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On who to believe 138

Posted on March 14, 2021 by

Nine days ago Wings told you this:

And you’ll never guess what’s happened.

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To the editor of The National 112

Posted on March 14, 2021 by

I’m bemused that The National is now dragging up a nine-day old story for no apparent reason other than to assist the SNP in its determined recent attempts to smear my site.

But I’m extremely disappointed that in doing so it’s chosen to ignore a document I sent to your previous reporter, Emer O’Toole, more than a week ago, proving the accuracy of my leak.

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A matter of timing 409

Posted on March 13, 2021 by

Writing about the Hate Crime Bill in the Herald today, Kevin McKenna summarises in a sentence a point this website has been making for many months.

Because the real question about the SNP’s sudden demented obsession with focusing the public’s attention on its most unpopular policies right before supposedly the most important election in its history isn’t “Why?”

It’s “Why now?”

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The writing on the wall 167

Posted on March 13, 2021 by

The own goal 132

Posted on March 12, 2021 by

Last week we warned you to beware of poll questions containing the formulation “Does [X] make you more or less likely to vote in a certain way?”, and this evening Survation have provided us with an example of why.

According to those numbers, the conflict between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon has caused a staggering 47% of Scots to change their likelihood of voting Yes in an independence referendum. And the bulk of those – 37% – say it’s made them MUCH more or MUCH less likely to vote Yes.

Those numbers break by more than 2 to 1 (23% to 11%) in favour of “much less likely”, which is a margin of change (12 points) bigger than almost any Yes majority that’s ever been recorded in a poll.

In other words, if the poll is to be believed, Nicola Sturgeon’s attempt to neutralise Alex Salmond as a threat to her personal political power has almost definitely turned a Yes vote into a No vote as people have started paying attention to it.

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On a nod and a wink 175

Posted on March 12, 2021 by

Someone forwarded a Freedom Of Information response to us today. It’s frighteningly illustrative of the kind of Scotland that the SNP are bringing into being.

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The fluidity of principles 169

Posted on March 12, 2021 by

We’re assuming, naturally, that the First Minister will be duly suspended from the SNP while these shocking allegations are fully investigated, just like Gareth Wardell, Denise Findlay, Neale Hanvey, Mark McDonald, Michelle Thomson, Neil Hay, etc etc etc were.

We’re not, of course. And nor should she be, because “shared a platform with” is the ugly ginger stepchild of fake-outrage cancel culture – lower on the smear scale even than “liked a tweet by” or “linked an article by someone who completely separately had an unfashionable opinion on a completely different subject several years ago”. It’s absolute guff punted only by scumbags.

Nevertheless, the uncomfortable fact is that those are precisely the crimes for which other people WERE suspended and/or ostracised from the party, and we can’t help wishing the SNP’s flagrant hypocrisy about it was just a little bit less obvious and less arrogantly blatant, so that it wasn’t quite so painfully offensive to any decent person, and so that we weren’t having to fight quite so hard to keep believing in independence when we see the grim state of the Scotland that’s taking shape before our eyes.

But hey, we are where we are.

The Wrecking Crew 937

Posted on March 10, 2021 by

We took the day off today because we didn’t trust ourselves to watch the Hate Crime Bill debate without doing something violent. By all accounts it was the smart call.

While the debate overran and will conclude with a vote tomorrow, there’s no suspense about the outcome. With the backing of the snivelling, hateful, misogynist Greens (one female MSP out of six, entirely by choice), the bill will pass and Scotland will become a country where almost anything you say could be a hate crime.

The bill is designed to terrify normal people into silence about almost any subject, as an automatic habit. Even in your own home you won’t be safe from denunciation.

And while an amendment by Adam Tomkins of the Scottish Tories – it has come to the stage, readers, where we’re reduced to needing the Tories to try to save us from the SNP – should help a lot of people escape being convicted, that’s not even the point. Malicious, vexatious complaints will have put them through months of worry and fear, effectively punishing them even though they’re innocent, and most people – especially women – will simply hold their tongue to avoid the trauma.

