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Buying class 97

Posted on December 14, 2022 by

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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The Land Of Make-Believe 155

Posted on December 13, 2022 by

So it’s now official: in Scotland the words “sex” and “gender” mean the same thing, except when they don’t, and if you give a man a piece of paper because he’s asked for one, with no sort of checks whatsoever, then it literally turns him into a woman, except when it doesn’t, unless it does.

Or put more concisely: the word “sex” in Scotland now has no meaning at all.

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Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul 73

Posted on December 13, 2022 by

The SNP love to indignantly tell everyone how healthy the party’s finances are these days, especially in response to impertinent queries about the infamous “ring-fenced” £600,000 for a second indyref that everyone now knows isn’t going to happen.

(We still await an update from Police Scotland on what has now been an 18-month formal investigation into the matter, on top of the 18 months that had already elapsed since Wings first broke the story. We imagine they’re very busy investigating the runaway epidemic of misgenderings and feminists putting ribbons on stuff.)

It rakes in £2.5m a year from membership fees as well as millions from the UK government, and only has to pay for about 20 staff and a modest office in Edinburgh. So why is it having to borrow almost £108,000 from its own chief executive?

(Click pic to enlarge.)

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Newspeak For Independence 275

Posted on December 12, 2022 by

Let’s be quite clear what this means.

It means that the new Westminster leader of the SNP thinks it’s “absurd” to even try to achieve independence while the UK is in a crisis.

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The first sighting of the kite 142

Posted on December 10, 2022 by

From tomorrow’s Herald.

We’re calling it now, folks. The SNP will not conduct the next general election as a de facto referendum. There’s a reason they’re stalling. They know they’re going to have to let you down gently. The softening-up starts here.

 

The Lady 92

Posted on December 10, 2022 by

Situation Vacant 131

Posted on December 09, 2022 by

This is real. Sounds right up our street, frankly.

We’ve got some pretty exciting ideas.

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Adult Human Female 48

Posted on December 09, 2022 by

To its eternal disgrace, the University Of Edinburgh is trying to prevent this excellent film from being shown in Scotland, as part of a systematic campaign of suppression and censorship that starts from the highest offices of the Scottish Government and works its way down through academia, the arts and the civic sector.

It deserves to be seen and supported.

Nobody does it better 111

Posted on December 08, 2022 by

There has of course been a lot of chat since last night about the latest Ipsos Mori poll putting independence on 56%, with the usual suspects getting over-excited.

It remains to be seen whether the figures represent a short blip of anger over the Supreme Court decision, a more sustained but still temporary period of Yes support like that of summer 2020 – spring 2021, or a permanent shift in public opinion.

So as such they’re actually relatively uninteresting, although the SNP’s plan to do absolutely nothing to take advantage of any momentum that might exist, and to wait several months before even having a strategy conference, remains disturbing.

But what actually caught our eye about the poll were a couple of questions nobody else has reported on.

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Tally-ho for the final chukka 123

Posted on December 07, 2022 by

Same energy.

Although to be scrupulously fair to General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmany Melchett, he did at least actually launch an offensive from time to time, rather than just putting out occasional half-arsed discussion papers and press releases about it.

For English Gold 187

Posted on December 06, 2022 by

The SNP has for quite some time been a hollow shell of a political party. Like the Conservative Party, its members have been systematically stripped of all policy-making powers, with decisions of conference on major issues simply ignored and other policies pushed through (most notably “gender reform”) which have never been put in front of conference for debate at all.

The party is now primarily a vehicle for processing cash and funnelling it to carefully selected and ideologically vetted activists, mostly from the fundamentalist youth wing, who are given well-paid jobs working for MPs and MSPs or parachuted into council seats in return for their unquestioning loyalty to Nicola Sturgeon.

And at this, it must be admitted, the SNP is still a highly effective operation. Which is fortunate, because without UK government money it would be bankrupt.

Above are the Electoral Commission’s donation figures for the third quarter of 2022. They note that 100% of the SNP’s reportable income for that period came from the UK government’s coffers – a trait shared with Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the DUP.

Given that three of those four parties are nationalists committed to removing various constituent parts of the UK, one might almost be tempted to commend Westminster’s generosity. But perhaps it knows exactly what it’s doing.

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Brace yourselves, everyone 117

Posted on December 05, 2022 by

It’s THAT day again.

Try to feign some interest, it’s only polite.

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