As we’ve repeatedly pointed out, Wings has made NO comments about the “workplace harassment” allegations made against Alex Salmond several years ago. We’ve only commented on the CRIMINAL allegations, and workplace harassment isn’t a crime. (It’s a matter for an employment tribunal, not the police.)
But the real question is WHY Andy Wightman is so doggedly attached to these two complainers that he’s determined to keep digging himself further into a hole of lies. And everyone knows what you tend to find when you start digging holes.
“Hello Stuart. We’ve been contacted by a reader who says he also contacted you about a post on the website in the early hours of Saturday. Referring to Nicola Sturgeon, the poster says “Decapitating this witch would stop the SNP dead in their tracks.”
Our reader, Ian Reid, an SNP activist in the Borders, has been a regular Wings reader but was taken aback by the language. He had hoped you would have deleted the post, but that hasn’t happened.
He has reported it to the police and given a statement to them.
He has also given us these comments on why the Alba Party should condemn this sort of material and cut its ties to the Wings site.
“Alex Salmond and the leaders of the new party need to separate themselves from that, they need to call it out. They seem to be trying to set themselves up as the moral guardians for women’s rights, which I absolutely support. At the same time, we’ve got somebody posting this on a blog that they clearly associate with and clearly use.
On the one hand, they’re talking about gender-proofing their policies, which is great. On the other hand, they’ve got this where a woman is being described as the devil herself, and where there’s a reference to decapitating the witch having a justifiable end.
That needs to be called out. The party needs to come out and say something about it. The best possible outcome would be that they do condemn it. It would be such a powerful message. Separating themselves from that cesspit would be a very politically astute thing for them. As long as they don’t, it’s colluding with it, it’s condoning it.”
This is for a potential story online and in print.
If you didn’t already know that the BBC were going to run a character-assassination hatchet job on Alex Salmond tonight (and another one tomorrow), you could surmise it easily enough from the state of the Scottish media in the last few days.
But it’s today’s Daily Record that dredges the depths of the journalistic sewer with a barrel and then scrapes the very bottom of it for the grubbiest, oiliest sludge it can find.
The BBC’s Reporting Scotland is, in our view, directly responsible for at least 80% of Yes supporters’ belief that the UK’s state broadcaster is biased against independence. Almost all of the worst examples of unbalanced or downright dishonest coverage over the last five years come from the flagship teatime bulletin.
Normally the amateur blogger, unqualified would-be economist and unsuccessful dog-food salesman that BBC Scotland and the Daily Record employ on a regular basis to openly troll Yes voters restricts himself, when attacking this site, to crude abuse or smear and innuendo like the below, tweeted on Holocaust Memorial Day last year:
It’s important to note, firstly, that the version of Sadiq Khan’s speech to the Scottish Labour conference he tweeted on Saturday morning simply flat-out said that Scottish nationalists were the same as racists and sectarian bigots. Its meaning was as clear as crystal to the Daily Record, a newspaper which is hardly hostile to Khan’s party.
“No difference” is a stark and unambiguous phrase. The speech did not contain the hastily-added qualifiers about “in this respect” and “of course I’m not saying the SNP are racist” which suddenly appeared when he read it out onstage that afternoon.
There’s a truly abominable piece of hatemongering in today’s Times. A grotesequely dishonest Nat-bashing smear job based on stupendously misrepresented fragments of quotes, it’s penned by Patrick Harkness, someone who the paper identifies as “a past co-chairman of the RSE [Royal Society of Edinburgh] Young Academy of Scotland”.
For some reason it’s chosen to leave a few lines off his CV.
Readers may be aware that Wings Over Scotland is (fairly remarkably, really) the UK’s second-most-read politics blog, behind the hardcore right-wing “Guido Fawkes”.
Our “competitor” isn’t a site we look at a lot – the comments make the Daily Mail readership seem like enlightened and thoughtful moderates – but last week someone asked us about a smear piece they’d run on SNP MP Corri Wilson, and we only just remembered today to check it out. Our initial findings weren’t well received.
It seems that Mr Fawkes and his minions aren’t too keen on scrutiny themselves.
Since the astonishing election of 56 SNP MPs to the UK Parliament last May, the Unionist media – suddenly deprived of a whole contacts book full of friendly Scottish Labour bench-warmers ready to feed it cosy stories over a boozy expenses lunch in Whitehall – has raked through every bin and gutter in the land looking for anything (however pathetic) that it can try to puff up, distort, and rope into service as “dirt” on each of the Nat members, in an attempt to discredit them and the party.
