The Scottish Government and Nicola Sturgeon have tonight embarked on a last-ditch desperate throw of the dice to undermine and sabotage the already-compromised and endlessly-obstructed Fabiani inquiry in its impossible quest for the truth.
Having previously deployed her paid mouthpiece Rape Crisis Scotland last week, the First Minister – who’s spent the last six months insisting that she’d save her comments for her appearance at the inquiry – suddenly popped up on BBC and STV (but not, curiously, Sky News) to issue a challenge full of gunfighter bravado to her predecessor.
As a spinoff from the hysterical Scottish media witch-hunt over last week’s piece on Neil Mackay, today we found ourselves listening to a podcast from last May by Courier editor Davie Clegg and former Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale.
While it was obviously of personal interest, we had a specific reason for listening – we suspected it might contain some helpful information that our lawyers had been looking for (which as it happened it did).
But there was also something else really interesting that we weren’t expecting.
It’s difficult to know where to even start on the absolutely extraordinary reaction to our post about yesterday’s meeting of the SNP National Executive Committee. Our traffic exploded to levels not seen since 2014, racking up tens of thousands of pageviews an hour, and social media was aflame with argument into the small hours of the morning.
A whole raft of issues arose from our exclusive revelations, but the one we want to talk about now is the one that was buried at the bottom of what a panicked SNP hastily and laughably produced as the “minutes” of the meeting, and we didn’t even notice it until a couple of hours after the original post.
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.
It’s our sad duty to report this fact to you, readers: our experience of sending Freedom Of Information requests to the Scottish Government is basically that the more answers you get from them, the less information you end up having.
Because while pretty much every journalist, pundit and legal expert reporting the case agrees that the amendment made to the Section 11 order protecting the anonymity of the complainers in the Alex Salmond case is an important and significant one, it hasn’t impressed the only person whose opinion actually matters: Andy Wightwash.
Once again we’ve clipped the entire question and “answer” so you can see nothing’s been taken out of context, but the important bit is from 2m 30s to 2m 53s.
Davidson’s question was quite complex but boiled down to why Nicola Sturgeon hadn’t properly recorded details and minutes of meetings on Scottish Government business, in direct breach of the Ministerial Code.
That’s a valid question in itself, to which there was no meaningful response, but it was what Sturgeon said right at the end that raised our eyebrows.
Sorry, folks, we had a minor medical emergency today (veteran readers can probably guess in which category) and haven’t been quite as on top of events as we’d like.
So terrible was it that the SNP had a backup plan to distract from it – a nonsense of a press release from SNP chief operating officer Sue Ruddick in which she made an allegation about a supposed “act of physical aggression” by Alex Salmond.
The following statement has been issued in response. It’s an eye-opener.
Aidan on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Yes, that was the motivation behind the blue sea rule. The legal principles on decolonisation and NSGT’s were agreed by…” May 27, 17:42
duncanio on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Sarah – We don’t have the luxury of time. Every time there is an election it could be the last…” May 27, 17:33
Xaracen on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “But, Aidan, how can the ‘blue water’ requirement be “fundamental” when you made it clear to me that its purpose…” May 27, 17:04
James Cheyne on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “I have been squinting quickly through, Textual Amendments to “Scotland union with England” Acts House of Lords ( privileges Committee…” May 27, 16:43
Northcode on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Hello, Sam. Good to know you’re still about this place. “We are much the same genetic material now as in…” May 27, 16:21
sarah on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “That is indeed interesting about the party whip system. I’d love to see their candidate win.” May 27, 16:14
sarah on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “@ duncanio at 11.23 p.m. and twathater at 03.33. Thank you, twathater for correctly pointing out my motivation for supporting…” May 27, 16:12
Northcode on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: ““Towards decolonization and then liberation.” Indeed, Alf. The third and final phase of Scotland’s decolonization has begun there’s no doubt…” May 27, 16:04
Kelpie on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “I live in Hamilton so we have people canvassing and leaf-letting for the by-election next week. I’ve never had so…” May 27, 16:01
James Barr Gardner on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Wallonia has the right of veto in Belgian Federal decisions, it’s population of 3.7 million is 31.4% of Belgium……..” May 27, 15:32
Breastplate on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Yes, John, you’re correct, it is something you eat, particularly in Scotland. What the English call rolls, tend to be…” May 27, 14:25
Alf Baird on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “A soond analysis Robert. Yer deid richt, thar’s faur too mony jubous poleetical assumotions in this piece. Poetry theory is…” May 27, 14:10
sam on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Hello again Northcode. Genetic studies of the Scots identify how little change there has been within Scots. We are much…” May 27, 13:55
Hatey McHateface on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “It’s defo interesting you don’t believe in viruses, Billy. Back in the early decades of the last century, the inhabitants…” May 27, 13:11
Lorn on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Spot on, Susan. In order to do that, we need to create new and sustainable industries across the board, and,…” May 27, 12:44
Lorn on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “It is true, twathater, that our politicians have gone out of their way to penalize women who do not work…” May 27, 12:37
Billy Carlin on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Hatey McHateface Oh Dear! One of those who do not want to use their own brains. First off there was…” May 27, 12:32
James Cheyne on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “The down fall and hollowing out of Scotland and changing its ethic population and culture were dilberate actions talen, The…” May 27, 12:30
Hatey McHateface on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “@ Billy Carlin says:27 May, 2025 at 11:31 am So what you’re saying is that we don’t actually need Indy…” May 27, 12:25
Aidan on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “I won’t be aghast, the failure to even address the fundamental ‘blue water’ requirement just continues to show that this…” May 27, 12:23
Hatey McHateface on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: ““Towards decolonization and then liberation” And wads of moolah. You forgot that. And to most Scots, that’s the bit that…” May 27, 12:17
Hatey McHateface on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Aye, BP, those fecking nationalist, sovereignty-defending, freedom fighters, eh? If only they would cave. Have you seen the price of…” May 27, 12:12
Billy Carlin on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Insider 26 May 2025 at 7.17 pm You use your brain and go and do some simple research – you…” May 27, 11:31
Robert Hughes on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “Well written as y’d expect from a published poet ( an excellent one at that ) with much to enjoy…” May 27, 11:28
Gaitero on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “tldr; We should learn from past failures, not beat ourselves up about them. “He who does not understand his history…” May 27, 10:53
Vronsky on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “tldr; We should learn from past failures, not beat ourselves up about them. “He who does not understand his history…” May 27, 10:48
Southernbystander on What Are We, And Where Are We Going?: “But that does not address the points I am making. It is not specifically the English that have imposed notions…” May 27, 10:37