The following article by Conor Matchett appears in today’s Scotsman:
It’s a pretty standard anti-Wings smear piece, except for this bit:
which is simply a flat-out lie. We can’t speak for Kenny MacAskill, but we do know for sure that Wings has NOT been contacted for comment by Mr Matchett.
We’d happily have provided a quote if we HAD been asked, to give the lazy hatchet job (perhaps “Matchett job”) at least a minimal veneer of balance and fairness as a boost to the badly-ailing paper’s “trusted, fact-checked journalism”. Since we’re banned from Twitter, perhaps someone could pass that on to Mr Matchett.
In the meantime, Wings readers should look forward to some more posts from SNP politicians, which we’ll be publishing later today.
It would be improper not to note that in addition to this:
…Darren McGarvey has contacted me directly by email this evening with what I take to be a sincere apology, which I’ve accepted as such.
(It was a private communication and won’t be reproduced here.)
I have no problem at all with people disliking me and saying so – I’m hardly a shrinking violet – but I can’t abide hypocrisy, which is what the massive pile-on from friends of Neil Mackay yesterday amounted to, and while I couldn’t give the slightest toss about the opinions of the people involved, even one person doing the decent thing over what was said deserves to be acknowledged. While I’m sure that we’ll continue to disagree profoundly and strongly on many or most things, what’s right is right.
It contains nothing that those who listened in on the case by telephone last week didn’t hear for themselves – it’s simply an 11-page summary of what was debated in court and casts no new light on what Lady Dorrian said at the time.
We’ll be very interested to see whether or not The Spectator – or perhaps more to the point its lawyers, who we must presume had vetted and cleared the initial publication just as Alex Salmond’s lawyers had – now feels able to restore the redacted paragraph that it removed after what it can now be publicly revealed was a threat from the Crown Office (a threat also received by this website).
The magazine’s response today is non-committal on the subject.
While it is this site’s belief that the paragraph in question DOES NOT identify anyone as a complainer – the Crown Office has not communicated which “other evidence” it feels could be combined with the paragraph, which makes no reference whatsoever to the criminal case, to provide identification – the restoration of the missing paragraph would certainly appear to provide circumstantial evidence to that effect, something which would be entirely due to the intervention of the Crown Office.
But overall, the needless delay in publishing this document has merely run down the clock on the inquiry by another week – time that it can ill afford – without providing any real additional clarity.
(We’re a bit puzzled as to why The Spectator’s counsel appears to have given up so easily on the second element of their application, which sought to specifically permit the publication of both Salmond and Geoff Aberdein’s written evidence.)
The fact that the judgement wasn’t released yesterday probably means, at a minimum, no more evidence sessions until next week, as the committee generally only meets on Tuesdays. We hope that doesn’t become a crucial issue, but we fear that the written judgement is sufficiently tepid that the crooked SNP members of the committee, and the spineless Andy Wightman, will use it to justify rejecting Salmond’s evidence and therefore hearing from him in person, rendering the entire undertaking moot anyway.
The SNP have plumbed some real depths recently, but this is a new low.
Although we suppose on one level you could spin it as a positive, namely that disabled people really are just like everyone else – they can be despicable scumbags too.
I started writing this post two weeks ago, incensed at the behaviour of the SNP NEC and their proposals to introduce self-ID for disability. Then they sacked Joanna Cherry from the front bench.
Joanna Cherry is probably one of the few people left in the SNP exec that even knows what Chesterton’s Fence is, and its importance in lawmaking. As a gay woman, she understands on a practical level the issues round equality legislation.
It also means that she’s a particular target for certain groups. Ye shall know a genius by this sign; all the dunces of the world are in confederacy against her.
Two weeks ago a Wings scoop caused quite a furore to erupt around the SNP’s ham-fisted and corruptly-motivated attempts to increase BAME and disabled representation at this year’s Holyrood election.
We’ve always been opposed to what were until recently known as “quotas”, and prior to that “positive discrimination”, but have now been cunningly rebranded as “diversity and inclusion” because that’s a much more difficult thing to say you object to.
It’s easy to make an honourable-sounding case against any form of “discrimination”, because decent and civilised people are taught to automatically think of discrimination as a bad thing, even if you put “positive” in front of it.
So the word “quotas” was adopted to move the concept from a pejorative term to a neutral noun – objecting to “quotas” doesn’t sound intolerant, any more than objecting to (say) “procedures” does. So that’s fine, because you can still discuss it like adults without too much unpleasantness.
But those pushing the agenda got smarter still by changing the name again. If you say you object to “diversity and inclusion”, you sound like a monster and a racist, because diversity and inclusion are plainly good things – no decent person wants to live in a monoculture, or to exclude anybody from society – and so the debate is immediately drowned out by self-righteous tossers screaming “BIGOT!” and “NAZI!” at everyone.
And yet in the context of social policy the three phrases mean the exact same thing. They’re all systems for overriding raw democracy so as to increase the representation of selected groups at the expense of other groups, for one reason or another.
(Sometimes it’s ostensibly just penance for historical wrongs, while at other times it’s supposedly for economic benefits, and so on.)
And while the proponents of those systems will openly argue that the only group being disadvantaged is straight white men so it’s all fine (because nobody likes straight white men and anyone standing up for them can be easily dismissed as a “gammon” for lots of woke points and Twitter likes), it isn’t even remotely close to the truth.
