Slacky The Holiday Boy is off for the next THREE weeks, gallivanting around the globe on the clearly excessive wages we’re paying him. We hope he does actually come back, because his home city is becoming a poisonously hostile place for the creative.
Around 300 years ago, Edinburgh was the birthplace and residence of the Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable period of intellectual and scientific accomplishment built around “the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason”, and which led to the city being famously dubbed “the Athens of the North”.
Just for a change, let’s have a Friday-night competition!
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that former First Minister Alex Salmond is staging a show in the Spiegeltent at the Edinburgh Fringe next month, from 4-13 August.
You may even have seen a bit of online criticism from certain po-faced pseudonats about the fact that Salmond is sharing a platform with – gasp! – a Yoon, in the shape of the “last of the traditional Tories”, David Davis MP.
It is our solemn duty to inform readers that deranged, shovel-handed Scottish Greens member and known associate of rapists and paedophiles Scott “Heather” Herbert has taken the hump at a Wings article from yesterday in which he was satirically featured.
He filed a malicious false copyright claim with YouTube which resulted in a silent video clip from the article showcasing his comically gigantic man-hands being scheduled for deletion, despite Herbert owning no copyright in the video (it’s the property of TalkTV, who have raised no objections to it) and having no legal standing to file any complaint.
But YouTube’s abysmal automated structures operate on the basis that all complaints are intrinsically valid, and allow absolutely no way for Wings to appeal this decision.
Just over a year ago, Shona Robison – then the Cabinet Secretary For Social Justice, now the Deputy First Minister – told the Scottish Parliament this:
There now follow some quotes from the media regarding the case of Andrew Miller, aka Amy George, who yesterday admitted the kidnap and repeated sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl at his home in Galashiels earlier this year.
In June of last year, I started work at Transport Scotland. It wasn’t the best job I’ve ever had. It was pretty much an entry-level post and it was only a temp gig through an agency, but after spending almost six years out of the workforce following a bout with cancer, two frozen shoulders, and chronic knee and hip pain, it was a huge relief just to be earning my keep again.
Of course, June is Pride Month, and Saltire (the Scottish Government’s intranet) was full of news and blogs about “LGBTI+” issues.
Also on the Saltire front page was a prominent invitation to two training sessions to understand the issues facing these groups: “LGBT+ Awareness 101” and “Trans 101”.
These were both run by the LGBTI+ Network, one of several “affinity networks” for civil servants belonging to different groups. With the GRR Bill on the horizon, and having heard stories about how difficult it had been for gender critical groups to get a hearing from the Government in relation to it, I was very curious to hear what this training involved, and I signed up to attend via Teams.
The first session was “LGBT+ Awareness 101”. This session was fairly inoffensive. The content regarding gay people was about what you would expect, and the T+ stuff was clearly biased, but not terrible.
However, the tone of the event suggested quite strongly that you weren’t meant to disagree with anything that was said. Towards the end, when questions were invited, I typed my question into the chat:
“How does the Scottish Government handle conflicts between TERFs and trans people?”
Let’s take a moment off, folks. In our latest Panelbase poll, we also threw in a question just for fun, with genuinely no agenda at all, simply because we were curious to know what the answer was. Here it is:
On January 22nd the violent, abusive transgender activist Jack Douglas, who now uses the name Beth and the Twitter username “pickle_bee” (slang for “somebody who likes dick”), threatened that feminist campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen’s imminent “Standing For Women” event in Glasgow was going to be disrupted by the “furry” community, who happen to be hosting a gathering at the Crowne Plaza that same weekend.
“Why? What possible grudge could furries have against women?”, a friend giggled, as I related this news to her. But to answer that we have to know who these people are.
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.
In May 2016, this site published one of the most unfortunately prescient articles in its history. It didn’t actually use the words “woke” or “cancelled”, which weren’t yet in common parlance, but its purpose was very much to warn of the puritan, censorious, hyper-intolerant and catastrophically destructive culture they came to embody.
At the time Nicola Sturgeon had only been First Minister for a year and a half and there were few signs that she was that movement’s commander – or, those inclined to a more charitable outlook than us might posit, its prisoner. It would be two more years before she detonated the bomb that really shattered the unity of the Yes movement when she attempted to fit up Alex Salmond over fake allegations of sexual assaults.
But last night and this morning I was struck by an unexpected pang of pity for the fanatical, fundamentalist Twitler Youth rainbow stormtroopers who make up Sturgeon’s ideological frontline. Sympathy for the little devils, you might say.
