Help and support:

In politics, readers, evil and stupidity aren’t the same thing.

But nor are they exclusive.

Before we ask you to consider which of the terms applies to the Scottish Government led by John Swinney, we’d like you to read this letter sent to Wings by the auntie of two women imprisoned in Scottish jails.

“I have two nieces who have had to share prison space with men. I used to visit niece 1 in Saughton in Edinburgh and Greenock where men were housed, including Paris Green, Melissa Young and Alex Stewart. She got released in 2024 but then her sister (niece 2) was imprisoned and I would visit her in Polmont (Scotland closed Saughton for women and sent them all to Polmont in Falkirk (although Alex remains in Greenock). She was released last week. Both nieces gave testimony to FWS in their current court case against Scot Gov.

The first time I visited my niece in Saughton in Edinburgh I was wearing my WOMEN DON’T HAVE PENISES sweater. I had no idea she was sharing the estate with men. My sweater was something I would wear around town on a daily basis. As I was in the waiting area with other visitors, a guard told me I would need to take my sweater off if I wanted to visit my niece.

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I asked him where is the lie in stating women don’t have penises. He told me, ‘that’s a matter of opinion’. I turned to the room and asked, ‘hands up, all the women here who have penises’. They all laughed, but I still had to take my top off in order to go visit my niece. That’s when I realised she was sharing the estate with men.

She told me of Melissa Young (Google him). He has had the operation, but my niece said his room was always ‘stinking’. Presumably because of the vinegar douche he needs to use, and because of the fact that the intestine is used to replicate a vagina.

She also said that he made the female inmates perform humiliation rituals in order to access his codeine tablets. He would make one woman, Mary, suck on his breasts, and my niece said he would show people his ‘vagina’ at every opportunity. He also battered a woman, and it was the woman who got sent to a different prison so that he wouldn’t be inconvenienced.

Paris Green would walk around with stretchy leggings on, showcasing his penis. Both he and Melissa have been guilty of assaulting prison guards (google it). Paris Green also entered niece 2’s cell and started stroking her hips. This was ten years ago (my nieces have had a very violent and abusive upbringing and have been in the system since the ages of 15).

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Both of my nieces are caught in a cycle of poverty, crime and addiction. When this happened, years ago, it was the case that trans prisoners had to sit at the door of their cell. They were not allowed to mingle freely because the prison recognised that they were a risk. But when the ‘screw’ wasn’t looking, Paris made her way into my niece’s room and started stroking her.

In Greenock, in order to take a shower, females have to go through Nyomi Fee who killed her child. Inmates are given jobs, and it’s Nyomi’s job to hand out towels. Nyomi is in love with Alex the trans man. My niece hates a ‘beast’ and so she would wipe herself down in her room rather than have to go through a man, Alex, in order to get a towel. Alex and Nyomi are inseperable. Nyomi was in charge of distributing towels for women to enter the communal shower area.

Niece 2 is a lesbian, and in Greenock it is communal showering. I imagine most women don’t want to see a man in their washing area, but for lesbians it is particularly relevant.

The prison guards do not allow lesbian relationships. My niece’s lover was also in jail and they separated the two of them by putting them in different jails, but with Alex and Nyomi the guards allow them to freely interact with each other. My niece said the guards would often hang out in their rooms, laughing it up with the both of them.

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Laws changed and most of the women were put in Polmont. Alex stayed at Greenock. My niece said Paris was always on a ‘rule’ (locked in his room) because he was always flashing his cock to the guards and the women. She also said that he is a very tall man, and can look over the cubicle when women are showering. She also said that she had to sit in the waiting area with him when waiting for a doctor’s appointment, unsupervised.

Both nieces were battered and abused by their father, but niece 1 went on to have a relationship with an abusive man who would hit her and handcuff her naked to a radiator. In her own words he ‘kicked babies out of me’. She miscarried twice because of the severity of the beatings he gave her. And yet Scot Gov are putting her in an estate with men guilty of the most violent crimes.

Lastly, there is a woman who is living as a man in Polmont. She has had top surgery and takes testosterone and has a beard and looks like a man. When she was charged, she was sent to a man’s prison. But when she got there they discovered she is a biological female and so they returned her to a women’s prison.

Women’s prisons are a dumping ground for the gender confused. If men who think they are women are allowed to be in the female estate, why can’t women who think they are men be housed in the men’s estate?”

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Readers will doubtless already have their own opinions about the merits or otherwise of the Scottish Government’s apparent desperation to ensure that men like those described above continue to be housed among vulnerable women. But we’d also like you consider something else.