Because in “diversity and inclusion”, some groups are a lot more included than others.
The two main centres of infection for the woke entryist poison currently disfiguring the SNP are Stirling and Aberdeen, where they coalesce around two Westminster MPs – Twitler Youth gauleiter Alyn Smith and the worryingly unhinged Kirsty Blackman.
In recent months Wings has documented numerous attempts by the faction (which is chiefly characterised by its hyper-extremist and fundamentalist version of transgender ideology) to gerrymander and fix the party’s internal election processes to ensure that its disciples – who are enormously unpopular among the grassroots membership and have repeatedly failed to win by playing fair – get selected as candidates.
Minceheid on The End Of Law: “Hatey McHateface says: 22 June, 2026 at 2:15 pm Posh toff titled scum. Bet they all believed Bronze Age blethers…” Jun 23, 12:09
ALANM on Job Half Done: “Interesting how the quaint old term “estranged husband” has been brought out of retirement right across the media at the…” Jun 23, 12:02
Stuart MacKay on Job Half Done: “Fraud begets fraud…. In his foundational book, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon analyzed how, following an anti-colonial struggle, true…” Jun 23, 11:50
Cynicus on The End Of Law: ““Now England arrives …but videos of fans singing ‘Fuck your Tartan Army’ in pubs have drawn backlash from locals invoking…” Jun 23, 11:34
robertkknight on Job Half Done: “If he keeps his nose clean he can expect to be sprung on… Monday 8th January, 2029.” Jun 23, 11:28
Hatey McHateface on Job Half Done: “£660,000 Plus compound interest, as would be expected for any “ring fenced” sum deposited or invested. I reckon over a…” Jun 23, 11:21
Hatey McHateface on Job Half Done: “Did the sentencing judge cite “colonised mindset” as a mitigating factor? What did Fanon predict would happen? C’moan, Alf, help…” Jun 23, 11:13
Skip_NC on Job Half Done: “My best guess is that he was running a version of a Ponzi scheme, where donations would come in and…” Jun 23, 11:13
Hatey McHateface on The End Of Law: “Jeezo! So she squandered a perfect opportunity to tell England what Scots really care about: Banockburn, Culloden, 1707, and how…” Jun 23, 11:10
Hatey McHateface on The End Of Law: “Of course, CC. They’d have had a special punishment reserved for somebody who’d sworn lifelong allegiance to a foreign monarch,…” Jun 23, 11:06
100%Yes on Job Half Done: “I’m glad to hear “Murrell’s entirely separate crime of theft FROM the SNP, has still not been answered for by…” Jun 23, 10:52
Randolph Kleinman on Job Half Done: “BBC Scotland was repeating Swinney’s stance this morning that spending the referendum fund money on general SNP stuff is okay…” Jun 23, 10:51
Confused on Job Half Done: “eligible for parole in 2 1/2 turned out nice again trebles all round will anyone touch the teflon queen?” Jun 23, 10:45
Gerry parker on Job Half Done: “Well spotted Ruglonian. ?” Jun 23, 10:32
Tony L on Job Half Done: “I have to admit that I was fairly sure he’d get a light sentence, or even “time served” rather than…” Jun 23, 10:31
Confused on Job Half Done: “If you look at sentencing guidelines for fraud you will see that the tariff usually goes as the logarithm of…” Jun 23, 10:28
Effijy on Job Half Done: “Do the luxury items stolen from SNP accounts belong to the SNP? If so did they get a six figure…” Jun 23, 10:28
Captain Caveman on The End Of Law: “In fairness Hatey, I reckon I’ve got it wrong about YL. I’d always assumed that his oft claimed military credentials…” Jun 23, 10:21
Cuphook on Job Half Done: “The fact that Murrell had cause to conspire against Salmond and lie to the Holyrood inquiry means that evidence needs…” Jun 23, 10:12
Minceheid on The End Of Law: “Ach, that isn’t long enough. We really need to stop this weak sentencing guff, don’t we? 😐” Jun 23, 10:10
duncanio on Job Half Done: “Has there been any response from Police Scotland to your second and follow-up letter regarding the new evidence of the…” Jun 23, 10:07
Mark Beggan on The End Of Law: “Someone’s got a date with the gavel today!” Jun 23, 10:07
robertkknight on The End Of Law: “He’ll be out in 958 days.” Jun 23, 10:06
agentx on The End Of Law: “5 years 3 months in the clink.” Jun 23, 09:49
Jay on The End Of Law: “Woman’s Hour interviewer seemed to try to interrupt J Cherry, maybe to prevent comment on Trans topic, but J Cherry…” Jun 23, 09:44
Jay on The End Of Law: “Trued that link, ‘x’ screen appeared but the article would not display. Is this normal for ‘x’? Cannot find the…” Jun 23, 09:38
Hatey McHateface on The End Of Law: “Any Tartan Army peaceniks feeling threatened can take refuge in the women’s bogs.” Jun 23, 09:35
Hatey McHateface on The End Of Law: “Telt ye afore, YL. Dinna post afore 2 AM. That gies ye ample time to write furiously through the night,…” Jun 23, 09:17
Willie on The End Of Law: “So England has arrived in Boston and already the vicious thuggish behaviour has started One chant from the thugs is…” Jun 23, 03:21
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The End Of Law: “Starts at 14 mins 7 secs.” Jun 23, 00:22