Wings Over Scotland

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.

But there wasn’t one solitary word about the thing it just spent three solid days forcing into law. And since it was a thing that most of its own voters, and indeed a huge majority of all Scots, were opposed to, readers might be forgiven for thinking that they just wanted it all kept as quiet as possible, as if they were ashamed.

We suspect, and very much hope, that their wish may not be granted.

Last night this happened.

The events marked simply and unquestionably the most shameful and contemptible moment in the history of the Scottish Parliament since 1707.

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One of the most memorable lectures I had as an undergraduate student at university was on Eugene Ionesco’s play “Rhinoceros”, a defining work of the Theatre Of The Absurd genre. It is both a timeless and timely text, on a par with 1984 or The Crucible.

During the opening scene, the everyman protagonist Berenger sits having coffee with a friend. Midway through their conversation, a rhino charges past the café. Berenger is startled and concerned but his friend seems unperturbed, in denial that they even saw a rhinoceros.

Throughout the rest of the play, Berenger watches in incredulity and terror as, one by one, every person around him, colleagues and friends, transform into rhinoceroses, the cause seemingly being part-infection, part-capitulation.

In the final scene, he stands at his window looking out over the carnage, and in a moment of desperation, tries to force himself to transform into a rhinoceros. Despite his efforts, he is unable to and upon regaining his senses, vows in a hopeless frenzy that he will never capitulate.

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The newest Panelbase poll, which shows a narrow lead for independence, was an “omnibus” one with questions provided by multiple clients, including Wings and the Sunday Times. The questions we’re about to show you were asked by the ST rather than ourselves, but their results are deeply disturbing on multiple levels.

The first one is perhaps predictable but still unsettling. (Click all pics to enlarge.)

A huge 2:1 majority of Scots believe the Scottish Government’s proposed new “gender recognition” laws pose a safety risk to women. Tory voters think so by almost 9:1, Lib Dem voters by almost 6:1, and Labour voters by nearly 2:1.

That can only partly be explained away by partisan party loyalty – Labour and the Liberal Democrats both support the bill, but their own voters are still strongly against. More noteworthy is the fact that (excluding Don’t Knows) even slavishly loyal SNP voters agree with the statement by a smaller but still clear 12-point margin, 56 to 44.

So let’s say it unambiguously: most SNP voters think the SNP’s gender reforms pose a danger to women’s safety.

But that’s not the disturbing bit.

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This is a quite extraordinary thing for a grown adult to say.

When a reader quoted it in a comment earlier today we were reluctant to believe it. Googling the words produced only a broken Facebook link and a Scottish Daily Express story (and the Wings reader’s comment), which obviously did little to disperse the scepticism.

Facebook is essentially unsearchable (which in itself is a pretty good reason not to trust anyone who does the majority of their work on it), and even when we went to the Believe In Scotland page and scrolled down and down and down and down for an eternity, it was impossible to find.

But eventually we had a brainwave and searched the site’s pictures for the one used in the Express and found the post. He really said it. And it needs some examination.

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The SNP is now almost entirely incapable of telling the truth.

Let’s just check the above by way of example.

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At this point you really just have to laugh.

The Lord Advocate’s reference to the Supreme Court was filed on 28 June 22. The court delivered its judgement unexpectedly early on 23 November, but that still gave the SNP five months to plan for the various possible outcomes and be ready to spring into action. But perhaps Nicola Sturgeon misunderstood. She’s just announced that the party won’t even talk about it until another four months after that – in other words, no action until spring.

Is there any point in us even observing how pathetic that is? Should we waste our breath noting what a contemptuous pantomime is being performed here by the Widow Twankies running the party? Can we be bothered mocking the idea that this is some sort of “emergency” response? For Heaven’s sake, even NHS Scotland ambulances arrive quicker than that.

SNP members, of course, have shown time and time again that they’re happy to be fed even the oldest, rottenest carrots by the First Minister, so we won’t hold our breath waiting for them to muster a scrap of anger over this painfully blatant insult to their intelligence, loyalty and commitment. After all, it’s not like they were ever going to be given any meaningful influence over the eventual decision anyway.

(Sturgeon has already made absolutely clear that a UK general election in 2024 is the only option she’s willing to consider, and there is only one authority in her new SNP.)

But good grief, readers. Good grief.

In February this year this site asked whether disabled children should be used as props to make men with sexual fetishes feel better. Just before Christmas, it appears the Scottish courts have indirectly given their answer.

An important ruling for women, girls and the disabled was passed in the judicial review of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. On the 13th December Judge Lady Haldane declared that men literally change sex if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).

Next week MSPs will vote on the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill which will grant GRCs on the basis of self-identification, with no diagnosis, checks or safeguards of any kind, and thereby enable any male to claim he is female and should thus have access to female single-sex services and spaces. The bill is expected to pass comfortably due to the support of Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems.

The new law is a predator’s pass: a permit for perverts. Indeed, on 15 November Social Justice Minister Shona Robison refused to back amendments specifically aimed at preventing the GRC being exploited by registered sex offenders.

Instead, incredibly, she proposed a system of men self-reporting their sexual offending to the police. This will have huge and grave implications for disabled women and girls in Scotland.

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Boris Johnson infamously once hid in a fridge to avoid any awkward questions. Nicola Sturgeon prefers a different kind of small rectangular space, but it’s the same move.

Well done to the Times for attempting to ask one of the obvious questions arising from the events – do the Murrells have a joint bank account? – and we hope someone will ask the others soon. (Why such a specific amount? Why hasn’t it all been paid back yet if it was just a June-2021 cash-flow matter? Why can the Times STILL not credit where they pinched the story from?)

But it wasn’t the only thing the SNP ran scared from today.

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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.

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The entire mainstream Scottish media has picked up this afternoon on our intriguing scoop from yesterday about Peter Murrell lending the SNP £108,000 last year.

(The official SNP line is that it was for “cash flow reasons after the 2021 election”, although that doesn’t explain why less than half the money has been paid back more than 18 months later. Surely the party’s had enough cash flowing back in since then?)

And it’s enlightening to see how Scotland’s “proper” journalists handle such things.

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