Because even if you think that putting violent men in women’s prisons is a simply super idea, you must be aware that the majority of Scots do not.

And so even if you agreed with the policy, you would presumably still be able to understand that there was a less moronic way to try to achieve it than the one the Scottish Government is currently pursuing.

Because the government’s core argument in the case heard at the Court Of Session last week is that it HAS to continue to allow the Scottish Prison Service to flout the Supreme Court ruling in the For Women Scotland case, because if it doesn’t it might find itself sued by a hypothetical transwoman who murdered or raped someone and then found himself locked up in a men’s jail.

Such a man, the Scottish Government’s counsel argued last week, might kill himself in such circumstances, which a great many people might consider no great tragedy but which would apparently upset the government sorely.

The First Minister was therefore faced with a choice between two options:

OPTION 1

 – continue to house male prisoners in the female estate if they say they’re women.

 – spend a bucketload of public money fighting for that position in court against For Women Scotland, causing the vast majority of the Scottish electorate to think you’re a bunch of scumbags who have lost their minds.  

OPTION 2

 – obey the Supreme Court ruling and immediately ban all males from women’s prisons. 

 – wait and see if at some point in the future, a transwoman prisoner assigned to a male prison did indeed bring a court case about it. (If they don’t, problem solved and it didn’t cost you a penny!)

 – fight that case in the court, arguing for the Supreme Court ruling, with the backing of the vast majority of the Scottish electorate. 

And here’s the thing, readers – it makes no difference to the eventual outcome. Whichever side you fight, the court will make the decision.

If you choose Option 1, almost everyone thinks you’re sewage whether you win or lose. If you choose Option 2, you win either way – you get all the benefits of taking the position that voters want you to take, and if you lose and the court rules in favour of the murderers, you’ve got someone else to blame it on.

(And if that’s the outcome you secretly want, you can always choose an idiot for your KC and send him in to throw it.)

Try as we might, even assuming the worst of motivations, we can think of no sane or sensible reason for doing as the Scottish Government has done and choosing Option 1. It’s not only evil, it’s also political suicide. The level of staggeringly obvious stupidity it requires stretches the bounds of credibility even for an administration as packed full of utter boneheads as this one.

Option 1 guarantees wasting yet more taxpayers’ money, enraging voters and getting terrible headlines in the months immediately preceding a general election. Option 2 not only gets you a lot more support, but it almost certainly kicks the issue down the road beyond the election where it can’t do you nearly as much hard.

Literally the ONLY halfway-logical explanation we can think of for what they’ve done is if the First Minister wants to make absolutely sure he doesn’t win a majority in May. And the reasons he doesn’t are rather easier to discern.

Making sure Swinney doesn’t have to try to secure independence in the next five years is just the latest in a long list of reasons why the SNP are willing to throw women under the bus, and subject people like our reader’s nieces to the grotesque suffering they’ve been made to endure at the hands of the state.

We don’t know about you, folks, but it makes us sick to our stomachs.

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The Israel lobby, its political allies and its media actors have been pushing a farcical narrative that last week’s acquittal of six anti-genocide activists from the Filton 24 was unsafe. The supposed ‘reason’ for this unsafe verdict was ‘jury-tampering’. The supposed jury-tampering? Placards near the court that reminded jurors of their legal right to ignore the trial’s biased judge and acquit.

Filton acquittal to be challenged?

It’s nonsense, and recent legal precedent shows it’s nonsense. But nonetheless, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced that it will seek a retrial of the six who dared to defeat its first attempt to criminalise and imprison them for trying to stop Israel’s Gaza genocide.

It’s nonsense because this is not the first time the UK government has tried it – and it was laughed out of court. The dying Sunak government tried to prosecute pensioner Trudi Warner for holding up a placard outside the trial of climate activists. The placard read:

Jurors, you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.

The government’s barrister Aidan Eardley KC told the judge that the prosecution needed to go ahead “to maintain public confidence” in the independence of the jury system. He added that if Warner wasn’t punished for holding up the sign, actions to remind juries of their rights were “likely to propagate”.

The judge threw the prosecution case out of court, saying it was ridiculous to prosecute someone for reminding someone else of their legal rights. He also pointed out that the same reminder is on a placard on a wall inside the Old Bailey courthouse (emphasis added):

Overall, in my judgment, the claim is based on a mischaracterisation of what Ms Warner did that morning and a failure to recognise that what her placard said outside the court reflects essentially what is regularly read on the Old Bailey plaque by jurors, and what our highest courts recognise as part of our constitutional landscape.

