Wings Over Scotland

Just an SNP activist tonight, saying that it doesn’t matter whether there’s a majority for independence in the Scottish Parliament or not, and that it’s undemocratic for a new pro-indy party to stand democratically for election like any other and take seats from Unionists (as long as the SNP hold power in the devolved administration, of course).

Other SNP activists, meanwhile, are already openly trying to dig dirt and undermine the women leading the new party, which is only planning to contest list seats and therefore poses no threat to the SNP whatsoever. Does anyone still think the current SNP care about independence, rather than power?

Scotland’s media is still unable to contain its outpouring of bitter, resentful rage over Alex Salmond’s exoneration by a jury on trumped-up sexual assault charges.

Flailing blindly in all directions it’s achieving little other than to embarrass itself, such as last night when Scotland On Sunday had to change its front page in a late panic. But the media’s toxic fury at being denied Salmond’s head on a pole has also led it to do something far, far more serious and reckless.

And every one of them knows exactly what they’ve done.

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There are now exactly two weeks remaining of the Scottish Government’s second fake “consultation” into its proposed reforms to gender law.

We say “fake” not out of cynicism or mad paranoia, but because the cabinet minister responsible for the reforms has already made it explicitly, publicly and repeatedly clear that she intends to press ahead with them regardless of the responses, and that the only purpose of the “consultation” is to try to persuade people to agree with them.

Shirley-Anne Somerville reiterated this position just days ago, telling Scotland Tonight that she was “absolutely determined” to enact the bill and only interested in silencing opposition and removing any “medicalisation” of the process of gender transition.

While the Scottish Government has met literally hundreds of times with transactivist groups with regard to the reforms, it has refused to meet women’s groups critical of them, and frequently lied about that refusal.

(It also funds transactivist pressure groups with hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money to create a “feedback loop” supporting its position. Gender-critical women’s groups receive no such funding, largely because the conditions attached to Scottish Government funding specifically and deliberately exclude them.)

The consultation document and the draft bill leave enormous logical and legislative gaps which are likely to cause untold chaos if the reforms are implemented. The Scottish Government has apparently learned nothing from the shambolic fiascos around the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act and Named Person legislation, both of which have collapsed despite widespread public support – something the proposed gender reforms emphatically do NOT enjoy.

We’re obliged for the sake of sanity to assume that at some point the First Minister, the Cabinet Secretary or both will have to undertake at least one proper interview on the subject of these extremely serious and potentially catastrophic proposals.

For the consideration of whoever may conduct these interviews, we submit below some questions which a very considerable number of people in Scotland – primarily but by no means exclusively women, and encompassing a majority of every political and social demographic – urgently want answered.

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So that’s it, then. That’s the grand plan.

We’re sorry, but we’d say the game’s a bogey, gang.

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So it’s finally official: Boris Says No. He’s formally done the thing that we’ve all known he was going to do ever since he became UK Prime Minister last July.

So what’s the stunning, game-changing counter-response we’ve got for him, having known for six months that this was what he’d say and had all that time to prepare for it? What’s the stroke of strategic genius that all those SNP loyalists insisted we had up our sleeve and just weren’t revealing until the key moment?

“We’re going to wait for however long it takes for the Westminster establishment to accept that another referendum is inevitable.”

Brilliant. What a plan. To the barricades, everyone.

Anyone who’s followed the UK political media over the last decade or so with specific reference to Scotland will know that in a very crowded field, the standout poster boy for arrogant, condescending metropolitan cluelessness is the Independent’s chief political commentator John Rentoul.

For reasons which escape us, Rentoul – who was born in India and as far as we know has spent not a single day of his life resident in Scotland – identifies as Scottish. And yet he doesn’t appear to even recognise the concept of Scotland as a political entity, and today he demonstrated that fact in a manner so stark and striking that it’s worth recording for posterity.

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It really is quite the remarkable feat of timing that concerted mass reporting by SNP activists managed to get the Wings Twitter account (and several others) closed down this week of all weeks, isn’t it?

They’re also trying to get my personal account banned, and reporting scores of others, in an open attempt to purge any sort of dissenting opinions from public dialogue at exactly the same time as opening a “consultation” whose outcome has already been predetermined, and which in another remarkable coincidence is due to close just a few days into the four weeks scheduled for the Alex Salmond trial.

What were the odds, eh readers?

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There are just under 36 hours until the 2019 general election.

God help us all.

Two stories from yesterday’s Scottish papers, published at 11.19am and 11.28am:

But it’s even weirder than it looks.

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