For the last couple of years this site has been critical of the SNP’s failure to make any sort of progress on independence. But this is far, far worse even than that. Because if they somehow miraculously achieved independence tomorrow, we’d be afraid to live in the Scotland they’re creating.

Our country doesn’t have a SINGLE political party remotely fit for government. Voters in May face a choice between the evil, the stupid, and the evil and stupid. And they can’t even be angry about it, because even the politest anger is now a hate crime.

We wish we had a constructive course of action to suggest to you, folks. But we don’t, because democracy has failed you. There is no way you can vote that will fix the ruins the SNP have made of Scotland. We cannot see a way forward. It is becoming nearly impossible to evade the conclusion that all is lost. Nicola Sturgeon has destroyed it.

The Great Ribbon Terror 628

Posted on March 09, 2021 by

When we suggested yesterday that the SNP was turning into New Labour, we didn’t expect them to go to quite so much trouble to provide us with a timely illustration.

In happier times, almost seven years ago, a united and focused Yes movement had a bit of fun at the expense of Labour MP Ian Murray when he had a huge pearl-clutching fainting fit over someone putting a couple of stickers on his constituency office.

Record-scratch and jump-cut to the 2021 SNP.

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The House Of Secrets 393

Posted on March 08, 2021 by

We’re sure most alert readers will by now have seen the purported “leak” of the actual results of the SNP’s mystery-shrouded regional list selections. While the figures are highly believable, we haven’t yet been able to obtain any corroboration for them being anything other than a plausible hoax.

The SNP has of course denied them, but they also denied our recent leak from the party’s draft manifesto and we know for sure that that was real. The trouble with lying all the time is that nobody believes you even if you occasionally tell the the truth.

Of course, there would be an easy way to prove the numbers were a fake – release the real ones, which is in any case the most fundamental element of transparency in a democratic election. And whatever they are could hardly be any more embarrassing than the rumours, which have candidates topping the list (and likely to get seats) on a shocking 2.4% of the vote.

Heavens, even Annie Wells managed 8.6%.

But there’s a much more important reason the SNP will never release the real results.

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Some things stay the same 232

Posted on March 07, 2021 by

An extraordinary find by alert reader Ian Brotherhood in the archives.

(Click to enlarge.)

The paragraph at top right is a particular eye-catcher.

Blood in the water 256

Posted on March 07, 2021 by

It brings us genuinely no pleasure at all to report that events in Scottish politics are panning out exactly the way we’ve been telling you they would for nearly two years.

Because this is the worst of all possible worlds.