Holding up a sign reminding juries of their right to acquit is not just legal. It is a right that “our highest courts recognise as part of our constitutional landscape”.

If it’s legal, it can’t be jury-tampering – because jury-tampering is a crime. Case closed, except for the tame corporate media like Murdoch’s Times.

Show trials

But the reason that the Israel lobby in and out of Parliament and the CPS is trying to have it ruled as jury-tampering is that jury-tampering is one of the grounds that allows people to be prosecuted for an alleged offence despite being found not guilty. And the lobby – from Number 10 down – is desperate to get a conviction, both to cement Palestine Action as ‘terrorists’ and to deter future resistance to genocide. Canary CEO Steve Topple did an explainer video on how the double-jeopardy exception works:

Based on legal precedent, the government/lobby (same difference) case is bollocks. But will the judge deciding whether to grant a re-trial care?

Featured image via the Canary

Anas Sarwar has called for Keir Starmer to resign as Prime Minister (Alamy)

3 min read49 min

Sarwar made the intervention in a press conference on Monday afternoon, in the latest blow to Starmer’s premiership.

PoliticsHome understands that Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan could follow Sarwar in calling for Starmer to step down.

Speaking at an unscheduled press conference on Monday afternoon, Sarwar said: “The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change” and “the situation in Downing Street is not good enough”.

Sarwar said the decision to speak out against Starmer “is not easy and “not without pain” as he has “a genuine friendship with Keir Starmer”.

But he said his “first priority” had to be to his country.

Sarwar said: “We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland, because the election is not without consequence for the lives of Scots.

“The situation in Downing Street is not good enough. There have been too many mistakes. They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened.

“Have there been good things? Of course there have many of them, but no one knows them and no one can hear them because they’re being drowned out.

“That is why it cannot continue.”

Sarwar said he had spoken to Starmer earlier on Monday and “it’s safe to say that he and I disagreed”.

His call for Starmer to quit comes after the Prime Minister lost his director of communications, Tim Allan, and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, in less than 24 hours, with both resigning in quick succession.

McSweeney announced his resignation on Sunday over his role in the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

The pressure on Starmer has been growing since his admission at PMQs on Wednesday that he knew about the ongoing friendship between Mandelson and paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein when the former was appointed as US ambassador.

Labour is expected to suffer significant losses at Scottish Parliament elections in May, with the party trailing both the Scottish National Party and Reform UK.

A Scottish Labour source told PoliticsHome that Sarwar wanted to be the first to make the call for Starmer to go to gain the maximum electoral advantage among the devolved leaders ahead of the Holyrood elections.

The source confirmed there have been conversations between Sarwar and allies of Health Secretary Wes Streeting, widely seen as a leading candidate to succeed Starmer, in the run-up to the decision to call for Starmer to quit, though the electoral factor was the key reason for his announcement.

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy posted on X in support of Starmer, saying he “won a massive mandate 18 months ago, for five years to deliver on Labour’s manifesto that we all stood on”.

He added: “We should let nothing distract us from our mission to change Britain and we support the Prime Minister in doing that.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Defence Secretary John Healey and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Steve Reed have also posted online in support of the Prime Minister.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “Keir Starmer is one of only four Labour leaders ever to have won a general election.

“He has a clear five-year mandate from the British people to deliver change, and that is what he will do.”

More follows…

Additional reporting by Sienna Rodgers

Labour and its press allies continue to try to undermine popular Green party candidate Hannah Spencer in the Gorton and Denton by-election. Predictably, the tactics on show are the most hypocritical and tin-eared imaginable.

In an Observer article yesterday, Labour’s corporate-lobbyist, NHS privatiser candidate Angeliki Stogia tried laughably to claim that Spencer should stand aside because:

Every Green vote is going to make Reform very happy.

With hypocrisy that should be astonishing but isn’t, she also claimed the Greens had shared “misleading” polling showing they are the main hope of defeating Reform UK.

Labour just got caught using a poll based on responses from just 51 people to try to claim it is in a good position. Even Labour fan and war criminal Alistair Campbell dismissed it as “bullshit”.

Labour hypocrisy

The hypocrisy didn’t end there. Stogia also claimed to be angry that Reform is “spread[ing] division” in the constituency. Reform’s whole playbook is division, of course, but Stogia’s boss Keir Starmer constantly tries to out-Reform Reform. Remember his “island of strangers” speech, compared to racist Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” incitement? Or how about Labour boasting about how many people it has deported?

