Even by the embarrassing standards of The National, the gulf between this morning’s blaring front-page splash and the weak, watery weasel words in the actual article is a chasm so wide and so yawning (in every sense of that word) that it would put the epic planetary scar of Mars’ Valles Marineris to shame.
Coupled with a feebly underwhelming Programme For Government (in which the main policy was the re-abolition of peak rail fares just months after the SNP insisted such a move was unaffordable, with no clue as to where the money had suddenly been found) and a pitiful list of candidates for next year’s Holyrood election featuring the likes of Sally “all aboard the gravy bus!” Donald, Kaukab “DECAPITATE TERFS” Stewart, Kirsten “DECAPITATE TERFS” Oswald, Alison “DECAPITATE TERFS” Thewliss and Alyn “throw anyone who doesn’t want to DECAPITATE TERFS out of the SNP” Smith, the story was an abject vision of a bleak future for independence.
On reflection, we feel we may have not taken this story seriously enough. After all, they don’t put just ANY old guff on the front page of the Sunday Mail.
The less said about the Scottish Government’s toe-curlingly embarrassing “summit” last week, the sooner we can all pretend it never happened. We’ve got little to add to the withering assessments of Robin McAlpine and Kevin McKenna and just about everyone else who’s bothered covering this pathetic waste of everyone involved’s time. (Not that the time of most of these useless quangocrats was worth anything anyway.)
We take a moment only to note something remarkable: the closest Scottish Labour’s hapless branch manager Anas Sarwar has ever come to understanding anything.
Yesterday the Scottish media gave Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman what she’s never willingly given anyone else – a platform on which to make her case.
Most did a very poor job challenging her on her outrageous comments about the Supreme Court, with BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime show being an especially wretched example of allowing the interviewee to ignore every question and then just ramble on endlessly about something else entirely, but LBC’s Gina Davidson was on top of her brief and put all the points that reasonable people wanted to be made, while giving Chapman ample time to answer uninterrupted.
Let’s break down how that went, with the help of our handy Bullshit Buzzer.
At the weekend, Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman was filmed applauding as a notoriously unhinged transactivist ranted through a megaphone to a small and almost exclusively male crowd of protestors about how he was going to openly break the law by continuing to use women’s public toilets, and addressing JK Rowling with the words “We should all take a shite on you, you heinous creeping old bitch”.
At another protest, Chapman herself asserted that the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on the correct interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 was motivated by not by a solemn consideration of the law or by the arguments of counsel who appeared before it, but by “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”.
Chapman is – incredibly – Deputy Convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament, and as such her comments sparked a storm of wholly justified outrage over her flagrant breach not only of Parliamentary rules but also of the law – specifically the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008, which requires all MSPs to uphold the independence of the judiciary.
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.
Scottish Greens candidate and transactivist Matt “Ellie” Gomersall, with whom Wings readers will be familiar, appeared on the Jeremy Vine show today and blundered straight into an elephant trap a myopic mole could have seen coming on a foggy night.
Having just embarked on a diatribe in which he dismissed as “ridiculous” the idea that predatory men would ever pretend to be transwomen to gain access to vulnerable women, Vine asked him about Adam “Isla Bryson” Graham, the convicted double rapist that even hapless Humza Yousaf felt able to confidently assert was “at it”.
Having just painted himself into a corner, Gomersall was then embarrassingly unable to disown Bryson as a “real” transwoman, thereby implicitly admitting that transwomen do indeed present a danger to women in exactly the same way that predatory men do, and torpedoing his entire core point that it was unfair to “discriminate” against them in exactly the same way single-sex spaces discriminate against non-trans men.
(Outrageously, earlier in the speech he’d tried to claim that it was only natural that some transwomen would be sex offenders because some biological women were.)
It’s tempting to believe that Gomersall was demonstrating an intellectual vacuum by making such vacuously cretinous arguments and failing to spot even the most obvious pitfalls in them, but the truth is far worse. Gomersall, and people like him, know that they’re lying (which is why they always try to silence opponents), but they lack the moral courage to face up to the fact that the inevitable price of their lies is vulnerable women being raped by what he revoltingly waves away as “fringe cases”.
All rapists are fringe cases. 95% of men would never dream of raping anyone. But we discriminate against ALL men in women’s spaces because you can’t tell which ones are rapists by looking. Men like “Ellie” Gomersall, though, think that the price of a few women being raped is worth paying to validate their delusions and fetishes (in his case, the creepy fetish of skinwalking as his pretty sister), and they don’t even have the shred of decency to bother coming up with a coherent line of bullshit to cover it.
