Wings Over Scotland

Alert readers will have noticed our so-far-fruitless attempts to extract information from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator regarding the disturbing activities of the controversy-plagued LGBT Youth Scotland.

We are far from the only people raising concerns about the charity – we know of at least 17 separate formal complaints against LGBTYS in the past year alone, yet the OSCR has declined to open any sort of formal inquiry into them. (It carried out three such inquiries in 2024.)

But despite the OSCR’s assertion that “we strive to be transparent and accountable”, when we went to find those complaints (including, of course, the one from ourselves) to link you to them, we hit a brick wall that rapidly turned into a whole new concern.

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In relation to yesterday’s article, we’ve now filed the following with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.

I request a review of this decision.

Firstly, I wish to note that since the response I received was a wholly generic one containing no reference or relevance to any of the specifics of my case, it should not have taken until the 28th day of the 28-day deadline to deliver. This appears to be a deliberate stalling tactic.

The information I sought did not involve the disclosure of any sensitive identities or data. It is in fact an attempt to establish the answer to an extremely basic question of first principles: why is LGBT Youth Scotland operating so far outwith its stated remit?

Since the fact that it IS doing so is not in any question – its own public statements declare that it is operating widely and openly in primary schools – it is a matter of plain and overwhelming public interest that this glaring anomaly be explained. The charity itself refuses to do so, or even to enter into any discussion of the matter, so it becomes a matter for its ostensible regulator.

Since the public is unable to ask the OSCR to speak on behalf of LGBTYS, the only remaining option to achieve transparency, accountability and public confidence is to seek the information requested and thereby discern the answer via the OSCR.

Particularly given LGBTYS’s unfortunate record of involvement with extremely serious child abuse, and its highly controversial position on matters such as “puberty blockers” – on which it is starkly at odds with the stated position of the Scottish Government – this matter cannot simply be swept under the carpet and the public ordered to mind its own business. Someone, somewhere, at some level of Scottish civic life, must answer the question:

Why is an organisation whose remit concerns intrinsically sexual matters and exclusively encompasses 13-25-year-olds being allowed to operate in primary (and indeed nursery) schools and discuss such sexual matters with children 10 years below its minimum stipulated age range?

Given LGBTYS’s refusal, that duty then lies with the OSCR, and it should not evade it. The public deserves to know both that OSCR has in fact complied with its own responsibilities and carried out a satisfactory investigation, and what the outcome of that investigation was, given that nothing has changed in respect of the charity’s actions since concerns were raised with the OSCR a year ago and LGBTYS continues to far exceed its stated brief.

There are in this case no redactions which would reveal any sort of information that would place anyone at risk. The identities of LGBTYS and/or OSCR employees could be safely redacted if appropriate, while the substance of the discussion remained visible. What matters is that the question was asked, and that the public be told the answer.

None of OSCR’s stated objections to answering the FOI request are pertinent to this particular enquiry. It has no valid excuse to refuse. We fully expect it to do so anyway, because nobody in Scotland is answerable for anything any more. But we’re required to give them another 28 days to waste everyone’s time before we approach the only person in Scotland who appears to still believe in their civic and professional duty: the Information Commissioner.

Barring a miracle, we’ll see you on the 15th of May, readers.

Alert readers will recall that Wings has for the past year been attempting to establish why controversial charity LGBT Youth Scotland is being allowed to operate in primary schools across Scotland, discussing sexual matters with children as young as four, despite only being supposed to deal with young people aged between 13 and 25.

Having received no response from multiple emails to the charity, we raised the matter with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator last year, and heard nothing from them about the results of their investigation – or indeed, come to that, about whether they’d actually conducted an investigation at all.

So a month ago we sent them a Freedom Of Information request to find out. At the last possible second before the deadline to reply expired, the OSCR have this morning deigned to grace us with their response, which you can read below.

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So as promised, and having now spent 11 months trying to get answers any other way, this afternoon we had a live chat with controversial charity LGBT Youth Scotland.

Below is how it went.

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In April last year we wrote to LGBT Youth Scotland asking them to explain why they were conducting activities in primary schools (and even with pre-school children) about sexual matters despite only having a remit to work with young people aged 13-25.

We received no reply, so we contacted the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, who sent a rather sniffy acknowledgement saying:

“If your concern leads us to making inquiries with the charity, we are unable to update you on the status of those inquiries. For more information about what to expect after you submit a concern, read our guidance on how OSCR deals with concerns and inquiries.”

That link, you’ll be amazed to hear, leads to a dead page.

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You know what, Surrey Live, we think you’re probably right.

We DO think people will remember him.

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The National carried a strange article yesterday, apropos of seemingly nothing, about a Brussels-based political thinktank supposedly linked to the right-wing Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. The piece actually originated on superwoke “fact-checking” site The Ferret a couple of days earlier, and professed to expose how the thinktank was “stoking Scotland’s culture war”.

Alert readers will already have pricked up their ears at this point, because “culture war” is a radical-left dogwhistle term used to obscure, belittle and dismiss groups (largely though not exclusively comprising left-wing feminists) fighting for the safeguarding of children and the protection of women’s and LGB rights.

And sure enough, nothing’s different this time.

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As more horrific experiences from survivors of rape torture gangs surface from across the UK, we must focus not on knee-jerk political posturing but on the root cause that led to the failure of these children by our society.

Political inaction has now opened the door to inevitable political mileage, nurtured from stoking vengeance in a rightly-angered public. Those only interested in creating cultural conflicts no more support justice for survivors than those who allowed this abomination to fester by looking away or worse, covering up the problem.

For any functioning society, inflicting unimaginable pain on children on an alarming scale seems unimaginable. Yet, the evidence has been in front of us for years – so why has immediate action to ensure the safeguarding of children – and vulnerable adults – not been a pressing priority?

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We’ll give you three guesses as to the highly controversial and extravagantly taxpayer-funded organisation that has its rainbow fingerprints all over this story, readers.

But you’re going to have two to spare.

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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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I was going to write this article yesterday, but 2024’s miserable damp squib of a summer unexpectedly delivered a beautiful day – a perfect 20C of unbroken sunshine with a refreshing slight breeze – so I went for a nice walk instead.

Rather than my usual bird-feeding and bear-patrolling beat along the river and canal, I headed off on what used to be my standard summer stroll: up the long steep hill to Beckford’s Tower and its associated cemetery with stunning views over the city.

I’ll scatter a few pics from the walk throughout this feature, as otherwise I’m afraid it’s going to be a bit depressing and angering.

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We were going to write a follow-up piece to this last week, until the SNP detonated a hand-grenade in its own trouser pocket. But with the coronation of John Swinney this afternoon after the only challenger sold out for some shiny beads and trinkets, we can get back to some serious news.

The controversial charity LGBT Youth Scotland, which has been involved in a number of serious child sexual abuse scandals, continues to exert considerable influence on Scotland’s education system, thanks to extremely lavish funding from taxpayers – well over a million pounds from hard-pressed councils in the last year alone to address unspecified issues whose urgency is difficult to identify.

After our last piece we sent LGBTYS a letter raising our concerns about their improper interference with primary schools, something we were obliged to do before we could file a formal complaint with Scotland’s charity regulator, the OSCR.

We received an automated reply on 24 April saying “We are currently experiencing staff shortages and it may take up to a week to respond to your email.”

That deadline expired five days ago, and we will now be writing to the OSCR. But in the meantime LGBTYS persists in exceeding its remit, with deeply alarming results.

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