As a lifelong political geek and former SNP and Alba Party member, I’ve spent years supporting Scotland’s independence movement. However, over the last few years, I’ve watched the campaign (as opposed to support for independence) wither away. Being a Scottish nationalist has become increasingly disheartening, like watching someone you love succumb to a slow, debilitating illness. In frustration, I switched off from my homeland and turned my focus to the drama of US politics.
Over the last three years I immersed myself in it, watching both left and right-wing outlets. I became so hooked and invested that I jumped on a plane to Washington DC for the 2024 election. I canvassed with DC Democrats in rural Pennsylvania (that’s me third from the left in the pic below), attended Kamala Harris’s concession rally, and went to Trump’s only watch party in DC.
My journey led me to believe that Scotland’s independence campaign could learn a great deal from Trump’s victory and the Democrats’ failure.
We’ll give you three guesses as to the highly controversial and extravagantly taxpayer-funded organisation that has its rainbow fingerprints all over this story, readers.
To be honest, readers, the peculiar events of yesterday continued to nag at us all day as every news broadcaster in Scotland and beyond leapt eagerly on the ludicrous non-story from the Herald On Sunday’s front page. (It was even the #2 item on BBC Radio Wales, inexplicably).
For such an absolute nothingball of scurrilous sub-gossip to so dominate the entire news media was just too strange to ignore. We cannot remember the last time a low-grade freelancer managed to sell the same story to FOUR major Scottish newspapers – who normally, remember, only want exclusives for their big front-page splashes – let alone a crummy opinion columnist (not even an actual news reporter) who’s only been back in journalism for five minutes after a 15-year break as a failed PR guru.
(Once they’d all run the shoddy hatchet piece, TV and radio then had all the excuse they needed to blare it across the airwaves. “Oh, it’s not us inflating and amplifying this garbage, guv, we’re just reporting what the papers are saying.”)
So in our eternal quest for enlightenment and understanding we thought we’d see if we could find out a bit more about the little-known but recently-revived sleeper assassin with the ironic name: Carlos Alba.
Astonishingly, there isn’t a single word of apology anywhere in this statement.
There isn’t a scintilla of contrition, not the tiniest glimmer of admission of culpability or responsibility. There isn’t even a weasel-worded expression of “regret”.
Rape Crisis Scotland is unfit for purpose, and its CEO must resign.
In the 1990s, Dr. Robert Smith, a surgeon at Falkirk Royal Infirmary, performed a pair of amputations on two men. Neither of the men involved had anything physically wrong with them, but both were suffering from apotemnophilia – a rare psychiatric condition involving the desire to have healthy limbs amputated.
Sufferers, counterintuitively, claim not to feel “whole” with four limbs and obsess over having their unwanted body parts chopped off. Smith argued the surgeries were life-saving, claiming the patients would commit suicide otherwise.
Apotemnophiles, like autogynephiles, insist that there is no erotic element, but it was later discovered that one of the men Smith operated on ran an amputee fetish website.
Despite saying as recently as mid-May that it was “committed to continuing with that legislation”, and the new First Minister making a huge fuss about it at Edinburgh Pride just a handful of weeks ago, the administration has clearly (if belatedly) realised that as well as being massively unpopular it would probably be another disastrous high-profile failure along the lines of the Gender Recognition Reform Act, as it too would be likely to be in conflict with UK law.
So on the face of it it’s just a “pragmatic step” to avoid wasting any more time, energy and political capital that could be better spent trying to turn the government’s fortunes around, and leaving Labour to do all the dirty work instead.
But it may turn out far more significant than that.
But in fact the headline on the STV News website – whether intentionally, through innocent misunderstanding or, as we suspect, a result of being deliberately misled by government ministers – is a flat-out lie.
In fact the Scottish Government has done the exact opposite. It has taken Dr Hilary Cass’s four-year report and set it on fire, so that it can continue to irreversibly destroy the lives of Scottish children in the name of gender ideology.
You’d have to be living in a pretty strict prison not to have heard the big story from today’s Olympics in Paris, in which male Algerian cheat Imane Khelefi was put in a boxing ring with young Italian woman Angela Carini and allowed to hit her in the head for 46 seconds until she retired, in tears and in fear for her safety, saying “I had to preserve my life”.
Sound like your kind of fun, men? It’s surprisingly easy!
