Warning: despite the quite zingy title this is actually going to be a very dry stats post, readers. It is, on the other hand, based on a man having something disturbingly close to a complete psychotic mental breakdown, so there’s always that for a bit of colour.
Because the paragraph above, and in particular the highlighted part, is without a doubt the most dishonest, diametrically false and wildly extreme lie about Scottish politics that we’ve ever seen anyone tell in the 13.5 years of Wings Over Scotland’s existence.
And as a rule we don’t bother addressing them because they’re so demented you could spend 5,000 words pulling apart all the individual strands of lunacy every time, and lunatics thrive on attention, but this one does merit a very brief comment.
Because “Vote Labour, get indy” wasn’t our plan. It was John Swinney’s.
Even by the embarrassing standards of The National, the gulf between this morning’s blaring front-page splash and the weak, watery weasel words in the actual article is a chasm so wide and so yawning (in every sense of that word) that it would put the epic planetary scar of Mars’ Valles Marineris to shame.
Coupled with a feebly underwhelming Programme For Government (in which the main policy was the re-abolition of peak rail fares just months after the SNP insisted such a move was unaffordable, with no clue as to where the money had suddenly been found) and a pitiful list of candidates for next year’s Holyrood election featuring the likes of Sally “all aboard the gravy bus!” Donald, Kaukab “DECAPITATE TERFS” Stewart, Kirsten “DECAPITATE TERFS” Oswald, Alison “DECAPITATE TERFS” Thewliss and Alyn “throw anyone who doesn’t want to DECAPITATE TERFS out of the SNP” Smith, the story was an abject vision of a bleak future for independence.
The less said about the Scottish Government’s toe-curlingly embarrassing “summit” last week, the sooner we can all pretend it never happened. We’ve got little to add to the withering assessments of Robin McAlpine and Kevin McKenna and just about everyone else who’s bothered covering this pathetic waste of everyone involved’s time. (Not that the time of most of these useless quangocrats was worth anything anyway.)
We take a moment only to note something remarkable: the closest Scottish Labour’s hapless branch manager Anas Sarwar has ever come to understanding anything.
Yesterday the Scottish media gave Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman what she’s never willingly given anyone else – a platform on which to make her case.
Most did a very poor job challenging her on her outrageous comments about the Supreme Court, with BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime show being an especially wretched example of allowing the interviewee to ignore every question and then just ramble on endlessly about something else entirely, but LBC’s Gina Davidson was on top of her brief and put all the points that reasonable people wanted to be made, while giving Chapman ample time to answer uninterrupted.
Let’s break down how that went, with the help of our handy Bullshit Buzzer.
At the weekend, Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman was filmed applauding as a notoriously unhinged transactivist ranted through a megaphone to a small and almost exclusively male crowd of protestors about how he was going to openly break the law by continuing to use women’s public toilets, and addressing JK Rowling with the words “We should all take a shite on you, you heinous creeping old bitch”.
At another protest, Chapman herself asserted that the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on the correct interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 was motivated by not by a solemn consideration of the law or by the arguments of counsel who appeared before it, but by “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”.
Chapman is – incredibly – Deputy Convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament, and as such her comments sparked a storm of wholly justified outrage over her flagrant breach not only of Parliamentary rules but also of the law – specifically the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008, which requires all MSPs to uphold the independence of the judiciary.
Scottish Greens candidate and transactivist Matt “Ellie” Gomersall, with whom Wings readers will be familiar, appeared on the Jeremy Vine show today and blundered straight into an elephant trap a myopic mole could have seen coming on a foggy night.
Having just embarked on a diatribe in which he dismissed as “ridiculous” the idea that predatory men would ever pretend to be transwomen to gain access to vulnerable women, Vine asked him about Adam “Isla Bryson” Graham, the convicted double rapist that even hapless Humza Yousaf felt able to confidently assert was “at it”.
Having just painted himself into a corner, Gomersall was then embarrassingly unable to disown Bryson as a “real” transwoman, thereby implicitly admitting that transwomen do indeed present a danger to women in exactly the same way that predatory men do, and torpedoing his entire core point that it was unfair to “discriminate” against them in exactly the same way single-sex spaces discriminate against non-trans men.
(Outrageously, earlier in the speech he’d tried to claim that it was only natural that some transwomen would be sex offenders because some biological women were.)
It’s tempting to believe that Gomersall was demonstrating an intellectual vacuum by making such vacuously cretinous arguments and failing to spot even the most obvious pitfalls in them, but the truth is far worse. Gomersall, and people like him, know that they’re lying (which is why they always try to silence opponents), but they lack the moral courage to face up to the fact that the inevitable price of their lies is vulnerable women being raped by what he revoltingly waves away as “fringe cases”.
