Scotland’s biggest cultural problem famously used to be with its alpha males: hard-working, hard-drinking men, often sexist and openly sectarian, with an easy propensity for violence. (The archetype cut right across every social class, from shipyard workers to high-ranking police officers and everywhere between and beyond.)
But times change, and thankfully those characters are now almost entirely a thing of the past. Less happily, though, they’ve simply been replaced by a breed that’s every bit as unpleasant, just in slightly different ways. Readers, meet the Beta Bullies.
And it’s almost easy to dismiss it as meaningless. You can report to the police that aliens dug up your prize petunias and they’ll record it and give it a reference number and promise to investigate, before concluding that it was actually the neighbour’s cat.
But there’s one word in the 500-word piece that makes it much more interesting.
So… his job is to get a legally binding referendum (something which doesn’t actually exist), but he knows that if we’re likely to win it we’re less likely to get it, so… we need to look like we’re going to lose one if it happens?
So presumably with support for the SNP already plummeting through the floor, the next phase of his grand strategy will be to drive support for independence down too? We suppose that’s a more rational explanation of the party’s actions in recent years than anything else we can think of, right enough.
Or of course, it might be that the guy’s just a complete gibbering idiot. You tell us.
Yesterday we took an extensive tour of all the red flags in the SNP’s 2022 accounts, which show a party in very deep financial trouble. But there was one part we left out because it deserves a post of its own.
It starkly exposes how a party chose to hold an event for around 800 members in a venue with a capacity of 15,000 and then went to a lot of effort to disguise how empty the space was, rather than, for example, just hiring somewhere of an appropriate size (and cost) in the first place.
(Look how far into the hall the stage has been placed, leaving half the arena vacant, to then be hidden behind a giant screen and curtains and banners in order to give a false impression of how full it is.)
But what’s more symbolic is that there are almost no people in it.
Did you all get together and arrange this as a massive prank while we were out at the shops? Because if so, well done, you got us, but it’s time to own up.
Slacky The Holiday Boy is off for the next THREE weeks, gallivanting around the globe on the clearly excessive wages we’re paying him. We hope he does actually come back, because his home city is becoming a poisonously hostile place for the creative.
Around 300 years ago, Edinburgh was the birthplace and residence of the Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable period of intellectual and scientific accomplishment built around “the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason”, and which led to the city being famously dubbed “the Athens of the North”.
Fair play to The National, the use of the word “HIS” in this banner on their front page today might be the single funniest thing ever printed by a Scottish newspaper.
Because everyone and his dug in Scotland knows whose strategy it actually is, and how many years Pete Wishart spent traducing it as nonsense and furiously venting his overworked spleen at anyone who advocated it – right up to the point where Nicola Sturgeon adopted it in a desperate last attempt to keep the indy faithful pushing the SNP gravy bus, at which point it became the greatest masterplan of all time.
But today’s piece in the indy equivalent of the Daily Express (albeit with only a tenth of the sales) is so jawdropping that we doubt even Robert Oppenheimer would be up to the job of putting a scorchmark on Wishart’s brass neck, so let’s spend five minutes having a look at it before we go out for a bit of sunshine.
Humza Yousaf is played here by Morgan Freeman, the big plane carrying the bomb is the independence movement and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are in the chopper.