The Scottish Greens, in a feat of remarkable hubris and financial profligacy, stood 44 candidates in this week’s general election, knowing that most of them would lose their deposits, which they duly did.
But not quite all of them. And there the comedy arose.
Because while SNP boneheads on social media are raging idiotically at Alba, Wings and others for causing division and damaging the unity of the indy cause yada yada yada, a small handful of Green candidates made a real difference.
GM on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “It appears that Nicola Sturgeon is finally being called out by the MSM. ‘Sturgeon claims never to have seen..yet we…” May 26, 23:59
Skip_NC on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Not as such, I don’t think. He didn’t steal pound notes. He took it in kind. There was the sale…” May 26, 23:20
Skip_NC on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “The amount of Short Money is not unknown. It may be hidden in the SNP financial statements but it is…” May 26, 23:11
sarah on Off-topic: “You’re a lucky man, TC, with your wildlife – especially the goldcrest. I’ve only seen one once in all my…” May 26, 23:03
Frank Waring on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “I don’t find it at all implausible that Ms Sturgeon was completely in ignorance of Murrell’s appetite for bling: on…” May 26, 22:26
PRJ on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “There was an article written prior to the referendum that implied that three SNP members had close links to unionists…” May 26, 22:03
Wally Jumblatt on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “They reckon that since they didn’t have any clue how much money they had left in the kitty (for 5…” May 26, 21:30
Andrea on The Final Robbery: “I came here to ask that very question. Do we know what happened to that “loan” and why it was…” May 26, 21:20
Tinto Chiel on Off-topic: “@sarah: the tinies are now obsessed with slaters (“wood lice”) and green-veined white butterflies. I heard a goldcrest singing today,…” May 26, 21:07
Freeforester on The Final Robbery: “As Pushkin Famously observed, “Where there is a trough, there will the pigs be also”…” May 26, 21:01
GM on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Izzie, I’ll take your posts at face value.The unionist weasels on here are lapping this up. They will always be…” May 26, 20:34
Aidan on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “If you’ve read the article above you’d see that it wasn’t just SNP members money that was stolen. It is…” May 26, 20:16
Hatey McHateface on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Hmmm. Ordinarily this would summon up a barrage of abusive posts along the lines that the Telegraph (like the BBC)…” May 26, 20:08
Hatey McHateface on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Sure, Northy, but please show some respect. Some of us are still in mourning for the disastrous election results (remember…” May 26, 20:01
Hatey McHateface on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Don’t just leave it at that, you idle so-and-so! Stir yourself and post Ataturk’s speech.” May 26, 19:53
Hatey McHateface on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Wouldn’t work, TURABDIN, we have no bananas.” May 26, 19:49
Cynicus on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “TURABDIN says: 26 May, 2026 at 6:57 pm «Instead of politicians, let monkeys govern countries; at least they will steal…” May 26, 19:47
Cynicus on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “I do not wish to be disrespectful to Mehmet Murat ildan, but Scots have had monkeys governing us in different…” May 26, 19:43
Hatey McHateface on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Ah, c’moan noo, Aidan. If we’re all colonised and we’re all victims, then so is Murrell. There can be no…” May 26, 19:42
Anne on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Pleased to see Alison Pearson today in the Telegraph has acknowledged you as having been the first to break the…” May 26, 19:42
Izzie on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Aidan It seems the medua are hyping this to ‘get’ at tge SBP. The members are the victims here and…” May 26, 19:32
GM on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “‘..the chief exec stealing nearly all of the parties resources..’ Yes, and the chief exec who stole the SNP’s money…” May 26, 19:32
Northcode on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “The Murrells are a distraction from what should be the sole objective of the Scots, and their highest priority… independence.” May 26, 19:31
diabloandco on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Like that Turabdin! AS I like Ataturk’s speech after Gallipoli.” May 26, 19:31
Young Lochinvar on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “HMcH Bruce never sought a referendum from the English, he dragged them by the metaphorical scruff of the neck to…” May 26, 19:27
Hatey McHateface on The Final Robbery: “Sorry, Geri, I only just noticed you took a tinkle on the site at 10:02 AM. Would it be fair…” May 26, 19:25
robertkknight on No Money Back, No Guarantee: “Izzie…you really must stop dropping the ‘D’ from your name, it’s disingenuous. Hark! Is that yon Wee Ginger Fud and…” May 26, 19:20