It really is quite the remarkable feat of timing that concerted mass reporting by SNP activists managed to get the Wings Twitter account (and several others) closed down this week of all weeks, isn’t it?
They’re also trying to get my personal account banned, and reporting scores of others, in an open attempt to purge any sort of dissenting opinions from public dialogue at exactly the same time as opening a “consultation” whose outcome has already been predetermined, and which in another remarkable coincidence is due to close just a few days into the four weeks scheduled for the Alex Salmond trial.
As some alert readers have already noticed, our Twitter account has been suspended again, three and a bit years after the last time. The ban is supposedly permanent. To save a lot of repeated explaining in emails and direct messages, a brief record of the pertinent events follows.
One week out from a general election, the SNP are busy purging the “problematic”, as seen in this footage captured by a terrified bystander tonight somewhere in Fife.
The latest victim of the Waffen YSI, the party’s ultra-pious “woke” youth battalion, is Denise Findlay, a recently-elected member of the party’s Conduct Committee. She was targeted because she’s a gender-critical feminist opposed to the transgender cult which exerts a wildly disproportionate influence in the SNP upper echelons, supported enthusiastically by the First Minister.
She follows on the heels of Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath candidate Neale Hanvey, who last week was suspended from the party – without even a hearing – on a ludicrously trumped-up charge of “anti-Semitism” dredged up by SNP woke youth, namely that three-and-a-half years ago he shared an article (written by someone else) about billionaire financier George Soros and money-laundering, which at no point mentioned either Israel or Jewish people, even obliquely.
Hanvey, like Findlay, was brought down not by political opponents or the media but by members of his own party, as punishment for signing the SNP Women’s Pledge.
You probably haven’t heard of me. I’m a notoriously “vile” political blogger who’s said a few pretty mean things on social media about politicians in the last eight years. But perhaps that’s partly because I’m a grumpy old white guy who hasn’t had the benefit of your commendable programme aimed at “building the fairer, kinder & more tolerant world the late Jo Cox MP believed in”.
As we write this, voting has just ended to elect the membership of a number of key SNP internal bodies, including the Member Conduct Committee which has the power to discipline members and even expel them from the party.
This year has seen a concerted attempt by a small but active faction within the SNP, led by the Young Scots for Independence and Out For Indy groups, to flood the MCC (which in normal times struggles to fill its ranks) with officers aggressively committed to transgender ideology, with the openly-declared intent of purging “gender-critical” women from all party candidate lists and ensuring that anyone seeking to protect women’s sex-based rights can be expunged for “transphobia”.
(An attempt to deselect Joanna Cherry on such grounds failed earlier this year, but with control of the MCC the faction could pretty much dump anyone it wanted to.)
The matter has not escaped the attention of the independence-hostile media.
We avoided discussing the committee elections while voting was taking place because it’s not our business to interfere in the internal affairs of the SNP, and also because a certain element of the party has been having a massive tantrum over some poll results we published last week and it might have ended up being counter-productive.
But make no mistake – the outcome of these elections will have a huge impact on both the SNP’s electoral fortunes and the chances of securing independence. We’re about to find out, in other words, how screwed we are.
Our latest Panelbase poll, conducted exclusively among SNP voters, has proven to be the most controversial we’ve ever done. So let’s see if we can get things back onto some nice safe ground: the transgender debate. (“Oh no!” – everyone)
Pictured above, front right, at the recent Dundee Pride is Shirley-Anne Somerville, the cabinet minister in charge of the second public “consultation” being held on the Scottish Government’s transgender policy. Somerville told the event that regardless of the consultation’s outcome she planned to press ahead with the “self-ID” proposals anyway, and that “trans women are women and trans men are men”. She’s almost literally nailed her colours to the mast in advance of the results – she’s wearing a jumper in the blue, pink and white horizontal stripes of the transgender flag.
And the issue of whether people with penises should be allowed to declare themselves women purely on their own say-so and access all female-only spaces unchallenged is one that’s currently tearing the SNP in two.
I went for a very long walk before writing this post, because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing it in the heat of anger. But 8.5 miles and 18,753 steps later it still needs to be said and there’s no getting out of it, so batten down the hatches, folks.
