Wings Over Scotland

While we all wait for the thing we all really want to happen this week, try to pretend that the disastrous and pitiful “indy march and rally” at the weekend never took place, and do our best to ignore the fact that thanks to the weakness of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf our country’s government is infested with lunatic extremist child-abuse apologists, let’s see if we can’t take some time out from all the doom and gloom to offer something constructive.

Not you, Patrick. This is for grown-ups, you can sit it out on your wee high chair.

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The SNP has for quite some time been a hollow shell of a political party. Like the Conservative Party, its members have been systematically stripped of all policy-making powers, with decisions of conference on major issues simply ignored and other policies pushed through (most notably “gender reform”) which have never been put in front of conference for debate at all.

The party is now primarily a vehicle for processing cash and funnelling it to carefully selected and ideologically vetted activists, mostly from the fundamentalist youth wing, who are given well-paid jobs working for MPs and MSPs or parachuted into council seats in return for their unquestioning loyalty to Nicola Sturgeon.

And at this, it must be admitted, the SNP is still a highly effective operation. Which is fortunate, because without UK government money it would be bankrupt.

Above are the Electoral Commission’s donation figures for the third quarter of 2022. They note that 100% of the SNP’s reportable income for that period came from the UK government’s coffers – a trait shared with Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the DUP.

Given that three of those four parties are nationalists committed to removing various constituent parts of the UK, one might almost be tempted to commend Westminster’s generosity. But perhaps it knows exactly what it’s doing.

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All recorded indyref polling on the standard question, from here and here.

The picture (click to enlarge) tells the story more eloquently than we could.

We imagine people may wish to read the Alba Party manifesto.

It can be downloaded by clicking the link above. Had we formed our own party it’s pretty much the manifesto we’d have written, and we especially endorse the gorgeous pooch on the front.

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It’s probably past time that we put this all in one post for easy reference.

Herald journalists with no idea what a story is, start here.

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As we write this, we still wait for Scotland’s hopelessly compromised Lord Advocate to decide whether he, as John Swinney has already done twice, will refuse to obey the will of the Scottish Parliament by releasing data demanded by the Fabiani inquiry.

We suspect he’ll surprise everyone and the information WILL be released, because according to analysis by Craig Murray it’s actually completely useless, and the Scottish Government has undeniably been red-hot when it comes to deluging the committee with vast screeds of junk documentation it hasn’t asked for and doesn’t want.

By coincidence, that same Craig Murray will go on trial in Edinburgh tomorrow for his liberty, for the crime of allegedly telling readers of his blog the truth about the shameful failed conspiracy to imprison Alex Salmond for crimes he didn’t commit – a conspiracy, remarkably, for which nobody has yet been held to account in any way despite the most obvious of grounds for suspicion of perjury, and which the Scottish Government is still frenziedly trying to conceal.

Speaking of liars, we thought it was probably time to update the list below.

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There’s been a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks about the SNP NEC, the rather secretive body that controls the operation of the party (and therefore also in effect the Scottish Government).

Extraordinarily, even if you’re a party member there’s no way to access a full list of the 42-member committee – something which for pretty obvious reasons of basic political transparency and accountability ought to be recorded prominently on the SNP website, let alone available to rank-and-file members.

(Ordinary party members aren’t even permitted to see the minutes of NEC meetings, which are restricted to NEC members.)

So we got our investigating hats on.

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In the light of several news stories today, we thought it’d be useful to keep a record of which organisations and individuals had now publicly expressed strong reservations or outright opposition to the Scottish Government’s alarming and deeply illiberal proposed new Hate Crime Bill, and which had expressed support.

This list will be updated as required.

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Crazy stuff happens when we have a thought.

Buckle in for a bumpy ride if you don’t like pictures of my ugly mug.

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We had an interesting exchange with Scottish Labour MP Paul Sweeney this week on the deathless lie that is the “fiscal transfer” – the £10bn or so that Unionists rather startlingly insist the rest of the UK generously donates to Scotland every year out of the goodness of its heart, just for the pleasure of our company.

As you can see, the debate was of a high intellectual standard.

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We couldn’t help noticing one particular Rory Bremner tweet last night.

And we thought, “Well, WE know someone who predicted those things.”

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It’s probably overdue that we start collecting these together. So here’s Sir John Major on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, explaining why a “once in a lifetime” referendum should in fact be held again because its outcome was determined by something that turned out to be untrue.

Which is, of course, totally different to Scotland being told to vote No in 2014 in order to stay in the European Union, because [REASONS TO FOLLOW AT SOME POINT]

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