Wings Over Scotland

Symbolism matters in politics. What ostensibly can appear minor actions can have significant effect. Simply changing the names of things, whether from Londonderry to Derry or from the Scottish Executive to the Scottish Government (and swapping a UK-focused logo for a Scotland-focused one), were hugely important, signalling a new era and enthusing supporters.

Similarly, it’s been the case that as well as public actions of political leaders there requires to be mobilisation of grassroots supporters.

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So we guess this is an answer to our question:

But there are many more questions.

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It seems fair to say that the SNP’s shady, ugly coup d’etwats yesterday hasn’t gone down massively well. Social media was awash in pictures of cut-up membership cards and resignation letters, and some of the most moderate voices in the commentariat also decried the stitch-ups of Joanna Cherry and James Dornan.

The NEC meeting which forced through the new rules was held in secret and nobody knows who was present or who voted for what. Indeed, even the identities of the NEC’s members are largely not public knowledge.

But there’s one thing we do know.

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SNP MSP James Dornan is someone Wings always had a lot of time for, at least until his shameful and central role in the stitch-up of Mark McDonald – an act which was the foundation stone for all of the party’s subsequent chicanery. We can only speculate as to his motivations for doing so, and their connection or otherwise to a certain deranged and ambitious fantasist in his close circle.

But as anyone who’s watched The Usual Suspects (or GoodFellas, or pretty much any classic-era Bond movie) will tell you, the real villains have a nasty habit, once they’ve achieved their goals, of “tidying up” anyone who might link them to their misdeeds – especially if those people don’t fit the ideal of their brave new worlds.

So an old, straight, white, working-class male like James Dornan, who signed the SNP Women’s Pledge, was always likely to find himself propping up a motorway flyover at some point sooner or later, and thus it has proved.

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Out of 100, exactly how humiliated do you feel today on learning that the leadership of your party has so little faith in you winning the Edinburgh Central nomination fair and square – despite all your advantages, connections and long party history – that it’s had to stack the deck with such an unprecedented, transparent, embarrassing fiddle to try to get you in? Because tbh, if it was us we’d be too ashamed to show our face.

No rush, take as long as you like. Just like you’re doing with independence.

The Wings Over Scotland Twitter account was – whether coincidentally or otherwise – banned very shortly after it made this famous quote from “1984” its pinned tweet:

So it was only ever a matter of time until a trans activist went there:

That’s an MSc in maths, an MA in statistics and a PhD student in statistics at Harvard University there, readers, publicly calling for the flexible redefinition of the meaning of the number 2 so that two plus two can sometimes make five. Humanity is doomed.

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Well, here’s a place we’ve been before.

Especially alert veteran readers will recall that this site, too, has had its advertising removed from a railway environment for being “political”, on the flimsiest of grounds. We doubt whether excessively-named feminist activist Kellie-Jay “Posie Parker” Keen-Minshull will be overly distressed about this turn of events – our experience was that it generated far more publicity than the adverts themselves could ever have hoped for, PLUS we got all our money back. Win-win!

But it’s still a disturbing occurrence for all sorts of obvious reasons.

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In the light of several news stories today, we thought it’d be useful to keep a record of which organisations and individuals had now publicly expressed strong reservations or outright opposition to the Scottish Government’s alarming and deeply illiberal proposed new Hate Crime Bill, and which had expressed support.

This list will be updated as required.

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Alert readers may have noticed that the hypothetical Wings list party is once again the talk of the steamie, with the usual suspects stamping their feet and pouting about it yet again on social media, in particular the firmly-ensconced SNP MP Pete Wishart and the worryingly obsessed former poll-analysis website WINGS OVER SCOTLAND IS BAD AND TERRIBLE AND STUART CAMPBELL SOMETIMES DOES SWEARS SO NOBODY WOULD EVER VOTE FOR HIM! Goes Pop.

(We’re not sure where this sudden outbreak of 18th-century Puritanism about Scottish people using colourful language has come from, to be honest. It seems the weirdest and least plausible grounds for objection imaginable in a country that’s literally world-famous for its enthusiastic embrace of swearing, but *shrug*.)

The trigger was a bizarre piece in yesterday’s Courier (also picked up by the National, the Evening Express and others). They phoned us last week ostensibly to talk about a new website set up by a bunch of loony Unionist zoomers who with amusingly ironic timing have named themselves “The Majority”, and whether we thought they’d have any impact or be able to attract funding.

We chatted perfectly amiably to the reporter for several minutes on the subject, so we were quite surprised when the story that eventually appeared didn’t contain a single mention of them, and instead was solely about the Wings party, which he’d also asked us a couple of “Oh, by the way, while I’m here”-type questions about.

So let’s just clarify a couple of things for the record (again).

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Late last week, Wings finally received a long-overdue full response to the queries we first made to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in early April, regarding several matters connected to the failed prosecution of Alex Salmond.

(You’re supposed to get a reply in 20 working days. It’s been nearly four months.)

The unmappable fog-filled labyrinth that COPFS (under the Lord Advocate, W. James Wolffe QC), the Scottish Government and the civil service are attempting to construct around these matters is so tangled that it’s taken us a few days to sit down and make some sense of it, but the truth that’s being coaxed, painfully slowly, into the light is one that paints a truly disturbing picture.

We invite you to examine it for yourself and see if you disagree.

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This week saw publication of the long-awaited Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report on alleged Russian interference in British affairs. Despite media hysteria, the report contained no new revelations, just all-too-familiar catastrophising about Moscow’s ill-defined “disinformation” efforts and warnings of the undue influence rich Russians (most of whom are actually Kremlin opponents) have bought themselves.

The most salient point for supporters of Scottish independence to consider was the allegation that Moscow’s interference efforts extended to the 2014 indyref. As Wings pointed out earlier this week, however, the “evidence” to support this sensational claim amounted to nothing more than a heavily-redacted single paragraph, citing “credible open source commentary” as its sole source.

A look at the paragraph’s accompanying footnote reveals the “credible open source” commentator was Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council. For those in the fortunate position of being unfamiliar with his work, Nimmo is known for, among other things, falsely identifying a Syrian-Australian blogger and a British pensioner as Russian bots – so clearly someone whose expertise should be relied upon to determine the extent of Russian infiltration into Scottish politics.

I mention this not simply to reveal the transparently amateurish nature of the ISC’s report but rather to offer a commentary on the SNP’s (predictably) disappointing response to its allegations.

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