We’d almost forgotten the delirious pleasure of having something to write about that isn’t sodding Brexit, so thank heavens for this email today:
It’s the outcome of a case that we’ve been pursuing since February, and while it’s a very welcome step it’s still not quite good enough.
We’re being somewhat generous with the numbering here, to be honest, but you’ve got to start the official count somewhere, right?
Alert readers will recall that current Scottish Labour policy is to enshrine in law the right to a free bus pass for all Scots over the age of 60:
This time last year, for example, their transport spokesman Colin Smyth specifically and indignantly condemned any possible suggestion by the dastardly SNP of perhaps increasing the qualifying age from 60 to state pension age (currently 65 and due to rise to 68 and beyond), saying:
“Sadly, the scheme is now under threat with SNP ministers refusing the rule out increasing the age citizens can qualify for a pass in a bid to try and save money. Ordinary people in their 60s should not be paying the price of Tory austerity because the SNP refuse to use the powers of the parliament to fund our services properly.”
A commendably unambiguous and righteous position. Indeed, the North British branch of Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist party announced at this year’s conference that if elected they’d not only keep the threshold at 60, but would extend free bus travel immediately to everyone in Scotland under 25, and then swiftly to everyone of any age.
So we can safely assume that in Wales, where Labour have been in power for all 20 years of the devolved Assembly, all those things will already be happening, because otherwise it’d just be embarrassing.
At the very least, we can be certain that there’s no chance of the qualifying age going up from 60 to state pension age, because we already know that Labour regard that as a scandalous and unthinkable moral outrage.
We’re pretty sure we can’t be alone in being a little perturbed by this paragraph from a story in today’s Times.
It’s public knowledge that Davidson worked for BBC Scotland before becoming a Tory MSP, but we don’t think it’s ever been revealed that she was also working as a lackey, chaffeur and seamstress for a politician.
(Presumably in her spare time, but honestly who knows?)
BBC staff – especially those working in news departments – are supposed to be impeccably politically impartial, including outside of work hours, for extremely obvious reasons. We can’t help but wonder whether there are any current BBC Scotland news broadcasters running around the country fiddling with the flies of Conservative MPs while they’re on party-political business.
Is Glenn Campbell making tea for Ross Thomson? Does Isabel Fraser polish Alister Jack’s shoes on speaking engagements? Does Andrew Kerr have to keep Bill Grant’s sash and apron nicely ironed? Is it Gordon Brewer’s job to brush Kirstene Hair’s hair or remind her to breathe in and out?
Unfortunately, as it’s the BBC there’s very little point in asking, so we’ll never know.
The modern world is an ideological minefield, readers, and is increasingly almost as dangerous as a real one. Having the wrong opinions about things can easily get you fired, ostracised from polite society, arrested or beaten up, and nowhere is this more the case than in the sphere of gender politics.
The extremely brave intersex woman Claire Graham (aka @MRKHvoice on Twitter, her latest account after a series of arbitrary bannings for upsetting the wrong people with statements of biological fact) recently compiled a list of things which are now deemed “transphobic” by trans activists, and given the transience and vulnerability of anything published on Twitter, we thought it was a good idea to preserve it here, with some additions of our own and from others.
[EDIT 9 Dec 2019: Claire has of course now been permanently banned and her original list deleted by Twitter.]
We’ve previously noted how alarmingly this sort of extremist, intolerant and openly violent male bullying in the guise of progressive political correctness has been used in recent months to silence all sorts of people (mainly but not exclusively feminists).
Politicians, police and numerous other authorities in both Scotland and the UK have been complicit – whether intentionally or not – in enabling a terrifying “woke” culture of censorship and intimidation in which the wishes of the vast majority of the public are about to be simply ridden roughshod over, resulting in the creation of laws which could have (and are already having) absolutely horrific consequences.
Anyone raising issues, however, is liable to find themselves at the centre of a vicious storm of outrage, abuse or worse. So if you’re concerned about the imminent abolition of sex but want to stay out of trouble, here’s the stuff you need to avoid.
Ruth Davidson led on numeracy (or as Tories call it, “numberacy”) at FMQs today.
And we can see why she’s concerned.
On Saturday, for the second year in a row, there was a huge and joyous independence march through the centre of Glasgow, which passed off with no incidents, arrests or disturbances despite attempted provocation from a small handful of abusive Unionist bigots led by a Holocaust denier.
Most of the Sunday papers carried largely neutral and factual reports of the event, of varying quality and size, with only a comical piece of hysteria in the extremist Scottish Daily Express standing out as objectionable for its ridiculous headline (and even then the actual copy barely mentioned the march at all).
But also for the second year in a row, one paper – or to be more specific, one man – took a rather more negative slant.
Alert readers may recall our ongoing enquiry with the Scottish Conservatives and the Information Commissioner’s Office about what may or may not constitute a lawful and legitimate “petition”, if one is conducted over a period of several years (during which signatories may changes their opinions, or die) and is never delivered to its supposed recipient, but merely used as a data-harvesting device.
And excitingly there’s been a new twist.
The BBC came in for a spot of criticism this week when its new BBC Scotland channel opted to show some snooker instead of Nicola Sturgeon’s major speech about a new independence referendum. But then things started to get weird.
An alert Wings reader noted that they hadn’t been able to locate any coverage by the state broadcaster of the SNP’s annual conference this weekend either, even though they send live cameras to just about any other party’s gatherings even if they amount to three people in a phone box (hi, Scottish Lib Dems).
The plot swiftly thickened.
Alert readers may have noticed that the deadline for the Conservative Party to respond to our formal query about their fake indyref 2 “petition” was about to expire (today, in fact), but fear not, compliance fans – at the eleventh hour a reply was received.
This is it:
So we’ve asked the obvious question.
While we dig deep into the results of our latest Panelbase poll, we thought we should update you on the progress of this story from last month.
A few days ago we received a reply from the Information Commissioner’s Office, and as a result have sent a letter to the Conservative Party’s compliance department. You can read it below.
We saw a tweet from some Tory MP or MSP this morning urging voters to sign some fake “petition” or other bashing the SNP, and it rang a bell in our minds, so we popped over to the Conservative Party website where we found this:
Despite referring to “a new poll today”, there’s no date to be found anywhere on the page, and that turns out to be because it’s been there for quite a while.
A little snippet in today’s Times caught our eye earlier.
As alert readers may recall from our numerous investigations into the enduring enigma that is Scottish Labour’s membership figures, at the end of 2014 the branch office was claiming to have either 14,000 or 20,000 members.
And even in a world where 38% is “almost half” and five is half of seven, there’s still no way you can get 21,000 to be “almost double” either 14,000 or 20,000.
Were Labour lying in 2014, or are they lying now, or (and this is our guess) were they lying both times and their real membership is nothing like any of those unverified, unscrutinised, plucked-from-the-air numbers?
We’ll probably never know, and it’ll almost certainly never matter.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