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: “Who would pay to watch Jenny Gilruth mud wrestling Alice Weidel?” Sep 7, 14:58
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: “There is a lot of finger pointing going on in Germany today. What is German for ” It was your…” Sep 7, 14:52
James Che on Anything But That: “To cherry pick some old history to make a narrative fit for the sake of the parliament of Englands ….transferred……” Sep 7, 14:48
Willie on Anything But That: “Its an interesting concept that of shirkers and grifters. No doubt the captain of wealth and influence would never come…” Sep 7, 14:47
Northcode on Anything But That: “I feel that my previous reply was a tad flippant and lacked sufficient explanation to be of much use in…” Sep 7, 14:37
James Che on Anything But That: “North code. Just a we correction to the old belief you quoted, That those two states were extinguished, Scotland parliament…” Sep 7, 14:33
Mark Beggan on Anything But That: “Scotland will always be in the state it is in whilst it clings to the socialist ideology that has enslaved…” Sep 7, 14:27
Northcode on Anything But That: ““What date did the treaty of union find it was spent and expired…” 1st May 1707.” Sep 7, 14:23
James Che on Anything But That: “What date did the treaty of union find it was spent and expired, can anyone that states it is no…” Sep 7, 14:03
Northcode on Anything But That: ““I like your turncoat attitude more and more.” Thanks, James. Your agreement with my structural analysis of ‘no longer relevant…” Sep 7, 13:57
James Che on Anything But That: “Including Scotland, Wales or Ireland requiring permission to remove themselves from a spent treaty.” Sep 7, 13:51
James Che on Anything But That: “I have to admit I am enjoying the mythical theory that Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland hold no such 1707…” Sep 7, 13:46
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “I mind when I learned that Tolkien was invalided out of the front line in the Great War and never…” Sep 7, 13:31
Young Lochinvar on Anything But That: “HMcH @ 8.56 Try the de-caff..” Sep 7, 13:24
James Che on Anything But That: “The 1707 treaty of union had economics and financial collections, taxation and revenues, Treasury benefits wrote into it that benefited…” Sep 7, 13:18
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Some see it as a very clear indicator of an over regulatory state pursuing a punitive taxation regime in order…” Sep 7, 13:14
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Surely if you believe the oppressed ethnic group are primarily Scots speakers, Alf, there’s little point in quoting Fanon, Hechter,…” Sep 7, 13:07
James Che on Anything But That: “North code. I like your turncoat attitude more and more. In your explanations you are quite thorough in Stating that…” Sep 7, 12:44
Captain Caveman on Anything But That: ““This implies that some colonially-minded people may reject their own liberation totally irrespective of any ‘economic case’, as arguably occurred…” Sep 7, 12:31
Alf Baird on Anything But That: ““Assuming there is a convincing economic case” We should not forget that ‘independence is a cultural emotion’ (Fanon), which explains…” Sep 7, 12:06
Willie on Anything But That: “And whilst we are talking about British economic success stories like JLR shedding thousands of jobs due to declining sales…” Sep 7, 11:47
Willie on Anything But That: “And whilst we are talking about British economic success stories like JLR shedding thousands of jobs due to declining sales…” Sep 7, 11:45
Willie on Anything But That: “China, now there’s a country that developed and grown its economy to where it is today. Yes around one in…” Sep 7, 11:36
Northcode on Anything But That: “A Tolkienian metaphor: One emerald tapestry of stories woven from the past, One land of songs and dragons, One untamed…” Sep 7, 10:43
Captain Caveman on Anything But That: ““Assuming there is a convincing economic case.” Well, quite. Said case needs to be credibly and comprehensively made, preferably by…” Sep 7, 10:43
Captain Caveman on Anything But That: “Yes, absolutely Hatey. That’s the principal reason I hate the Woke/Metropolitan Left so very much: it’s penchant to purposely ignore…” Sep 7, 10:34
factchecker on Anything But That: “Seems rather defeatist, T. Surely it should not be beyond the wit of roughly 50% of the Scottish people to…” Sep 7, 10:11
Hatey McHateface on Anything But That: “Sure, MH, but with so many products now, that ship has sailed. For just about all homeware, electrical products and…” Sep 7, 10:06
Northcode on Anything But That: “There is some confusion surrounding the Claim of Right and many folk don’t fully understand what the 1689 document actually…” Sep 7, 09:58
TURABDIN on Anything But That: “@Northcode «TURABDIN is chasing symbols: UN intervention external validation geopolitical rescue fatalistic narratives» «AgentX is describing strategy: democratic legitimacy internal…” Sep 7, 09:49