Last night SNP MP Mhairi Black tweeted what may be the most ill-advised, destructive, offensive, repellent and just downright idiotic thing that I’ve ever seen an elected SNP member do. (Maybe not just the SNP.)
The video, bizarrely made for the amusement of readers of comedy lad-mag website Joe.co.uk, sees Black reading out a series of supposedly “transphobic” and “mean” tweets – almost all from women and only two of which were in any way rude – and reacting to them with a toxic mixture of arrogant condescension, mockery and insults, alongside a tirade of flatly wrong and endlessly-debunked myths.
It concludes with the smirking, sniggering suggestion that women, including survivors of male violence, who’ve expressed their serious concerns over reforms to the Gender Recognition Act – concerns shared by the overwhelming majority of women, and of the population as a whole – are “Jeremy Hunts”, a piece of rhyming slang that doesn’t need any translation.
The video pretty much speaks for itself, unfortunately, but let’s look at some highlights.
The modern world is an ideological minefield, readers, and is increasingly almost as dangerous as a real one. Having the wrong opinions about things can easily get you fired, ostracised from polite society, arrested or beaten up, and nowhere is this more the case than in the sphere of gender politics.
The extremely brave intersex woman Claire Graham (aka @MRKHvoice on Twitter, her latest account after a series of arbitrary bannings for upsetting the wrong people with statements of biological fact) recently compiled a list of things which are now deemed “transphobic” by trans activists, and given the transience and vulnerability of anything published on Twitter, we thought it was a good idea to preserve it here, with some additions of our own and from others.
[EDIT 9 Dec 2019: Claire has of course now been permanently banned and her original list deleted by Twitter.]
We’ve previously noted how alarmingly this sort of extremist, intolerant and openly violent male bullying in the guise of progressive political correctness has been used in recent months to silence all sorts of people (mainly but not exclusively feminists).
Politicians, police and numerous other authorities in both Scotland and the UK have been complicit – whether intentionally or not – in enabling a terrifying “woke” culture of censorship and intimidation in which the wishes of the vast majority of the public are about to be simply ridden roughshod over, resulting in the creation of laws which could have (and are already having) absolutely horrific consequences.
Anyone raising issues, however, is liable to find themselves at the centre of a vicious storm of outrage, abuse or worse. So if you’re concerned about the imminent abolition of sex but want to stay out of trouble, here’s the stuff you need to avoid.
Today is International Women’s Day, and we wouldn’t normally pay much attention to that fact because this is a Scottish politics website, not a feminist one. But the Scottish Government is currently putting itself at odds with women in a way it would have been hard to imagine when Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, and since what Wings does specialise in is hard data – and at the request of a lot of women – we thought it was worth putting some solid numbers on a few things in our latest poll.
The phrase “the Labour Party has gotten itself into a catastrophic mess on [X]” is a sentence you can complete with almost any subject these days, whether it’s Brexit or anti-Semitism or anti-Asian racism or factionalism or Venezuela or just about anything else under the sun, so it should be no surprise that its gender policy is no different.
The party’s stance regarding all-women shortlists is now that men can be on them, so long as they say they’re women, with no questions asked, except when Labour decide arbitrarily that they aren’t really women at all because they’re obviously really men, except for all the other occasions when they’re obviously really men.
Which seemed like a timely moment for some more new poll data.
On a number of previous occasions we’ve highlighted the weird discrepancy between the undivided loathing of the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act in the Scottish media and the Act’s overwhelming popularity with the Scottish public.
You will struggle to ever hear a voice anywhere in the media in favour of it, yet there has never been a law in the history of the Holyrood parliament that is as universally backed by the electorate as the OBFA. Support for it crosses party lines, unites men and women, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, Yes voters and No voters, Celtic fans and “Rangers” fans, football lovers and football haters, and pretty much any other groups you can think of.
Despite their own voters wanting to retain it, however, the combined opposition parties may well succeed in having the Act repealed this year, for reasons of their own that we can’t begin to rationally explain.
Meanwhile, every party at Holyrood – this time including the SNP – looks as though they may be preparing to come together and implement the LEAST-wanted legislation (in terms of public opinion) that the Parliament will have ever seen.
