Even by the embarrassing standards of The National, the gulf between this morning’s blaring front-page splash and the weak, watery weasel words in the actual article is a chasm so wide and so yawning (in every sense of that word) that it would put the epic planetary scar of Mars’ Valles Marineris to shame.
Coupled with a feebly underwhelming Programme For Government (in which the main policy was the re-abolition of peak rail fares just months after the SNP insisted such a move was unaffordable, with no clue as to where the money had suddenly been found) and a pitiful list of candidates for next year’s Holyrood election featuring the likes of Sally “all aboard the gravy bus!” Donald, Kaukab “DECAPITATE TERFS” Stewart, Kirsten “DECAPITATE TERFS” Oswald, Alison “DECAPITATE TERFS” Thewliss and Alyn “throw anyone who doesn’t want to DECAPITATE TERFS out of the SNP” Smith, the story was an abject vision of a bleak future for independence.
The less said about the Scottish Government’s toe-curlingly embarrassing “summit” last week, the sooner we can all pretend it never happened. We’ve got little to add to the withering assessments of Robin McAlpine and Kevin McKenna and just about everyone else who’s bothered covering this pathetic waste of everyone involved’s time. (Not that the time of most of these useless quangocrats was worth anything anyway.)
We take a moment only to note something remarkable: the closest Scottish Labour’s hapless branch manager Anas Sarwar has ever come to understanding anything.
Yesterday the Scottish media gave Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman what she’s never willingly given anyone else – a platform on which to make her case.
Most did a very poor job challenging her on her outrageous comments about the Supreme Court, with BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime show being an especially wretched example of allowing the interviewee to ignore every question and then just ramble on endlessly about something else entirely, but LBC’s Gina Davidson was on top of her brief and put all the points that reasonable people wanted to be made, while giving Chapman ample time to answer uninterrupted.
Let’s break down how that went, with the help of our handy Bullshit Buzzer.
At the weekend, Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman was filmed applauding as a notoriously unhinged transactivist ranted through a megaphone to a small and almost exclusively male crowd of protestors about how he was going to openly break the law by continuing to use women’s public toilets, and addressing JK Rowling with the words “We should all take a shite on you, you heinous creeping old bitch”.
At another protest, Chapman herself asserted that the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on the correct interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 was motivated by not by a solemn consideration of the law or by the arguments of counsel who appeared before it, but by “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”.
Chapman is – incredibly – Deputy Convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament, and as such her comments sparked a storm of wholly justified outrage over her flagrant breach not only of Parliamentary rules but also of the law – specifically the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008, which requires all MSPs to uphold the independence of the judiciary.
Regular readers of Wings won’t need any reminding that Dani Garavelli of the Herald is, among some very stiff competition, one of the most contemptible pieces of nightsoil currently operating in the Scottish media.
But if you’re new here, we can give you a quick illustration.
If the sneering piety of that opening paragraph made you feel a little revolted, a bit angry and somewhat nauseous, then congratulations, because that means you’re still something minimally approximating to a decent human being. But unfortunately it gets a lot worse from there.
Scottish Greens candidate and transactivist Matt “Ellie” Gomersall, with whom Wings readers will be familiar, appeared on the Jeremy Vine show today and blundered straight into an elephant trap a myopic mole could have seen coming on a foggy night.
Having just embarked on a diatribe in which he dismissed as “ridiculous” the idea that predatory men would ever pretend to be transwomen to gain access to vulnerable women, Vine asked him about Adam “Isla Bryson” Graham, the convicted double rapist that even hapless Humza Yousaf felt able to confidently assert was “at it”.
Having just painted himself into a corner, Gomersall was then embarrassingly unable to disown Bryson as a “real” transwoman, thereby implicitly admitting that transwomen do indeed present a danger to women in exactly the same way that predatory men do, and torpedoing his entire core point that it was unfair to “discriminate” against them in exactly the same way single-sex spaces discriminate against non-trans men.
(Outrageously, earlier in the speech he’d tried to claim that it was only natural that some transwomen would be sex offenders because some biological women were.)
It’s tempting to believe that Gomersall was demonstrating an intellectual vacuum by making such vacuously cretinous arguments and failing to spot even the most obvious pitfalls in them, but the truth is far worse. Gomersall, and people like him, know that they’re lying (which is why they always try to silence opponents), but they lack the moral courage to face up to the fact that the inevitable price of their lies is vulnerable women being raped by what he revoltingly waves away as “fringe cases”.
All rapists are fringe cases. 95% of men would never dream of raping anyone. But we discriminate against ALL men in women’s spaces because you can’t tell which ones are rapists by looking. Men like “Ellie” Gomersall, though, think that the price of a few women being raped is worth paying to validate their delusions and fetishes (in his case, the creepy fetish of skinwalking as his pretty sister), and they don’t even have the shred of decency to bother coming up with a coherent line of bullshit to cover it.
We’ll be honest, readers, we gasped out loud when we saw this.
That such a basic, fundamental truth of human existence should ever be front page news with the capacity to shock 100,000 years after we invented language is a sign of just how insane our world has become since 2015.