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    • Alan Scott on Spot The Problem: “It’s quite simple you vote them out. If you don’t then the responsibility is yours. Unfortunately the very clever system…Aug 28, 00:38
    • Saffron Robe on Spot The Problem: “In the absence of any meaningful separation of powers, it would seem that only a constitutional crisis can bring about…Aug 28, 00:26
    • Rob on Spot The Problem: “Do you know, I am pretty sick of the “colonists” are to blame for everything, the union was illegal, the…Aug 27, 23:45
    • Dan on Spot The Problem: “Desperate stuff from the site prick there as he tries to deny, ignore and gloss over the massive influence and…Aug 27, 23:03
    • robertkknight on Spot The Problem: “Red… “But surely there must be at least one Labour, Liberal, Reform or Tory MSP who isn’t part of the…Aug 27, 22:24
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Ah, James, how I envy you. You will go to your final rest blissfully convinced that one day, Scots will…Aug 27, 22:11
    • 100%Yes on Spot The Problem: “The National doesn’t make good reading for people wanting Independence or the SNP membership. It states “SNP members’ fury as…Aug 27, 22:05
    • James on Spot The Problem: “LOL.Aug 27, 21:57
    • Hatey McHateface on Spot The Problem: ““there is no way the pro-union MSM or “Newspapers” will publish the kind of journalism you get on Wings” The…Aug 27, 21:54
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Spot The Problem: “LAWYERING WITHOUT LAW (1 May 2026) “What Does Legal Authoritarianism Look Like?” www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdG5J4saY3AAug 27, 21:53
    • James on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Jappy again; “Scotland’s real riches do lie in energy. The country exports 24% of its surplus electricity south of the…Aug 27, 21:48
    • Spartan 117 on Spot The Problem: “Dan & Robert – I can’t disagree with anything in your posts. All good points.Aug 27, 21:29
    • Hatey McHateface on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “The examples provided by all those formerly colonised shitholes suggest your claim doesn’t universally apply. As does the hundreds of…Aug 27, 21:25
    • James Barr Gardner on Spot The Problem: “https://www.google.com/url?esrc=s&q=&rct=j&sa=U&url=https://handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/fcg6&ved=2ahUKEwjtoueTz8GWAxWcWUEAHesdBM4QFnoECAUQAg&usg=AOvVaw0Uq372Zk8zIhKKGuz2zL81 Remember the SNP are a COMPANY !Aug 27, 21:16
    • Hatey McHateface on Spot The Problem: ““Certainly makes you think about ” drill baby drill “” All those folks with gas or oil heating, or petrol…Aug 27, 21:11
    • gm on Spot The Problem: “I am no longer living in hope.Aug 27, 21:03
    • robertkknight on Spot The Problem: “Spartan… Well, if it was good enough for Burgess, Maclean and Philby to piss off to Moscow, then why not…Aug 27, 20:57
    • Dan on Spot The Problem: “Spartan 117 says: at 6:13 pm “A good analogy, except for the unavoidable fact that it’s our own fellow Scots…Aug 27, 20:48
    • Hatey McHateface on Spot The Problem: “C’moan, Marie! Spill the beans. Dinna be leaving us hanging. If they believed you were important enough to “neutralise” they…Aug 27, 20:46
    • Saffron Robe on You’ll Have Had Your Supper: “Scotland will never flourish under the Union because it is an enforced dependency; a suppression of natural development. A country…Aug 27, 20:30
    • willie on Spot The Problem: “To change the dial a tad I’ve just been watching the horrendous pictures of the Himalaya floods arising from melting…Aug 27, 20:26
    • gm on Spot The Problem: “This thing we call a parliament needs to be closed down. It will deny the political class in Scotland and…Aug 27, 20:25
    • Spartan 117 on Spot The Problem: “Robert @ 6:33pm I would not be surprised if the M25 omniclusterfuckpermashambles was involved in some way, even if they…Aug 27, 20:19
    • Marie on Spot The Problem: “ALL of them are “crooks” Red. Any budding politician with courage or conviction is dispensed with long before the candidate…Aug 27, 20:16
    • Spartan 117 on Spot The Problem: ““You’re on speed, right?” Me or Alf? Can’t speak for the Prof but for me it’s worse. I’m autistic…Aug 27, 20:15
    • Spartan 117 on Spot The Problem: “A good post Red, summing up why things are the way they are. It’s not “Colonialism” or “They Inglish” (by…Aug 27, 20:14
    • Hatey McHateface on Spot The Problem: “Goalposts shifted again. So the Scottish Government could dismiss the Lord Advocate. But the Scottish Government would just appoint a…Aug 27, 19:53
    • Northcode on Spot The Problem: “The Lord Advocate is also a government minister and serves as the principal legal adviser to the Scottish Government and…Aug 27, 19:37
    • Hatey McHateface on Spot The Problem: “That’s a wonderful gift you have there, Bob. Stamp your foot, wrinkle your nose, and you can transport yourself backwards…Aug 27, 19:29
    • Red on Spot The Problem: “If you didn’t laugh you’d cry Hayley 🙂Aug 27, 19:22
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