“If voting made a difference they wouldn’t let you do it” is one of many quotes that are regularly misattributed to Mark Twain.
However, the sentiment could very much be used to sum up the current management of the Scottish National Party.
When we saw this a few days ago, we wondered what they wanted to hide.
And now we know.
In the sometimes-heated trans debate, it’s always nice to hear from Owen Jones.
If we ever find out who it feels, we’ll let you know.
Approximately 40,000 people have left the SNP in the last five years – among them hundreds (at least) of women who quit because of the party’s total lack of action against its abusive, misogynist transactivist wing.
Many of them had been members for decades and wrote pained letters explaining their reasons, only to be waved away with an automated form reply. But half a dozen of the party’s most obnoxious scumbags flounce off in a huff and this happens.
Kirsten Oswald is a brainless knife-and-fork operator and always has been. But Keith Brown must go home at night and drape towels over all the mirrors so he doesn’t have to look at himself after putting his name to that.
This site spent a lot of the indyref documenting the Scottish media’s obsession with “SNP accused” articles, in which they’d make a big deal out of any random nobody accusing the SNP of some absurdly trivial misdeed.
But today, curiously, absolutely none of them have covered this:
Which is weird, because that seems like, y’know, quite a big story.
We’ve got to try to write an article today about developments in Scottish politics in the last 24 hours, and it feels like someone’s just asked us to empty the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon. Bear with us for a bit, okay?
We know that many of you were quite upset by our revelation a couple of months ago that the Scottish Government has had absolutely nobody at all working on the case for independence for most of the last five years.
But readers, we wouldn’t want you to think that time had been wasted.
We’ll mostly be watching the trial of Craig Murray today, so there may well not be any proper posts. (It currently looks like this, which is the most we’ll be able to show you.)
We’re EXTREMELY limited in how much we can report, and we’ll be erring on the side of caution. But those of you who aren’t journalists can legally listen into proceedings for yourselves by telephone (yes, we know) by dialling 0207 660 8149 and entering the access code 174 658 1827. Standard-rate call charges apply.
Please note the rules for anyone using this service.
This is quite extraordinary:
Because what it amounts to is “Oh, if I have to tell the truth then I’m not coming”.
As we write this, we still wait for Scotland’s hopelessly compromised Lord Advocate to decide whether he, as John Swinney has already done twice, will refuse to obey the will of the Scottish Parliament by releasing data demanded by the Fabiani inquiry.
We suspect he’ll surprise everyone and the information WILL be released, because according to analysis by Craig Murray it’s actually completely useless, and the Scottish Government has undeniably been red-hot when it comes to deluging the committee with vast screeds of junk documentation it hasn’t asked for and doesn’t want.
By coincidence, that same Craig Murray will go on trial in Edinburgh tomorrow for his liberty, for the crime of allegedly telling readers of his blog the truth about the shameful failed conspiracy to imprison Alex Salmond for crimes he didn’t commit – a conspiracy, remarkably, for which nobody has yet been held to account in any way despite the most obvious of grounds for suspicion of perjury, and which the Scottish Government is still frenziedly trying to conceal.
Speaking of liars, we thought it was probably time to update the list below.
Way back in December 2019, when the SNP were once more returned triumphant, the mantra chant was of an independence referendum the coming autumn. Of course, coronavirus consumed 2020 but the reality was a referendum was never coming that year, irrespective of rhetoric. Neither planning, policy nor even funding was in place.
And those leading the chant, in Parliament or in public, knew it.
Now there’s come a new year, but sadly not a new dawn. The mantra chant simply moved on to the referendum being autumn this year. Again it was dutifully proclaimed in Parliament and public, long beyond the point of any credibility. And once again, the likelihood of it being held is all but nil unless strategy changes.
We’re not entirely sure why the SNP’s charade of a “National Assembly” over indyref strategy is still going on today at all, since the party pre-announced the outcome of it on Friday night. But just in case you were wondering:
This morning on the Andrew Marr show, Nicola Sturgeon had accused Boris Johnson of being “frightened of democracy”. We hope the members of her party who spent six quid on a pass to be allowed to attend an online rubber-stamping session they weren’t even allowed to comment on appreciate the irony.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