Geri on Looking up at the stars: “They’ve been referred to as Lib Dumbs for over a decade at least. Remember the tuition fee fiasco where the…” Mar 11, 09:41
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “The so called Scottish Elections are a farce, The devolved governance sent to Scotland under the laws of the England…” Mar 11, 09:30
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “One day the penny will drop, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England will wake up to the historical records and realise…” Mar 11, 09:23
James Che on Looking up at the stars: “Peter McAvoy, English votes for English laws, The Anglo- Irish Agreement in 1800, [ Scotland not Included ] set up…” Mar 11, 09:13
Sven on Looking up at the stars: “Did anyone ever seriously doubt that the LDs, at any level, in any constituency would sell out to anyone for…” Mar 11, 08:46
Aidan on Looking up at the stars: ““Lib Dumb” – you’re so witty and clever James, will you be at the fringe this year? Northcode has told…” Mar 11, 06:14
Young Lochinvar on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “HMcH @ 4.06 You have to be joking “old boy”! Scotchland Office seat warmers like yerself would probably be exempt…” Mar 11, 05:03
James Barr Gardner on Looking up at the stars: “Bring back Wee Willie Rennie, he was funnier…….” Mar 11, 02:46
Peter McAvoy on Looking up at the stars: “Will they cooperate to oppose the planned scrapping of jury trials in England and Wales,or remind Westminster of how these…” Mar 11, 01:38
Cynicus on Looking up at the stars: “Geri says: 10 March, 2026 at 9:45 pm “I dunno how he has the nerve to even collect a salary…” Mar 11, 01:12
Cynicus on Looking up at the stars: “Scot Finlayson says: 10 March, 2026 at 9:18 pm, `A carpetbagger is a derogatory name term for an outsider….. ..It…” Mar 11, 00:54
James on Looking up at the stars: “There’s a dark underbelly in the Lib Dumb movement. “Movement” being the operative word. Speaking of which – where’s Adrian…” Mar 10, 23:12
Geri on Looking up at the stars: “I dunno how he has the nerve to even collect a salary after he said Scotland shouldn’t be allowed to…” Mar 10, 21:45
Iain More on Looking up at the stars: “I have nothing to add to what has been said already although to refer to him as a wank stain…” Mar 10, 21:25
Scot Finlayson on Looking up at the stars: “Hamilton is an English carpetbagger, `A carpetbagger is a derogatory term for an outsider—historically a Northerner in the post-Civil War…” Mar 10, 21:18
Lorncal on Looking up at the stars: “Dear Lord, that man never learns, does he? We’re doing it for you, Anas! If I were Anas Sarwar, I’d…” Mar 10, 20:38
Geri on Looking up at the stars: “It’ll dawn on the electorate one day that they’re really all just one big party.” Mar 10, 20:34
ScotsCanuck on Looking up at the stars: “….. I can only say of Coal-scuttle, he is the personification of the saying “you can’t fix stoopid”.” Mar 10, 20:14
100%Yes on Looking up at the stars: “What would I rather have Lib-Dem leader resign or the SNP out on their ear, good bye SNP hopefully for…” Mar 10, 20:05
Morgatron on Looking up at the stars: “He is a useless wank stain to be honest. His friend Anas – surley thats a spelling mistake!” Mar 10, 20:05
Geri on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “‘You cling to this like mamas titty’ Says the monarchist who clings to something out the dark ages. Where men…” Mar 10, 20:03
Geri on Scotland’s Most Frightened: ““which apparently democratically elected its latest leader, in a process that with no preparation lasted a whole week, and lead…” Mar 10, 19:46
Alf Baird on Scotland’s Most Frightened: ““withdraw from the Union” There is no need to withdraw from something that does not exist. Scotland was annexed, according…” Mar 10, 19:30
Alf Baird on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “On the contrary, in the paternalist colonial society it is the colonized native as dependent ‘child’ who clings to the…” Mar 10, 19:18
sarah on Looking up at the stars: “I think he’s looking for a way out of the “leadership” – or does the extra pay mean he actually…” Mar 10, 19:05
100%Yes on Scotland’s Most Frightened: “There’s bigger fish to fry than indulge into to the mind of someone who doesn’t know from one day to…” Mar 10, 18:34
