Tonight someone sent us a copy of the SNP’s official Social Media Policy, which is exactly the sort of corporate wonk-drivel you’d probably expect it to be.
Our favourite part was this masterpiece of unrememberable gibberish in the vein of the Scottish Government’s hopeless “FACTS” slogan for the coronavirus (honestly, can you remember what ANY of the letters stand for?):
And here’s a tweet from earlier today from a prospective SNP candidate:
We’re not sure which of the letters that conforms to.
Mennie was boo-hooing at great length about this article, which had simply reported the events of the SNP’s most recent NEC meeting, and he wasn’t alone. (Although he was in the replies to his tweet, which were just dozens and dozens of people all telling him to grow up.)
“Justice” Secretary Humza Yousaf also piped up tonight for another of the people mentioned in the article, the grotesque Fiona Robertson.
Yousaf – who hasn’t said a single word in support of Joanna Cherry despite her receiving serious threats and endless torrents of abuse from SNP members this week, all clearly in breach of the Social Media Policy – sprang to Robertson’s defence with a tweet to which he disabled replies:
And because we care about getting our facts straight on Wings, we should address Robertson’s complaints.
And it’s true that the NE region has been allocated as preferential treatment for BAME candidates rather than disabled ones, which would exclude Robertson unless she identified as an ethnic minority, which wouldn’t surprise us in the least.
But her claim not to be seeking nomination is curious, since it’s only two weeks ago (at the previous NEC meeting) that she declared that she definitely was:
She declared it again at the 31 January meeting, which is weird behaviour for someone with no intention of doing it. You might even say it’s a lie.
Her explanation – “I put my name in just in case the vote didn’t pass so there’d be a chance for some representation in the contest at least, even if the system is still unequal and discriminatory” – is meaningless dribble.
Because if the vote hadn’t passed, BAME people would still have been able to stand – just without an unfair advantage – so it wouldn’t have needed her to provide “representation” for minorities. Even though she claims to have been voting for BAME people to have that advantage, in that situation she’d then have been competing against any BAME candidate who still wanted to stand in a fair contest, making it less likely that they’d get elected.
To tell you the truth, readers, our suspicion is that Robertson simply hadn’t noticed that the NE list was BAME rather than disabled, and as soon as she realised she wasn’t going to be the one getting the advantage she quit the whole contest in a strop, knowing she had zero chance of winning fair and square.
But of course we can’t know which of the two possible explanations – that she’s a liar, or that she’s really really thick – is the true one, so we’ll just give you the facts and let you make up your own minds.
