Wings Over Scotland

Welcome, readers, to what may be the final week of Wings Over Scotland.

We’ve been covering the Scottish Government’s horrific, draconian Hate Crime Act for almost four years now. But until this month, we hadn’t felt directly under threat by it. Wings is – sorry if this comes as a shock to anyone – based in Bath, in England, and we couldn’t see how the Scottish police could come after us.

And then we read this.

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As of last night, the Hate Monster campaign page on the Police Scotland website looks like this:

(Archive version here.)

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I make no apology for what I am about to write because while I’ve said it before, the time to do so is running out.

In a couple of weeks, the Scottish Government’s Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 will come into effect and my world, and that of women up and down Scotland will enter a very dark place.

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We’ve just submitted this Freedom Of Information request to Police Scotland:

I seek the following information with regard to Police Scotland’s programme of materials surrounding the implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021:

(1) What was the total cost of the “Hate Monster” campaign?

(2) Of that, how much was spent on the production of the “Have you met the Hate Monster?” video (below)?

(3) Which pronouns should be used when referring to the Hate Monster in reporting of the campaign? Does the Hate Monster have a sex and/or gender? Were any full-body images of the Hate Monster commissioned, or only its upper body? If the former, please supply any such images held by Police Scotland.

(4) Would the reference on this page to “young men aged 18-30 […] with ideas about white-male entitlement” constitute a possible hate crime or hate incident, under the protected characteristic of race, since it seems likely to stir up hatred of young white men as being disproportionately bigoted and violent on the basis of their colour and lead to their victimisation?

(5) If so, is there a particular third party (such as a sex shop or mushroom farm) to whom this crime/incident should be reported, as when the alleged offender was the police a person might for obvious reasons not “feel comfortable reporting the incident to the police”, as noted on the campaign website?

(6) Which organisations, if any, were employed to provide suitable training to the staff of Third Party Reporting Centres and how much, if anything, were they paid?

(7) Are Third Party Reporting Centres required to accept any report, or can they use their discretion to refuse some reports if they find them objectionable or offensive?

(8) Are there circumstances whereby a report of a hate crime/hate incident could itself constitute a hate crime/hate incident?

Rev. Stuart Campbell
Editor
Wings Over Scotland

We’ll keep you updated with developments as they occur.

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Wings has been regularly pointing out for the last 11-and-a-half years that by far the most reliable indicator of who’s going to win an election isn’t voting-intention polls, but “Who would make the best Prime/First Minister?” polls.

So the SNP should be really really alarmed about this.

Because those are some shocking numbers.

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Everyone’s having a lot of fun with the farcical Hate Crime Act that will finally come into operation in Scotland in just a couple of weeks’ time, fittingly on April Fools’ Day.

Even by the Scottish Government’s abysmally rank standards of legislation over the last decade it’s an embarrassing binfire, with citizens being urged to rock up at fishmongers, mushroom farms and demolished tower blocks to report “hate crimes”.

And you’d have to laugh, except that might be a crime soon too.

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There’s a Calvin And Hobbes cartoon we like to post on social media when someone’s got themselves in such a pickle that they’re just flailing around desperately firing off every slogan, argument or insult they can think of to get themselves out of it.

And so, wearily, to the SNP.

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We’re reluctant to even mention the farcical, embarrassing goings-on in the House Of Commons last night, but the very short version is that the SNP somehow contrived to save Keir Starmer from an embarrassing mass rebellion of Labour MPs.

And in so far as anyone cared about them at all, the people of Gaza were the losers.

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Well, imagine our surprise.

There was very little realistic prospect of any other outcome, particularly in light of the same judge – Lady Haldane – ruling last month that the definition of “woman” was not limited to biological reality.

In doing so she placed it beyond any credible dispute that the Scottish Government’s proposed Gender Recognition Reform Act did indeed impinge on equality law reserved to the UK government, because the rules on who constituted a legal man or woman would have been different in Scotland and England.

But what now for poor beleaguered Humza Yousaf?

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The writing, we mean. Because it’s not until you see it baldly written down in black and white that it really hits you how insane it is.

The SNP has 44 MPs now, and has not managed to enter independence negotiations.

Winning 29 seats would represent a LOSS of 15, or more than a third.

And they’re about to stand up in front of voters and insist that that would somehow compel the UK government to hand over what they’ve been flatly refusing since 2016.

(It’s all pretty academic anyway, obv, as we’ll be amazed if they get double figures.)

The very last shred of credibility has left the building, readers.

The greatest intellectual weakness of the independence movement is its attitude towards Trident, and trying to reason with people about it (whether readers or other independence activists) is consistently one of the most frustrating aspects of writing Wings, because nuclear disarmers and Unionists are equally impervious to logic on the subject.

The UK’s nuclear “deterrent” – or as it was more accurately and memorably described by the former Vulcan nuclear bomber squadron commander Air Commodore Alastair Mackie, “a virility symbol, like a stick-on hairy chest” – is the greatest gift to a future Scottish independence negotiating team imaginable.

The rest of the UK gets a lot of economic and infrastructural benefits from Scotland, like water and energy, but ultimately it’s not massively bothered about those. Water is not yet a critical area and energy can be sourced elsewhere, and in any event Brexit shows us that the UK is more than willing to do itself enormous harm in the service of ideological political goals.

But Trident is a whole different kettle of sweaty underwater men.

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