Wings Over Scotland

We had to go and check for ourselves to make sure this really happened.

But it did.

Read the rest of this entry →

When you’ve been watching Scotland playing football for 50 years of your life, you become accustomed to disappointment. You expect disappointment. Anything better than disappointment becomes a bonus.

You also come to expect injustice, like last night’s inexplicable failure of VAR – which has unfailingly spotted micro-infringements like a player’s toenail being offside – to even take a look at a nailed-on stonewall penalty in the last minutes of the game.

But because you’re so used to these things, you’re not expecting rage.

Read the rest of this entry →

Holiday Boy has of course chosen the general election campaign to spend the next three weeks feeding stray cats somewhere sunny, so here’s a cartoon by the brilliant webcomicname that summarises the Baillie Gifford story for anyone joining us late.

Because, y’know, idiots.

We suppose we should talk about the general election for a bit.

It’s going to be awful. Will that do?

Read the rest of this entry →

The National have buried this pretty quickly in understandable embarrassment:

Because some things are just a little TOO on-the-nose for comfort.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s probably as good an illustration of the madness currently engulfing Scottish politics as anything that the most unusual suspect, Anas Sarwar, may have just – temporarily at least – saved Humza Yousaf’s job.

And although our head hurts already, we’ll try to explain why.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Cass Review into gender medicine, which has been almost six long years in the making, was finally published this morning, and despite the fears of some – including us – that it was going to be watered down, it’s turned out to be an absolutely explosive document even on a quick skim. (It’s 388 pages long.)

The most damning aspect, though, is almost certainly this one:

Those quotes annihilate any concept of an “innocent good intentions” defence for the gender clinics. Because if you genuinely believe that you’re doing good, you don’t try to bury all the evidence.

Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

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

(Archive version here.)

Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Read the rest of this entry →