The recently-restored Wings Twitter account has a little over 56,000 followers, the vast bulk of them accumulated at a time when this site had far less reason to criticise the SNP or the Scottish Government. So while this poll isn’t scientific, the indy-friendly nature of the respondent base makes it pretty interesting.
Those numbers closely mirror what every actual proper poll tells us about Scottish people’s opinion of the GRR itself – they oppose it by margins of between 3:1 and 4:1. So if the Scottish Government is counting on the UK’s intervention to increase support for independence, frankly it looks like they’re onto a massive loser.
A few months ago, we all had a good chuckle at Pete Wishart’s screeching 180-degree turn on the subject of using a plebiscitary election for independence, a strategy which switched overnight from “suicidal, disastrous fringe lunacy with no hope of success” to “genius plan Nicola herself came up with”.
But after that crude ad-hoc field patch, we’re delighted to be able to report that Pete has submitted himself to SNP HQ for a full operating system update and is now fully compliant with the New Truth.
(The largest number that said No, around 118,000, didn’t tick the boxes of transwoman, transman or non-binary, nor wrote in their own. An unknown number of these may have been rejecting “gender” altogether. 30,000 ticked “non-binary” and 18,000 wrote in a gender because they were REALLY special.)
But, as we’ve been told time out of number, we must accept what people say about themselves. So 48,000 transwomen it is. So few. So vulnerable. And that number got me thinking.
The last few days have been perhaps the most turbulent in the entire history of the modern Scottish Parliament. Proceedings have been suspended repeatedly, members of the public thrown out and threatened with arrest, filibusters attempted, carol services cancelled, tempers frayed and sittings going on until the wee small hours.
All of this has happened in the service of the policy that the SNP has made its flagship priority for the last two years and more – the destruction not only of women’s rights, but of the very CONCEPT of a woman.
So you’d imagine the party would have been tweeting about it constantly, keeping its supporters informed about all the dramatic events and the progress of the bill, if only to reassure them that they were determined to get it passed before the Christmas break come what may.
And yet strangely, up until it retweeted a tweet from The National about the bill finally passing a few minutes ago, the SNP Twitter account had not made a single mention of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in the entirety of the last week.
It certainly hadn’t been quiet – it’s been churning out scores and scores of tweets on subjects from the NHS to Rwanda deportations, the COP15 summit, Brexit, early learning, FMQs, winter fuel payments, International Human Solidarity Day, train fares, independence polls, the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, free school meals, income tax, drugs, net zero, industrial disputes, the cost of living and dozens more.
The National must have been enormously proud when it successfully fought off all the other newspapers to secure this stunning exclusive today.
We must admit, when we had a good look in the “Pete Wishart Victories” section of our extensive archives we drew a blank. So we were excited to read on and find out.
So it’s now official: in Scotland the words “sex” and “gender” mean the same thing, except when they don’t, and if you give a man a piece of paper because he’s asked for one, with no sort of checks whatsoever, then it literally turns him into a woman, except when it doesn’t, unless it does.
Or put more concisely: the word “sex” in Scotland now has no meaning at all.
Although to be scrupulously fair to General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmany Melchett, he did at least actually launch an offensive from time to time, rather than just putting out occasional half-arsed discussion papers and press releases about it.
The party is now primarily a vehicle for processing cash and funnelling it to carefully selected and ideologically vetted activists, mostly from the fundamentalist youth wing, who are given well-paid jobs working for MPs and MSPs or parachuted into council seats in return for their unquestioning loyalty to Nicola Sturgeon.
And at this, it must be admitted, the SNP is still a highly effective operation. Which is fortunate, because without UK government money it would be bankrupt.
Above are the Electoral Commission’s donation figures for the third quarter of 2022. They note that 100% of the SNP’s reportable income for that period came from the UK government’s coffers – a trait shared with Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the DUP.
Given that three of those four parties are nationalists committed to removing various constituent parts of the UK, one might almost be tempted to commend Westminster’s generosity. But perhaps it knows exactly what it’s doing.
