Wings Over Scotland

The turnout at the “independence march and rally” yesterday was so abysmally poor that it seems almost unfair to pick on any of the scores of SNP elected representatives who didn’t bother to show up.

But dear old Cosy Feet Pete Wishart had the most chef’s-kiss excuse of all.

The reason he didn’t fancy getting his wee Billy Whizz quiff blown about a chilly Calton Hill was that he had important business “taking on the far right” – who were of course nowhere to be seen – with “half a million” (50,000) of his British besties, a convenient short Tube ride away from his London residence, at a pretty openly anti-Semitic protest called, with a double layer of delicious comedic value… UK Together.

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If events in Edinburgh today are anything to go by – when a march and rally announced with great fanfare seven months ago, backed by both the “independence” parties in the Scottish Parliament and featuring the First Minister as main speaker, attracted perhaps 1,500 people at the most to Calton Hill on a bright and sunny day – the independence movement faces an imminent final apocalypse.

So here’s how to prepare yourself for when the SNP win a landslide with 35%, Keir Starmer says “So what?” and then a deathly silence descends for another five years.

Even Kelly Given and Iona Fyfe didn’t show up for this one. That’s how bad it is.

The last faint hope of any remotely positive or at least interesting outcome of May’s election just left the building.

It wasn’t MUCH of a hope, and it’s absolutely no surprise in the wake of the comically shambolic, belief-defyingly inept farce that has been the birth of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s fringe-of-the fringe party, but all the same its extinguishing means the next two months will be even more of a waste of time than they looked like being.

Frankly, readers, we may as well not bother having an election at all.

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Posted without comment.

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A fascinating line from the BBC this evening:

The number of parties who got MSPs elected at the last election is… five. (Though in fairness there are now six, Reform having a single MSP after Graham Simpson defected from the Tories. The Lib Dems are even outnumbered by independents, of whom there are seven.)

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This was just two months ago. (Longer version here.)

And we’ll bet you anything you like he’s already wishing he hadn’t said it.

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Sorry, readers, we’ve been too busy boiling with rage at revolting, cretinous Americans for the last few days to trust ourselves with writing a full-length article, but we’ve just about calmed down enough in time for this month’s polling analysis.

Which is handy, because today is also the day of the Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester (fun fact: a seat we’d very likely have lived in ourselves if not for Osama bin Laden, but that’s another story), and that throws up some interesting parallels.

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There is a not particularly funny joke that is sometimes told in legal circles about why a law student failed to finish his coursework – because he had no conviction. With rare exceptions lawyers aren’t renowned for their sense of humour but I can’t help thinking someone, at the highest levels of our justice system, is having a right laugh at my expense and those who have loyally supported me over the past six years.

I’m talking about the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC – a sitting member of the Scottish Government’s cabinet who was nominated by Nicola Sturgeon to that post in 2021, five months after I was acquitted.

For those unfamiliar with my case, I offer this brief summary. In March 2020 I made a short video on my mobile phone that was two minutes and thirty eight seconds in length. I hadn’t planned to make the video when I went out for a walk in a field near my home. But I was annoyed and wanted to articulate that annoyance, although at the time I recorded it I wasn’t intending for it to go much further.

Later that night, just before turning in, I uploaded it to my YouTube channel on a closed, unlisted link and then posted that link to my Twitter account that, at the time, had a modest 1000 or so followers. I then forgot about it.

Little did I know that short mobile phone video would result in me facing initially a criminal trial, then a five year legal battle in the highest civil court in Scotland and now, most likely, an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

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So on the one hand there’s obviously very little point paying attention to the SNP’s regional list candidates for May’s Holyrood election, because as this website has comprehensively demonstrated over recent months, the chances of the SNP having any list MSPs elected are remote.

However, nothing is impossible, so let’s take a look at the B team, which also serves as a guide to the party’s upcoming talent taking its first steps towards the gravy bus.

Well, that was even grimmer than expected.

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Cost of keeping vital rape crisis services in Glasgow operating: £500,000.

Amount of money wasted by the Scottish Government fighting and losing court cases to try to remove women’s rights: £1.14 million.

Angry yet?

As the six-year fight for justice for Alex Salmond continues, we thought you might like to see this clip from this morning’s Mike Graham Show, interviewing Paul McManus, the businessman and drummer in Glasgow rock band Gun who’s stepped up to fund the Salmond family’s case against the Scottish Government despite disagreeing with much of what Alex stood for politically.

We take our (hi-)hats off to him.

A play in three acts:

And you thought ours were spineless.

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