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Archive for the ‘investigation’


Down The Pipe 64

Posted on October 16, 2023 by

As alert readers will have noticed, Wings has been perusing the SNP’s Governance And Transparency Review over the last couple of days, a document which tentatively attempts to discern just how big a mess the party’s previous leadership has left it in.

(SPOILER: a really big one.)

The paper has now also reached the mainstream media.

Wings already touched on that particular aspect of the party’s mismanagement back in August, but in the light of the report now formally acknowledging the problem it’s worth taking a moment to establish just how astonishingly bad it is.

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Glory days 242

Posted on October 10, 2023 by

The SNP put out this party political broadcast (PPB) last night.

And alert readers might already have noticed something odd.

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The washing of the hands 289

Posted on September 20, 2023 by

The Scottish National Party, in legal character, is what’s known as an unincorporated association. (The same form of entity as Wings, local colour fans.)

This has a number of interesting ramifications.

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To Another World 220

Posted on September 03, 2023 by

So, we guess this is the “mainstream independence movement” now.

It’s smaller than we imagined.

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How Scotland Hates Women 137

Posted on August 31, 2023 by

Readers may have been baffled by a news story yesterday, in which an event where two men insulted each other in the street (“Deviant!”, “Bigot!”) has led to one of them, but not the other, being arrested and charged with an unspecified crime by police.

In particular, many people on social media have contrasted the situation with one from a month ago, when a large male transactivist violently assaulted a feminist woman at a “Women Won’t Wheesht” meeting in Aberdeen but merely received a recorded warning rather than being arrested and charged.

So we’re very grateful to Roddy Dunlop KC, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (the “trade” body of Scotland’s senior barristers), for posting an extremely informative, and disturbing, summary of the relevant laws on Twitter this morning.

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The Lasting Effect Of A Single Word 93

Posted on August 27, 2023 by

This is a Sunday Mail cover story today:

And it’s almost easy to dismiss it as meaningless. You can report to the police that aliens dug up your prize petunias and they’ll record it and give it a reference number and promise to investigate, before concluding that it was actually the neighbour’s cat.

But there’s one word in the 500-word piece that makes it much more interesting.

Can you spot it, readers?

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The Hollow Heart 192

Posted on August 25, 2023 by

Yesterday we took an extensive tour of all the red flags in the SNP’s 2022 accounts, which show a party in very deep financial trouble. But there was one part we left out because it deserves a post of its own.

The picture above – which was posted by then-CEO Peter Murrell during last year’s SNP conference – is a revealing one in all kinds of ways.

It starkly exposes how a party chose to hold an event for around 800 members in a venue with a capacity of 15,000 and then went to a lot of effort to disguise how empty the space was, rather than, for example, just hiring somewhere of an appropriate size (and cost) in the first place.

(Look how far into the hall the stage has been placed, leaving half the arena vacant, to then be hidden behind a giant screen and curtains and banners in order to give a false impression of how full it is.)

But what’s more symbolic is that there are almost no people in it.

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Dead Cat Bouncing 58

Posted on August 24, 2023 by

We know the meanings of words are very flexible these days, especially in the SNP.

But this isn’t our understanding of the term “turning around”:

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The murmur of the cottonwood trees 89

Posted on July 20, 2023 by

Even not-very-alert readers will have noticed that we’re taking a little summer holiday in the complete absence of any political events. Rest assured that we’re using the time to patrol Bath diligently for bears. But we couldn’t help noticing this on Twitter today.

Someone tweeted it to show that as late as summer 2020 the SNP was still soliciting money for what it called its “ring fenced Independence Referendum Campaign Fund”.

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Ruined In A Day 219

Posted on July 03, 2023 by

Hannah Graf MBE (below, right, receiving the decoration from Prince William in 2019 for his “work updating LGBTQ policy in the British Army”) is a very strange fella.

And not just for the obvious reason.

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Fun with numbers 35

Posted on June 30, 2023 by

As a corollary to this piece from earlier today, here’s a nice simple picture.

Alert readers will already have spotted the problem with it.

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Fun with words 61

Posted on June 30, 2023 by

This is, strictly speaking, semantically, true:

It is, however, as the famous phrase goes, not the whole truth.

