer Alan Turing for being homosexual (a crime in the UK in the 1950s), which is believed to have led to his suicide by cyanide poisoning at the age of 41.

The most common such drug nowadays is Lupron, used as a treatment/alternative punishment on rapists and paedophiles to reduce their offending by destroying their sexual function. It has not been tested for use on “transgender” children and nobody knows how much permanent harm it could do them (although the likely answer is “a lot”), which is why the High Court ruled against it last week.

But apparently that doesn’t matter.

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