Wings Over Scotland

Two weeks ago a Wings scoop caused quite a furore to erupt around the SNP’s ham-fisted and corruptly-motivated attempts to increase BAME and disabled representation at this year’s Holyrood election.

We’ve always been opposed to what were until recently known as “quotas”, and prior to that “positive discrimination”, but have now been cunningly rebranded as “diversity and inclusion” because that’s a much more difficult thing to say you object to.

It’s easy to make an honourable-sounding case against any form of “discrimination”, because decent and civilised people are taught to automatically think of discrimination as a bad thing, even if you put “positive” in front of it.

So the word “quotas” was adopted to move the concept from a pejorative term to a neutral noun – objecting to “quotas” doesn’t sound intolerant, any more than objecting to (say) “procedures” does. So that’s fine, because you can still discuss it like adults without too much unpleasantness.

But those pushing the agenda got smarter still by changing the name again. If you say you object to “diversity and inclusion”, you sound like a monster and a racist, because diversity and inclusion are plainly good things – no decent person wants to live in a monoculture, or to exclude anybody from society – and so the debate is immediately drowned out by self-righteous tossers screaming “BIGOT!” and “NAZI!” at everyone.

And yet in the context of social policy the three phrases mean the exact same thing. They’re all systems for overriding raw democracy so as to increase the representation of selected groups at the expense of other groups, for one reason or another.

(Sometimes it’s ostensibly just penance for historical wrongs, while at other times it’s supposedly for economic benefits, and so on.)

And while the proponents of those systems will openly argue that the only group being disadvantaged is straight white men so it’s all fine (because nobody likes straight white men and anyone standing up for them can be easily dismissed as a “gammon” for lots of woke points and Twitter likes), it isn’t even remotely close to the truth.

Because in “diversity and inclusion”, some groups are a lot more included than others.

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In an attempt to freshen up its usual panel of tired and tiresome politicians and pundits, last night’s Question Time (ostensibly from an oddly-vague location in “the North East”) featured moderately-known circus fortune-teller Gypsy Rose Petulengro, crossing her palm with silver for some analysis in a short break from one of her celebrated seances.

The clip above was her take on whether Nicola Sturgeon would resign if either of the current inquiries found that she’d systematically and repeatedly lied to Parliament and broken the Ministerial Code, and the strange thing about it was that for someone who was professing to be looking into the future, she didn’t even appear to know the basic pertinent facts of the present or the past.

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Tonight somebody’s sent us a copy of the SNP’s official Social Media Policy, which is exactly the sort of awful corporate wonk-drivel you’d probably expect it to be.

Our favourite part was this masterpiece of unrememberable gibberish in the vein of the Scottish Government’s hopeless “FACTS” slogan (honestly, without going and looking can you remember what ANY of the letters represent?) for the coronavirus :

And here’s a tweet from earlier today from a prospective SNP candidate:

We’re not sure which of the letters that conforms to.

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Readers, we swear to you we are not making this up. What you’re about to read are genuine extracts from the SNP’s official new (probably illegal) Equalities Mechanism explanatory note, detailing what does and doesn’t count as a disability when it comes to jumping the queue for a regional list nomination.

And straight away it’s a real punch in the gut for firestarters, muggers, rapists, flashers and, in most cases, hay-fever sufferers. THIS BIGOTRY WILL NOT STAND.

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As soon as this happened, this was only ever going to be a matter of days:

It is, of course, all the doing of the transcult. The SNP is a trainwreck, readers, and its leader is a weak-kneed failure. Nobody can claim that we haven’t been warning you.

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So we’ve just heard some news hot from the SNP’s controversial special NEC meeting which took place this afternoon.

We don’t yet know what happened regarding the supposed definition of transphobia – our source thinks that it may have been postponed due to not being able to get the required 2/3 vote for an emergency agenda item.

But we know that something even madder DID happen.

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Approximately 40,000 people have left the SNP in the last five years – among them hundreds (at least) of women who quit because of the party’s total lack of action against its abusive, misogynist transactivist wing.

Many of them had been members for decades and wrote pained letters explaining their reasons, only to be waved away with an automated form reply. But half a dozen of the party’s most obnoxious scumbags flounce off in a huff and this happens.

Kirsten Oswald is a brainless knife-and-fork operator and always has been. But Keith Brown must go home at night and drape towels over all the mirrors so he doesn’t have to look at himself after putting his name to that.

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If you were to poll us on which of the two signs below we preferred, we’d definitely vote for the one on the left. It’s a lot more eye-catching, it’s easier to read and the strong use of red makes it much clearer that a prohibition is in place.

But here’s the thing: we wouldn’t go to jail over the choice.

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All we can say is that the other nine points better be amazing.

Because this, readers, is ZZZ-grade donkey fodder.

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It’s hard to keep up with developments in Scottish politics these days, readers. We told you January 2021 was going to be a pivotal and explosive month but there’s been more going on than even we expected, and that’s despite the fact that Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon’s appearances before the Fabiani committee now both look like being pushed back to February.

So our apologies if we have to give some things rather more cursory coverage than they might ordinarily merit, or cram several stories into one post. For example, we’re just going to link you to solicitor advocate Gordon Dangerfield’s appearance yesterday on the Tommy Sheridan podcast, even though he said this non-trivial thing on it:

“There’s a very simple answer to [why Leslie Evans is still in a job]. She says it herself constantly to the inquiry – civil servants only represent ministers. They have no status other than as the servants of the government.

Who is Leslie Evans’ boss? Leslie Evans’ boss is Nicola Sturgeon. Nicola Sturgeon was behind this from the outset. Leslie Evans was carrying out Nicola Sturgeon’s instructions. And that’s why she’s still in a job. Because if she wasn’t still in a job, neither would Nicola Sturgeon be.”

The whole interview is pretty unmissable, so if you can find 24 spare minutes in your day try to give it a listen. But there’s more.

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Tonight’s poll data from Survation is really quite remarkable.

We can’t wait to hear what “Pension Pete” Wishart makes of it.

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