Stogia’s Guardian-assisted nonsense comes shortly after Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell begged and stamped her feet to demand the Greens step aside. But the bookies – not known for throwing their money away – make Spencer odds-on (5/6) favourite to win, with Reform next on 13/8. Labour trail miles behind – 9/1 in a three-horse race is dire.

If Labour was really interested in ‘stopping Reform’, Starmer would be telling Stogia to stand aside and begging the public to support the Greens.

Featured image via the Canary

Another day, another media shill doing the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) job of turning the public against PIP claimants for them. Most annoyingly, this time it’s a physically disabled person who is throwing people with mental health conditions under the bus. But then it is Julie Burchill.

DWP don’t need a hand denigrating mental health

Burchill is, by her own definition. a ‘Rad-fem, Christian Zionist’, she’s best known for her abhorrent views on immigration and transphobia. So it figures that she’s also horribly lateral ableist too. In a column in the i Paper Burchill wrote:

If you’re too anxious to work but go on holiday, you shouldn’t get PIP.

Siiiigh, same old bullshit. It doesn’t need pointing out (again!) that personal independence payments (PIP) isn’t an out-of-work benefit. The article actually barely mentions claimants going on holiday; it’s a throwaway comment. But that didn’t stop the editor from making it the most clickbait possible headline.

Thankfully, Burchill does correct herself on the employment fact in the piece, but she also adds:

Of course, you can work and still receive PIP – as I do – but I do think too many people are getting it when they could be supporting themselves.

Such as, for instance, a columnist who brags about squandering their wealth.

Punching down again

Burchill is of course, talking about people who she, and vast parts of the media, think don’t actually deserve PIP from the DWP – people with mental health conditions. This is just the latest in a long line of the government trying to de-legitimise people with mental health conditions, whilst planning to make it harder for those same people to claim PIP.

Burchill rightly points out how hard it is to get PIP, even if you have a very physically obvious disability. In her case, she’s a wheelchair user and can’t walk. She said it took her six months to be approved for PIP, however she also took the chance to shit on other disabled people:

I can’t help thinking that had I claimed the mental equivalent of a “bad back” – anxiety perhaps – I would have been awarded it a lot earlier

There’s more joys in life than work

Burchill’s ‘article’ is mostly a bizarre rant about how, if she’s worked nearly every day since becoming a wheelchair user, what’s stopping everyone else? Dunno babe, probably less understanding bosses and less flexibility because they’re not rich. Calling herself a ‘grafter’ not a ‘grifter’, she says:

I can’t think of anything worse for anyone’s mental health than not having a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

It’s really fucking sad that work is the only reason to get out of bed in the morning for many. My dog is my reason for getting out of bed. For some it’s simple joys like a good cup of coffee, their fave tv show to catch up on, or seeing friends. I love my job, but I’m also not some capitalist drone whose only joy is work.

The thing about the old ‘work is good for your mental health’ argument, though, is that it usually comes from people who are supported in their work. It doesn’t take into account just how soul-destroying and detrimental to your mental health an awful job with a horrible boss, can be.

Playing into the government’s hands

Instead of sympathising with this point, Burchill essentially implies that disabled people should be happy with any old menial job, whether or not it’s suited to their needs. Which, of course, fits the DWP’s narrative perfectly and helps them push disabled people into work

There’s also the point that apparently needs hammering home that PIP has fuck all to do with whether you can work or not. Because, despite stating this, she still spends the majority of the piece conflating anxiety with workshyness. Which, again, is something the government has done consistently.

Hilariously though, Burchill also thinks the government are on disabled people’s side here. She calls them ‘the chief sponsor of idleness’. It’s always those who think they’re sticking it to the establishment who are playing right into their hands.

The government and media are doing enough, we don’t need one of our own doing it too

At a time when the media and government are doing everything in their power to turn the public against people with mental health conditions, we don’t need one of our own on their side too. Though it’s made pretty clear that Burchill is one of those disabled people who thinks she will be spared from the hatred because she works hard and doesn’t complain:

During my year in a wheelchair, I’ve had to deal with all of these, alongside other emotions as varied as fear and fury; if I and other severely physically disabled people can learn to process these feelings, why can’t those with anxiety do the same

Let me tell you now, Julie, the hate mob doesn’t give a fuck if you’re on their side or not. They’ll come for us all in the end and won’t be happy until all disabled people are left to rot.

Deliberate choice to turn people against benefit claimants, again

Burchill’s piece was published alongside two others. The first by Carrie Grant who shares her own experience as a parent carer on how the SEND system failures feed into more people needing PIP. The second is by a former PIP assessor who points out how life-changing PIP can be for all claimants.

