While we were out this afternoon diligently patrolling for bears in the 20C beauty of a Bath early spring (largely because there’s a rather implausible 40% chance of snow forecast for next Wednesday), an email flooded in from Tom Gordon of the Herald.
“Hello Stuart. We’ve been contacted by a reader who says he also contacted you about a post on the website in the early hours of Saturday. Referring to Nicola Sturgeon, the poster says “Decapitating this witch would stop the SNP dead in their tracks.”
Our reader, Ian Reid, an SNP activist in the Borders, has been a regular Wings reader but was taken aback by the language. He had hoped you would have deleted the post, but that hasn’t happened.
He has reported it to the police and given a statement to them.
He has also given us these comments on why the Alba Party should condemn this sort of material and cut its ties to the Wings site.
“Alex Salmond and the leaders of the new party need to separate themselves from that, they need to call it out. They seem to be trying to set themselves up as the moral guardians for women’s rights, which I absolutely support. At the same time, we’ve got somebody posting this on a blog that they clearly associate with and clearly use.
On the one hand, they’re talking about gender-proofing their policies, which is great. On the other hand, they’ve got this where a woman is being described as the devil herself, and where there’s a reference to decapitating the witch having a justifiable end.
That needs to be called out. The party needs to come out and say something about it. The best possible outcome would be that they do condemn it. It would be such a powerful message. Separating themselves from that cesspit would be a very politically astute thing for them. As long as they don’t, it’s colluding with it, it’s condoning it.”
This is for a potential story online and in print.
Would you care to comment?”
And, y’know, of course we would.
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