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    • sarah on Anything But That: “@ 100%Yes:TASP hasn’t attached the video, so far as I can tell. Have you managed to find it somewhere else?Sep 11, 14:18
    • sarah on Anything But That: “@ Fearghas M: one has to ask why isn’t the Scottish executive following the example of Wales in requiring all…Sep 11, 14:14
    • sam on Anything But That: “Keep up at the back. “stop interpreting a man’s words we CAN ALL READ FOR OURSELVES” Northcode was doing a…Sep 11, 13:48
    • Alf Baird on Anything But That: “Once you begin considering our nation through a perspective of colonialism everything starts to make a lot more sense: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYXR4s8RavESep 11, 13:45
    • Insider on Anything But That: “100%Yes says: 11 September, 2026 at 10:45 am “I like listening to Alf Baird and to be honest I could…Sep 11, 12:36
    • sam on Anything But That: “It was hostile. The Aliens Act used to get the Commissioners to sign up to negotiate the deal threatened about…Sep 11, 12:20
    • Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “One point where I have to agree with Confused. Trump could declare Scotland Independent. I seriously wonder why SALVO isn’t…Sep 11, 12:11
    • Alf Baird on Anything But That: “Yes indeed, colonial denial is soon enough forced to shift to such desperate denials as Cesaire’s ‘the moon is made…Sep 11, 12:01
    • Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Come oaf it Confused. You’d fight tooth and nail against any policy that attempted to make the UK, or Scotland…Sep 11, 11:55
    • Captain Caveman on Anything But That: ““Stop interpreting a man’s words by reading” Yeah, perish the thought eh. Idiot.Sep 11, 11:26
    • Captain Caveman on Anything But That: “Maybe some people don’t like what they’re hearing, as due to the bigotry openly on display? An intense dislike of…Sep 11, 11:24
    • willie on Anything But That: “To change the dial just a little but how many people know that in May this year the Standards Commission…Sep 11, 11:19
    • Confused on Anything But That: “trumpton calling … sargon calls for the anglo pak union www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9BLYgbR9sA – this is progress, the way of the future;…Sep 11, 11:17
    • Confused on Anything But That: “you can never win a game which is controlled by your opponent, which is why you need external support to…Sep 11, 11:16
    • Confused on Anything But That: “Quit it northcode – stop interpreting a man’s words we CAN ALL READ FOR OURSELVES (thanks sam) – and your…Sep 11, 11:14
    • 100%Yes on Anything But That: “I like listening to Alf Baird and to be honest I could listen to him until the cows come home.…Sep 11, 10:45
    • Captain Caveman on Anything But That: “Well said Northy: the truth matters. How much better would the world be if the sanctity of the truth was…Sep 11, 10:36
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Anything But That: “HIISTORY OF GAELIC-MEDIUM EDUCATION Informative but sobering 2023 audio interview – « Donald MacNeill, chief executive of Comunn na Gàidhlig…Sep 11, 10:17
    • Northcode on Anything But That: “I agree, Hatey — independence has to be a broad kirk, rooted in democratic legitimacy and grounded in reality rather…Sep 11, 10:15
    • sam on Anything But That: “Northcode, You say: “He did not classify Scotland as a colony under international law. He did not argue Scotland is…Sep 11, 10:09
    • Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Indy built on truth – amen to that. The first truth is that Indy has to be the “broad kirk”…Sep 11, 09:50
    • Northcode on Anything But That: “For clarity, and because Professor Black’s work is often invoked in different ways, here is my understanding of what he…Sep 11, 09:27
    • Chas on Anything But That: “I am absolutely gutted by your response. Well, not really. Who I donate to is none of your business. It…Sep 11, 09:25
    • 100%Yes on Anything But That: “Chas@11 September, 2026 at 8:08 am I’ve donated to Savlo and Liberation Scotland, we all know why we are donating…Sep 11, 08:52
    • Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Does the professor also subscribe to the “And With One Bound Scotland Was Free” notion, or does he admit that…Sep 11, 08:23
    • Chas on Anything But That: “Did you pay your own costs? Or did you rely on the donations from the mugs, sorry supporters of your…Sep 11, 08:08
    • Alf Baird on Anything But That: ““The story of the 1707 Union is not one of a voluntary, mutual partnership. It is a story of annexation,…Sep 10, 21:42
    • Alf Baird on Anything But That: ““The evidence points to only one conclusion: Scotland was annexed into a continuing English state.” (Prof Robert Black, ‘The Takeover…Sep 10, 20:35
    • Alf Baird on Anything But That: “Yes indeed Sam, Professor Black confirmed his conclusion on the ‘takeover’ and ‘annexation’ of Scotland by England during the SSRG…Sep 10, 20:11
    • Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Most admirable, Spartan. Is your brand of committed pacifism reciprocated by the people you call puerile, shite-posting idiots, or do…Sep 10, 19:54
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