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.
Jim Thomson on A Poor Example: “Expect faux queues at the GN ones. Which means there will be no TW or TM working, so that the…” May 10, 00:07
Dan on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “Aye, an aquaintence works in the technical design side of planning and implementing the new HVDC transmission lines from Scotland…” May 9, 21:11
Hatey McHateface on A Poor Example: “How can the law and judiciary of Scotland and the UK be held in even more contempt? Max contempt was…” May 9, 21:01
joolz on A Poor Example: “Anyone can have a meeting for anyone as long as you don’t misrepresent it. If she had publicised the event…” May 9, 20:47
Vivian O’Blivion on A Poor Example: “Another double digit lead for RefUK and another breach of the 30% barrier. BMG Research, Westminster voting intention, field work…” May 9, 20:13
Yoon Scum on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “can the stupid English worshipper ask After Scotland leaves the union What forms of power generation will be allowed?” May 9, 19:27
agent x on A Poor Example: “Scottish trans activists are in “denial” about the Supreme Court decision that confirmed the term ‘woman’ in the Equality Act…” May 9, 19:24
Aidan on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “@Anthem – the wind farms in England are efficient which is why one of the largest offshore wind farms anywhere…” May 9, 19:21
Anthem on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “@Dunx. That’s absolute garbage. They exist because Westminster sell the licences to American equity companies who invest for maximim profit…” May 9, 19:05
James Cheyne on A Poor Example: “It is still obvious. Nothing has changed biological women are and always were women, the supreme court did not change…” May 9, 18:46
Yoon Scum on A Poor Example: “You have to be a whole new level of stoopid to advertise a women’s only event in her position” May 9, 18:12
Mark on A Poor Example: “Don’t think so. As explained above, biological sex is the determiner for a “same-sex” service. “Trans women” are biological males,…” May 9, 17:16
Anna on A Poor Example: “Not for us in Scotland it won’t” May 9, 16:42
Yoon Scum on A Poor Example: “There is part of me that wishes the far left get their dream of Scotland becoming an islamic state Would…” May 9, 16:24
Sven on A Poor Example: “It all just seemed so obvious only a decade ago; Biological men are men. Biological women are women. Anyone gets…” May 9, 15:23
stonefree on A Poor Example: “It stinks like a Sturgeon-esk Franchise 34 Quid off,Decent people are not welcome” May 9, 15:11
Dunx on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “@Michael England does generate a lot of wind power. They are not helping themselves. The wind companies pay the SG…” May 9, 14:58
Vivian O’Blivion on A Poor Example: “YouGov, British attitudes towards discrimination in the workplace, published 9th May. By group, do you think positive discrimination has gone…” May 9, 14:19
Lorn on A Poor Example: “Don’t understand how so many people can read the ruling and still get it wrong. It is – and there…” May 9, 14:14
Andrea on A Poor Example: “Would it be allowed to have an event that is for women AND trans woman? I should think so, but…” May 9, 14:02
Vivian O’Blivion on A Poor Example: “As someone who lives across the road from a Mosque, I can assure you they wouldn’t admit chicks with dicks…” May 9, 13:56
Aidan on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “@Michael – you’re talking about the wind here, not some hugely valuable unique energy resources (e.g. oil and gas) which…” May 9, 13:52
factchecker on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “Wonderful to see some rationality here. Two comments. You say ‘we believe independence to be a normal situation’. I would…” May 9, 13:24
1971Thistle on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “I would agree. Has there been a drop off in the number of ‘anon’ comments on blog? He seems to…” May 9, 13:22
Stuart MacKay on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “The Stalker probably sits all day clicking on the links, with the result that his blog is currently sitting in…” May 9, 13:11
Michael Laing on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “@ Dunx: So we’ve to thank England for helping itself to Scotland’s energy and selling it back to us at…” May 9, 13:05
Lorn on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “Also, Yon, politicians used to at least try and explain their policies to the people. Now, they just ignore all…” May 9, 13:00
Confused on All Or Nothing: ““sons of satan” and “enemies of the human race” (*) – do you not read your bible, main? I would…” May 9, 12:58
Captain Caveman on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “Reform – and only Reform. Even the Tories can’t be trusted, particularly concerning “net zero” nonsense. (As for the rest…” May 9, 12:57
Lorn on The Last Thing They’ll Expect: “Yoon, to set up a crowdfunder around like-minded people and build a case to take to the courts. Plenty of…” May 9, 12:52