All rapists are fringe cases. 95% of men would never dream of raping anyone. But we discriminate against ALL men in women’s spaces because you can’t tell which ones are rapists by looking. Men like “Ellie” Gomersall, though, think that the price of a few women being raped is worth paying to validate their delusions and fetishes (in his case, the creepy fetish of skinwalking as his pretty sister), and they don’t even have the shred of decency to bother coming up with a coherent line of bullshit to cover it.
It’s one of the most profoundly disappointing things about the last decade of Scottish politics that for about five minutes in 2015 we all thought that this awful dunderheaded foghorn was a bright new hope for the future.
In April 2021, the SNP were still the undisputed masters of all they surveyed. A poll conducted by Ipsos MORI that month showed them on 53% of the vote for the Scottish Parliament, a jawdropping 33 points ahead of their nearest rivals.
When the Holyrood election a month later was held, they won 64 seats, one more than they had done in 2016. Yet despite having led a minority government without any significant difficulties for the preceding five years, Nicola Sturgeon chose to invite the Greens to form a coalition with her party, and the effect that had on the public’s view of the government was… well, let’s see.
The difficulty is that any minute now, someone is going to ask the beleaguered First Minister the staggeringly obvious question that arises from the fact, namely:
twathater on When the law breaks the law: “Scotland will never regain her independence until we have people who are willing to tell WM to fuck off, what…” Feb 22, 03:57
twathater on When the law breaks the law: “As I commented on Grousebeater blog re Mark Hirst It is absolutely despicable that Scotland’s laws and legal system is…” Feb 22, 03:28
Jay on When the law breaks the law: “Dan, thank you for the link to grousebeater’s exposition concerning Sturgeon’s history. Seems perfectly compromised for recruitment. Is any more…” Feb 21, 23:53
Saffron Robe on Shield Of The Phantom: “I’ve been thinking some more about this following a conversation today about AI, and I’m not convinced the explanation given…” Feb 21, 22:21
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “HMcH Nah, they are as bad in both departments as each other. Is either department the one/ those GP referenced…” Feb 21, 21:53
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “James HMcH is either: 1. Flexing his +60% fat brain percentage inspired imagination Or 2. Projecting YET AGAIN..” Feb 21, 21:30
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Now, now, James, tell the truth. You’re here for a few days because you’ve rubbed it red raw. As soon…” Feb 21, 21:09
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “CA As a point of order; that’s hardly an even handed source – over a year old – and, making…” Feb 21, 20:54
Iain More on When the law breaks the law: “And the Quislings and Treacherous Wokists crawl out from under their rocks.” Feb 21, 20:22
Cynicus on When the law breaks the law: “Wonderful. There are faux-Scots poets who compose English verse and, with the aid of dictionaries, translate material they pass off…” Feb 21, 20:20
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “GP at 2.26 “That’s not how it works (HMcH) as you are in a position to know”.. Please do share…” Feb 21, 20:09
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “A general political rule of thumb that seems to be accurate most of the time: With left wing parties, it’s…” Feb 21, 20:08
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: ““you will well know from your own sponsors” Sure. I asked them about your old department. They tell me they…” Feb 21, 20:03
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “Has LGBTQI etc etc etc killed the SNP and Alba? Certainly disproportionately over represented per capita.. Can’t keep hands out…” Feb 21, 20:01
Colin Alexander on When the law breaks the law: ““Leaked emails show Kenny MacAskill’s concerns of Alex Salmond’s Alba”. At least Kenny MacAskill had the sense to distance himself…” Feb 21, 19:58
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Fanon and Memmi, Jonesy too, predicted this would happen.” Feb 21, 19:55
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Good to see you back, James People were worrying you’d gone blind.” Feb 21, 19:52
Colin Alexander on When the law breaks the law: “It was under Kenny MacAskill as Justice Secretary that ALEX SALMOND’S woke colonial administration changed Scottish Prison Service policy to…” Feb 21, 19:37
Cynicus on When the law breaks the law: ““ Alba Party quits Holyrood election with questions over ‘viability’” ========= https://tinyurl.com/NOT-Murrel” Feb 21, 19:12
Dan on When the law breaks the law: “Aye, totes poundshop politics here in Scotlandshire. Lacklustre and spineless politicians, and divisive self-serving egotistic narcissism turned up to eleven…” Feb 21, 18:33
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “HMcH Oi Vey Y’all! Oh dear! Hebe geno side happy clapper and self professed coloured people hating “Oath Keeper” HMcH.…” Feb 21, 18:19
GM on When the law breaks the law: “What an absolute waste of your old man’s effort you are. Turd.” Feb 21, 17:42
TURABDIN on When the law breaks the law: “THE BRITISH STATE is experiencing a major existential crisis, Scotland’s «elect» are asleep. Sadly, the electorate is dozing too. The…” Feb 21, 17:32
agentx on When the law breaks the law: “Don’t forget Men’s curling team going for Gold (or at least Silver) at 18.00.” Feb 21, 17:10
