Wings Over Scotland

Redaction is a tricky business, and comes with numerous pitfalls even if you’re being careful, which not everyone is. If you’re involved in creating a document you know will have to be redacted, there are a variety of safeguarding approaches you can adopt.

When I worked on a videogames magazine called Amiga Power in the 1990s, we ran a fun comedy feature about censorship. But because the company that published the magazine had had some unfortunate mishaps in the field, we took extra care by typing all the “offensive” words as random-length strings of Xs when we wrote the article.

And it was lucky that we did, because as you can see in the feature’s strapline, the art department misaligned the red redaction bar on some of them, and if there’d been a sweary in there it would have been easily identified.

Another way to go is to simply slap down some black ink and hope for the best.

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As we write this article, Sandy Brindley (on the left of the picture below) is still in post as the CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland.

For as long as that remains the case, rape victims in Scotland will not be safe.

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Don’t say we don’t tell you, readers.

Because we do tell you.

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Astonishingly, there isn’t a single word of apology anywhere in this statement.

There isn’t a scintilla of contrition, not the tiniest glimmer of admission of culpability or responsibility. There isn’t even a weasel-worded expression of “regret”.

Rape Crisis Scotland is unfit for purpose, and its CEO must resign.

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The dogged persistence of alert Wings contributor Benjamin Harrop with regard to the Hamilton inquiry has been truly heroic, and today it has borne fruit in dramatic style.

The 10-page adjudication from the Scottish Information Commissioner that you can download by clicking that image is a somewhat labyrinthine (but fascinating) read, but the upshot of it is that the Commissioner has now ordered the Scottish Government to release all of the legal advice it was given with regard to its refusal to publish the written evidence submitted to James Hamilton for his inquiry into the events around the alleged conspiracy to falsely convict Alex Salmond of sexual assaults.

(See, even that one-sentence summary was quite hard going.)

But why does that matter and what does it mean?

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There may, readers, be a connection between this:

and this:

But the key fact about the SNP is the same either way.

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We’ve just watched a hearing at the Court Of Session with regard to Alex Salmond’s civil claim against the Scottish Government. It was an ostensibly minor one, in which Salmond’s team were requesting a sist (pause) in the case for the fourth time, on the grounds of a number of ongoing police inquiries related to the events around the claim.

For most of the time Wings was the only journalist in a (virtual) room full of lawyers – although a couple of Scottish Daily Mail hacks turned up midway through – and we got to hear a dramatic surprise revelation.

James Hynd is a civil servant who was head of the Scottish Government’s cabinet, parliament and governance division during the inquiry.

(And he may still be – he’s a man with a microscopic digital footprint, and pretty much every piece of what little there is to be found concerns the inquiry. Indeed, the same is true of his entire department, which is extremely publicity-shy.)

But the hearing revealed for the first time that Hynd is currently subject to a criminal investigation by Police Scotland, with the name Operation Broadcroft, on suspicion of the serious crime of “wilfully making false statements on oath” to the inquiry.

And the ramifications of that extend much further than Mr Hynd himself.

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David Davis may be the last of his kind – a libertarian Tory from a council-scheme and grammar-school background, and also one of the few remaining big beasts occupying the political jungle of the back benches.

(He could in fact have been Tory leader, and would have been if David Cameron and George Osborne hadn’t teamed up to defeat him in 2005 after he won the first ballot.)

He resigned from Cameron’s shadow cabinet in June 2008 on a principled issue of civil liberties (winning the subsequent by-election with a massive 72% of the vote) and from Theresa May’s Cabinet over Brexit, and he was one of a tiny handful of MPs prepared to defend Julian Assange from extradition.

And in 2022 it was Davis who rose from the back benches to tell Boris Johnson to “in the name of God, go”.

So on the rare occasions when he leads a Commons adjournment debate, as he did last Thursday evening, those with an educated eye for politics sit up and take notice.

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You should probably watch the whole of this speech by Sir David Davis this evening, even if you saw the trailer three and a quarter years ago.

It’s both a comprehensive refresher of events surrounding the Scottish Government’s conspiracy to convict Alex Salmond on false charges, and a sharp reminder of why Scotland is, in truth, not yet a country in a fit administrative state for independence.

But one part in particular ought to be the headline news tonight.

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Particularly alert readers may recall this from a few months ago:

An SNP pledge? About independence? Bound to be kept, then, right?

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We’re going to be really, REALLY generous and not quibble about the “us”.

Because it’s not even nearly the funniest thing here.

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We suppose we should talk about the general election for a bit.

It’s going to be awful. Will that do?

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