Wings Over Scotland

For several years now, this site has recorded how the SNP’s continued existence is now entirely dependent on UK state funding. The party would simply go bust without Westminster money. And how precarious a position that puts it in is sharply illustrated by the latest release of donations income from the Electoral Commission.

In a 12-month period running up to the last UK general election, the UK state gave the SNP a little over £1.3 million.

In the corresponding period for the last year, after the party was reduced to just nine seats, that figure plunged to just over £0.4 million, a drop of over £0.9 million.

And that’s money the SNP can’t afford to lose.

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We miss the days when this was parody, not “progressive” ideology.

But we are where we are.

And hey, it’s great news that their adult roles are still open to all.

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Disgraced ex-policeman and notorious vexatious serial complainant Lynsay Watson is having quite the meltdown on the groomer-and-paedophile haven Bluesky tonight.

Let’s listen in.

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This really is an extraordinary headline, for multiple reasons.

Because what actually IS “the rise of Reform”?

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Perhaps the key graphic from last night’s by-election in Caerphilly is this one (green means Plaid Cymru in the context of Wales):

In the end, Plaid won pretty comfortably in what had been predicted to be a very tight contest between them and Reform, with a majority of almost 4,000. But Plaid aren’t going to be the next government of the UK, so what’s the real story?

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Last month, when half a football team of armed police ambushed and arrested comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport for a couple of tweets, we said this:

Today, even more swiftly than we thought, this happened:

Rarely can a hand have been overplayed so badly.

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Last week we introduced readers to Sophia “Tarquin” Brooks, the 18-year-old boy who Graham Linehan is currently on trial for supposedly “assaulting”, and in particular his connection to disgraced former policeman and serial harasser Lynsay Watson.

(From reporting of the proceedings at Westminster Magistrates Court, it sounds very much like Watson has been directing and influencing Tarquin’s complaints to the police – which had originally been dismissed as baseless – and was largely responsible for the matter getting to trial.)

But Watson isn’t the only middle-aged trans-identifying man with whom “Tarquin” has a seemingly close relationship when it comes to the relentless, vindictive persecution of people who believe in biological sex.

We think (but haven’t been able to verify) that that’s Watson on the left of the thumbnail of the above video, in the facemask and with a brown bag amid extraordinary scenes as Tarquin left the court after giving his evidence.

But the burly, blond bespectacled man at the centre of it, who appears to be acting as some sort of official representative for “Tarquin”, is Stephanie Hayden – born Anthony Halliday, who changed his name in 2005 to Steven Hayden shortly after being released from the Sex Offenders Register (more on that below) before obtaining a GRC in the name of “Stephanie” in 2017.

Hayden is a convicted paedophile and self-described lawyer who, like Lynsay Watson, dedicates his entire life to the persecution of gender-critical campaigners.

And as remarkable as it might seem to anyone who read our previous piece, Hayden may be the more toxic of the two.

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We think transactivists will swiftly come to see yesterday as an epic mistake.

Because it looks as though it might just have been the final straw.

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For the combatants in the gender wars, it’s been quite a spring and summer here in the TERF Island theatre of battle.

In February, polling company YouGov revealed the vast extent to which public opinion has shifted around the issue (significantly though not entirely in the wake of the Cass Review last April), which we reported on via a snazzy Stalingrad metaphor. But just as with Stalingrad, it was only the precursor to the recapture of territory on an epic scale.

So let’s recap what we’ve won and what it means.

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This is what Labour say in Scotland:

And this is what they say elsewhere, when they think nobody in Scotland is looking:

One day someone’s going to tell them about the internet, and our life’s going to get a lot more difficult. Until that day, though, let’s just enjoy the laughs.

We’re getting there, folks.

Keep pushing.

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Regular readers of Wings won’t need any reminding that Dani Garavelli of the Herald is, among some very stiff competition, one of the most contemptible pieces of nightsoil currently operating in the Scottish media.

But if you’re new here, we can give you a quick illustration.

If the sneering piety of that opening paragraph made you feel a little revolted, a bit angry and somewhat nauseous, then congratulations, because that means you’re still something minimally approximating to a decent human being. But unfortunately it gets a lot worse from there.

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