So let’s just have a little look in here and – YIKES!
The Scottish Daily Mail’s front page lead today is so galactically despicable that it’s easy to overlook another story that it bundles in with the same “SNP BAD” attack.
While excoriating Dr Philippa Whitford for having the sheer shameless gall to help save women’s lives in her holidays, the alleged newspaper also devotes a page-high article to an attack on another Nat MP, George Kerevan, for employing his wife.
Chas on The Modern Politician: “Can I suggest that you pick an article written by Stu some 3 or 4 years ago. Any one will…” Feb 12, 09:17
Billie on The Modern Politician: “Turning if I may it may be of much interest to readers to learn about the suspension of an elected…” Feb 12, 08:53
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Good to see Sir Jim Ratcliffe under fire for stating the bleeding obvious – that the UK is being colonised.…” Feb 12, 08:47
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “It’s criminally remiss of your so-called friends and family not to have told you that Thatcher lost office a touch…” Feb 12, 08:29
Willie on The Modern Politician: “It may be grim observation but one cannot help wonder to what extent the sentiment of the woo woo ideologues…” Feb 12, 07:38
twathater on The Modern Politician: “@ Young Lochinvar 12.32am, Well said and as usual the POLITICIANS and deviants pushing this ideology are avoiding any responsibility…” Feb 12, 02:30
Young Lochinvar on The Modern Politician: “Well said. An example of how feminisation of society, nihilistic ideology and care in the community/ abandonment of the clinically…” Feb 12, 00:32
Young Lochinvar on The Modern Politician: “Chas Try reading top to bottom and left to right. Things will make more sense.. If you don’t agree with…” Feb 12, 00:06
willie on The Modern Politician: “Tragic, tragic, tragic the death of six killed and the twenty seven is just that. Who know what was in…” Feb 11, 22:38
DaveL on The Modern Politician: “Aye, and the BBC still don’t know that…” Feb 11, 22:24
Andrew scott on The Modern Politician: “O/T shooter in canada a tranny Quelle surprise” Feb 11, 20:17
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Grangemouth closed because the SNP/Green wreckers at HR voted for virtue signalling Scottish Nutt Zero by 2045. 5 years ahead…” Feb 11, 19:45
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: ““The deindustrialisation of Thatcher has ruined the health of much of the Scottish population and of the North of England”…” Feb 11, 19:36
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: ““explain what you mean” If politicians get re-elected time after time, then in the eyes of the voters, they’re not…” Feb 11, 19:17
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: ““girls fed testosterone” Crivens! I’d heard of maneaters. I’d never realised it was a literal description.” Feb 11, 19:11
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Form an orderly queue, Insider. I’m still waiting to hear how Alf presents the passport issued by an imaginary country…” Feb 11, 19:06
Hatey McHateface on The Modern Politician: “Great stuff, Alf. Could have been better though – needed something from Fanon to add that little bit extra. BTW.…” Feb 11, 19:01
Insider on The Modern Politician: “Alf ! Still waiting for an answer to my query yesterday concerning your fascinating comments about how “different animal species”…” Feb 11, 18:01
Chas on The Modern Politician: “As usual, I read the comments starting from the bottom up. I note 6 in a row from Cheyne, all…” Feb 11, 16:02
Alf Baird on The Modern Politician: ““Scottish politics is different” Indeed so, but we must understand why this is the case. Its because we are talking…” Feb 11, 15:04
PC Foster on The Modern Politician: “Ha . A woman ‘in a dress’ is code for ‘we are too scared to mention it was a trans.!” Feb 11, 14:24
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “The awful governance and policies of Tories, Labour, Greens, libdems and the SNP are the worst of the worst applied…” Feb 11, 13:42
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “Psyops and psychology worked on the democratic voters.” Feb 11, 13:08
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “Making your options so awful, they can guide you into making the choices they aways wanted you to make.” Feb 11, 12:37
Lorna Campbell on The Modern Politician: “Yes, exactly. The media twists itself out of shape to try and not hurt the feelz of this dangerous lobby.…” Feb 11, 12:31
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “The replication of reducing Scotland to a one party system is being done in England, Wales and Ireland, Nobody worth…” Feb 11, 12:31
James Cheyne on The Modern Politician: “Labour moved into the SNP for a reason, The next step is to reduce the ability people having the right…” Feb 11, 12:12
sam on The Modern Politician: “She, like every other leading politician, reacted to public pressure. She abolished the poll tax and did not introduce the…” Feb 11, 12:07