And since it’s a somewhat rare feeling, it seemed worth a little exploration.
Cynicus on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “The Offord Joke: Hats off to The National for publishing it. Old hat. I’d heard a version of it decades…” Mar 27, 02:01
100%Yes on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Labour on track to lose 2000 Councillors in this coming May’s election, now this will cause Sir Starmer to resign…” Mar 26, 23:11
Del G on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Your Party had not so much a faint hope as no hope of impacting the Scottish election: formed far too…” Mar 26, 22:46
agentx on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: ““John Swinney has said it is “not a coincidence” that the UK Government announced its decision to block a Chinese-backed…” Mar 26, 22:41
Del G on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Your Party had not so much a faint hope as no hope of impacting the Scottish election: formed far too…” Mar 26, 22:39
Geri on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I wouldn’t feel safe visiting Holyrood. Imagine if you were a tourist stumbling intae the gayest gaff in all of…” Mar 26, 20:22
Mark Beggan on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Couldn’t have said it better myself. Totally agree. I have never been to prison but I believe the first question…” Mar 26, 20:15
Geri on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “He’s a nasty piece of work. That was him behind the astro turfing fake no borders campaign during indyref. Caught…” Mar 26, 20:00
Frank Gillougley on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Dan, 1kW Electricity for 8p 1 m3 of gas is 23p 1 litre of diesel is 135p in Hungary the…” Mar 26, 19:56
Confused on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “wonder if jordan the bummer will be taking excessively long showers in addiewell, dropping the soap repeatedly and asking if…” Mar 26, 19:39
Dan on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Hi Frank, any idea how much regular diesel is out where you are? I had to do a double take…” Mar 26, 19:34
George Ferguson on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Day 1 of the election and I am already thinking about a complaint to Ofcom and the Electoral Commission. An…” Mar 26, 19:34
agentx on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: ““Former SNP politician sexually assaulted five young men and boys Jordan Linden, 30, is the former leader of North Lanarkshire…” Mar 26, 19:22
100%Yes on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “It says the crappiest newspaper in Scotland “Outgoing MSPs who made tough decisions on our behalf deserve thanks” I say…” Mar 26, 19:11
Geri on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Would you look at that. Just in time for LA28 Olympic games. The yanks certainly wouldn’t want every Tik Toker…” Mar 26, 19:06
100%Yes on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Sounds like Swinney has already excepted defeat. How long can the SNP cry wolf before the public say no more.” Mar 26, 18:44
Sven on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Young Lochinvar @ 18.04. “Rum, Buggery & the Lash”, sounds like a good election slogan for a Trans Political Party.…” Mar 26, 18:38
Frank Gillougley on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I am thinking, dangerous I know, but something better change… so here’s my tuppenth worth on the current surreal absurdity…” Mar 26, 18:35
Young Lochinvar on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “The daily rainbow comic the National actually printed Offord’s joke yesterday but only so that they could give a screaming…” Mar 26, 18:18
George Ferguson on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Classic STV coverage. Don’t mention Jordan Lindon was SNP. But foam at the mouth at a 2018 comment made at…” Mar 26, 18:16
100%Yes on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “The neverendum, I remember Mr Pete Wishart saying in 2019 through the Rag newspaper that claims to support Independence, we…” Mar 26, 18:11
Young Lochinvar on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “A hoy there me hearties! Jolly Rogers aloft as HMS Raleigh and HMS Drake reprise the English Elizabethan role of…” Mar 26, 18:04
Sven on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I wonder what type of Egregore a collective of would be Picts would bring into being. I sometimes feel that…” Mar 26, 18:02
Young Lochinvar on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Cards on the table, I don’t really fully understand the science behind the proposed tests but the main thing is…” Mar 26, 17:54
Geri on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “I suggest you go Google public opinion polling figures on the illegal invasion of Iran. Then the polling on jenny.…” Mar 26, 17:35
Red on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Sven I do support officially renaming Glasgow to “Funky Town” Unfortunately, Susan Aitken ate Funky Town” Mar 26, 15:52
Northcode on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: “Totally agree, the Scots suck… the Picts, however, were a class act, and their descendants (myself included) are carrying on…” Mar 26, 15:31
Northcode on Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off: ““Maybe Alba ?” Absolutely no way – Alba is a Scotti Gaelic word meaning ‘bright’ or some shit… from the…” Mar 26, 15:20
