Charities

Why is the SNP gagging charities?

The SNP handles criticism as well as the Incredible Hulk handles irritation. It’s why the party’s own parliamentarians are banned from making critical comments. The Nationalists are an independence-first organisation and rely on two important psychological tools. The first is projecting Nicola Sturgeon as the ‘Chief Mammy’ (her own term; ‘mammy’ being Scottish slang for ‘mother’), a national figure more akin to the Queen than the Prime Minister. The second is framing any institutional or organisational dissent not as standard, democratic debate (in the way that businesses, unions and charities routinely take the UK Government to task) but as something more controversial, political — even unpatriotic. As such, it is entirely

The sinister attacks on the LGB Alliance

Lesbian and gay rights are still not secure in the UK. This week the LGB Alliance – a group used to being smeared and misrepresented – came under further attack. With astonishing impudence, the LGBT+ Consortium, Gendered Intelligence, the LGBT Foundation, TransActual, and the Good Law Project ganged up with Mermaids UK in a staggering appeal to strip the LGB Alliance of its charitable status. The legal action is being brought in the name of Mermaids UK, a controversial charity that works with transgender-identified children. If it wasn’t such a serious attack on a legitimate charity, the appeal would be laughable. It’s clear from their submission that Mermaids doesn’t much