Young Lochinvar on Rapist’s Rights: “Not really a surprising considering SHE looks on herself as British as famously stated live on British MSM to SNP…” Aug 12, 02:34
Young Lochinvar on Rapist’s Rights: “C’mon please! Anyone else spare a moments thought for poor auld Lord Provost Swinney tonight? Weeping for his “PRECIOUSSS” on…” Aug 12, 02:14
Young Lochinvar on Rapist’s Rights: “I managed to miss the vast bulk of the bull on ITN this evening by walking the dog then popping…” Aug 12, 02:05
Cynicus on Rapist’s Rights: ““Yet in 2025, CM is not surprised, shocked or astonished that the people he supports in the Middle East will…” Aug 12, 01:15
Mark Beggan on Rapist’s Rights: “Sturgeon’s suffering from post Colonial Stockholm syndrome Isn’t she Professor. Oh dear oh fuckin dear!” Aug 12, 00:02
Young Lochinvar on Rapist’s Rights: “Onlooker Which actually neatly sums up the whole 2 legged walking conundrum that (the currently reinventing herself) SHE is.. London…” Aug 11, 23:46
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Rapist’s Rights: “ASH REGAN interviewed by Mike Graham (7 Aug) on subject of trans women and prison: (Please copy and paste link…” Aug 11, 23:40
Iain More on Rapist’s Rights: “Those Quizzers that voted NO have a lot to answer for. How they and Sturgeon hated Scotland.” Aug 11, 23:19
willie on Rapist’s Rights: “How dare you Hatey call a mobile home a “camper van ” Sturgeon and her husband Peter had a very…” Aug 11, 23:00
Onlooker on Rapist’s Rights: “Exactly right. She finally gets tae hae the teenage lesbian fun she denied hersel oan joining the SNP it 16.…” Aug 11, 22:55
willie on Rapist’s Rights: “Ureka – I have it now. The answer has been with us all along. And when you work it out…” Aug 11, 22:50
Onlooker on Rapist’s Rights: “Talk aboot an admission: “I’ve always loved London.” Aye, nae doot, hen, nae doot. Says it aw, really, eh? Jist…” Aug 11, 22:46
Hatey McHateface on Rapist’s Rights: ““named after her” Somebody needs to design a new camper van and call it the Sturgeon.” Aug 11, 22:06
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Rapist’s Rights: ““As First Minister I have many, many, many different responsibilities, but there is no responsibility that I have that is…” Aug 11, 22:05
Hatey McHateface on Rapist’s Rights: ““an enviable period of settled prosperity and good governance under, I’d suggest, the most able and competent politician of his…” Aug 11, 22:00
robertkknight on Rapist’s Rights: “Frankly, Sturgeon deserves the gaol.” Aug 11, 21:46
George Ferguson on Rapist’s Rights: “Wind back to 15 years ago. Her miscarriage was the most important thing that ever happened to Scotland. Not realising…” Aug 11, 21:32
Hatey McHateface on Rapist’s Rights: “She’d be Scotland’s Mammie for life, x, and yer mammie is niver wrang. Yoons like you (insert abusive swear terms…” Aug 11, 21:16
Sven on Rapist’s Rights: “agent x @ 20.49. Or, Mr Salmond would not have resigned, Ms Sturgeon would not have inducted as the “Nation’s…” Aug 11, 21:13
TURABDIN on Rapist’s Rights: “Ms STURGEON might so easily have been «the liberator», she held for years strong cards but chose not to play…” Aug 11, 21:02
agent x on Rapist’s Rights: “If the yoons like me (insert abusive swear terms here) had not voted “NO” the Sturgeon creature would be President…” Aug 11, 20:49
Hatey McHateface on Rapist’s Rights: “@ Alf Baird says: 11 August, 2025 at 8:29 pm If you’re paddling in the murky waters of the “class…” Aug 11, 20:42
Hatey McHateface on Rapist’s Rights: “@Tartanpigsy says: 11 August, 2025 at 8:10 pm “You are such a pr**k” Aw, diddums. Truly the “courage” of the…” Aug 11, 20:34
Alf Baird on Rapist’s Rights: “We should always consider first our fundamental colonial reality rather than looking at our situation as one of everyday political…” Aug 11, 20:29
Hatey McHateface on Rapist’s Rights: ““working class interest” Ah yes, the soon to disappear, already greatly endangered, working class. Politically, replaced by the benefits class…” Aug 11, 20:19
Tartanpigsy on Rapist’s Rights: “Hatey McNever-set-foot-in-Scotland-other-than-on-fishing-or-hunting-trips…… You are such a pr**k” Aug 11, 20:10
aLurker on Rapist’s Rights: “Captain Caveman says: Dangerous idiots who’ve disappeared so far up their absurd leftist ideological cul-de-sacs that they can’t distinguish reality…” Aug 11, 19:42
GM on Rapist’s Rights: “I agree, there is nothing about extreme social liberalism that is left or right wing. Right wing people support right…” Aug 11, 19:31
Andrew scott on Rapist’s Rights: “Not sure my tv will survive the interview Not sure i will watch” Aug 11, 19:08
Hatey McHateface on Rapist’s Rights: “Thanks for the reminder that as recently as 2022, CM was surprised, shocked and astonished that people would fabricate evidence…” Aug 11, 18:48