But magnificent as it is, it’s not even today’s BEST front cover.
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Snowflake Patrol: “Stuart, your valid remark regarding Mussolini seems I think not widely known. I add support below from Dutch philosopher Herman…” Aug 9, 12:53
Ian on The Last Marble: “Forbes as a marble? JFC.” Aug 9, 12:41
Mark Beggan on The Last Marble: “Powerful, horrific and an accurate portrayal of the sickness of Sturgeon.” Aug 9, 12:12
TURABDIN on The Last Marble: “ARE PEOPLE TIRED OF POLITICIANS AND THEIR BRAND OF POLITICS? Are they bored with the burlesque that modern democracy has…” Aug 9, 12:01
Anthem on The Last Marble: “She is a liar. I doubt anyone with any sense believes a word of that drivel! Looking forward to seeing…” Aug 9, 11:58
The Flying Iron of Doom on The Last Marble: ““issue: strikethrough text appears as ? characters” Are you sure about that? 🙂” Aug 9, 11:22
Alf Baird on Snowflake Patrol: “As an academic you are aware that I prefer to rely on postcolonial theory, which explains colonial procedures built upon…” Aug 9, 11:16
Callum on The Last Marble: “Funny how Sturgeon could not remember a thing during the Salmond inquiry but remembers every small detail in her biography.” Aug 9, 11:07
Onlooker on The Last Marble: “Mental torture? Now she knows how Alex Salmond felt when she and her wee high school prefect scum cabal tried…” Aug 9, 11:06
James Cheyne on Snowflake Patrol: “Having read the Scottish law Society comments years ago, it was interesting to read that just because Westminster altered the…” Aug 9, 10:54
aLurker on The Last Marble: “issue: strikethrough text appears as ? characters” Aug 9, 10:31
aLurker on The Last Marble: ““Nicola Sturgeon: ‘I have never considered my sexuality to be binary'” https://archive.is/g7hZI “I retain both faith in and respect for…” Aug 9, 10:29
willie on The Last Marble: “Nae baws, nae stones, nae marbles just a killer clown in a rainbow jersey and a yellow set of SNP…” Aug 9, 10:26
Lorn on Snowflake Patrol: “The whole woke bandwagon needs to be rooted out of public life, as do these women’s and gender studies in…” Aug 9, 10:04
agent x on Snowflake Patrol: “https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE2135” Aug 9, 09:58
Onlooker on The Last Marble: “Not ‘binary’ – gay. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nicola-sturgeon-never-considered-sexuality-175105366.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cDovL20uZmFjZWJvb2suY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMS_jftA7-NMQgGdCxz-4s9FErgGpH8lkb7In5hWoMTzBw1pO97T17O4uFnEJ2loIaaNoHiXmBDCxSDUltt9Y36-ZIrkl8z0DkekI5nKWZUzuGBUMHxjYQTPnn4mPbumxfpcqkO22B7Z9LUxyWMnM5tf1QfULW5BB6dlWHQcdqSY” Aug 9, 09:44
Hatey McHateface on Snowflake Patrol: “If you’re greetin intae yer dram, mind nae to dilute it too much.” Aug 9, 09:37
Hatey McHateface on Snowflake Patrol: “Du Bois These new names of yours keep coming out of the woods 🙂 Why not face facts, Alf. Fascist…” Aug 9, 09:22
Marie on Snowflake Patrol: “I don’t believe ANYTHING Sturgeon says or writes.” Aug 9, 08:30
And Spouse on The Last Marble: “Abs love it. Where do you get your ideas?” Aug 9, 08:23
Effijy on The Last Marble: “The dead cat bounce! Who knew Angus Robertson had such large feet.” Aug 9, 07:48
Karen on The Last Marble: “Perfect, as always!” Aug 9, 07:46
duncanio on Snowflake Patrol: “Bone fide. Check the link … I’ve only selected a sample.” Aug 9, 07:37
duncanio on The Last Marble: “Marbleous and Marbleless!” Aug 9, 07:33
Aidan on Snowflake Patrol: “These petitions get no traction because they are a complete waste of time. Nobody serious thinks that incorporating the ICCPR…” Aug 9, 07:33
Northcode on Snowflake Patrol: “The despair has come ower me… it will pass – but until it does, there’s this: We are the Scots.…” Aug 9, 07:24
Alf Baird on Snowflake Patrol: “Colonialism is “at root fascism” and always involves “hateful racism” (Cesaire) no matter who it is inflicted on. As Du…” Aug 9, 07:22
Willie on Snowflake Patrol: “Morning all. Herewith a statement that should gladden everyone’s hearts this morning. Scottish Labour Finance spokesperson Michael Marra said “Labour…” Aug 9, 07:18
Mark Beggan on Snowflake Patrol: “Falsch, falsch, falsch.” Aug 9, 03:12
Young Lochinvar on The Churn: “AL Sorry, have to disagree. I watched STVs Scotland Tonight programme a few years back and the shows panelist’s ripped…” Aug 9, 01:47