This could’ve and should’ve been an impactful and important series. However the i Paper couldn’t help themselves and had to ensure they included a hefty dose of the scrounger narrative too. There are so many campaigners who also claim PIP that they could’ve asked to write this.

This was a deliberate choice to de-legitimise mental health claimants. ‘Look, even REAL disabled people know they’re faking!” The fact that it’s a disabled person attacking other disabled people – and doing the DWP’s job for them – shows just how insidious the media narrative really is.

Featured image via the Canary

Bad Bunny just shook the US with his Super Bowl halftime show. And perhaps the most beautiful moment was when fellow Puerto Rican superstar Ricky Martin sang about US colonialism in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. This was especially poignant because of escalating US terror against Cuba right now.

Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, and US colonialism

Puerto Rico is a US territory that has been denied full democratic rights. And Bad Bunny speaks to the island’s resistance during many years of financial crisis. His song Lo que le pasó a Hawaii (‘What happened to Hawaii‘) expresses a desire that the US doesn’t do to Puerto Rico what it has done to Hawaii.

Ricky Martin, who has previously joined Bad Bunny and others on the island in progressive political mobilisations, sang Lo que le pasó a Hawaii at the 2026 Super Bowl. The song says:

They want to take my river and my beach too
They want my neighborhood and grandma to leave
No, don’t let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai
‘Cause I don’t want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii

RICKY MARTIN IN THE HOUSE 🔥#AppleMusicHalftime pic.twitter.com/7JLXOKaTjj

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) February 9, 2026

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Ricky Martin looking straight into the camera while singing “LO QUE LE PASO A HAWAII” was ✨chef’s kiss✨ This is politics. pic.twitter.com/JkmEHyIJSN

— ✨ (@greenzeldy) February 9, 2026

As Hawaiian news outlet KHON2 explains:

Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since 1898 — the same year that the US illegally annexed Hawaiʻi…

As people indigenous to the land get pushed out, Bad Bunny described outsiders who came into the island, hungry to take things for themselves…

The song compares Puerto Rico’s colonization to that of Hawaiʻi’s; the issues Bad Bunny highlighted in the song are the same issues shared by many Native Hawaiians today.

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The same story in Cuba – right now, in 2026

The US didn’t just occupy Puerto Rico after independence from Spain. It occupied and interfered in Cuba too, which shared culture and history with Puerto Rico. But to stop its influence waning in the Caribbean after Cuba’s 1959 revolution, the US embedded itself further in Puerto Rico while seeking to strangle Cuba economically.

US imperialism has long sought to dominate in the Americas, often through brutality. And following its illegal invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its president, the US under Donald Trump has intensified its stranglehold on Cuba. There was no provocation. This is blatant imperialism, out in the open for all to see.

Trump’s racist regime, with the support of largely white Cuban exiles in Florida like Marco Rubio, is manufacturing a famine on the island. In an escalation of its devastating economic terrorism, it has been intimidating other countries into cutting Cuba off from the outside world.

The American government is generating a famine in Cuba with its fuel embargo. Once again, The United States uses hunger as a weapon of war

— Climate Defiance (@ClimateDefiance) February 8, 2026

🇨🇺 BREAKING | Cuba has warned international airlines that it will run out of jet fuel within 24 hours, citing intensified U.S. energy pressure, according to an official aviation notice seen by EFE. The shortage affects all of Cuba’s international airports from Feb. 10 to March… https://t.co/MWbTWIt8AI

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 9, 2026

“We call it a blockade, they euphemistically call it an embargo.

It is neither blockade nor embargo – it is war.” https://t.co/X74iiq1UOk pic.twitter.com/Bxe2f5kAWn

— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) February 8, 2026

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If other countries allow the US to get away with starving Cuba of oil, any one of them could be next.

Starmer, Macron and other Euro leaders may be as anti-Cuba as Trump, but that will count for nothing.

As Greenland shows, he’ll pursue US self-interest no matter who it hurts. https://t.co/AIv2cDfYFZ

— Steve Howell (@FromSteveHowell) February 8, 2026

Cuba has sent tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, & scientists to more than 100 countries around the world

The international community owes a debt of humanity to ensure Trump does not starve the Cuban people into submission

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The medieval US blockade is a war crime

— Chris Hazzard MP (@ChrisHazzardSF) February 7, 2026

The 2026 Super Bowl got the biggest viewing figures ever, for one of the world’s highest-profile sporting events. So Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin bringing the reality of US colonialism into the heart of the empire was a massive moment. And it came at a moment when Cuban lives literally depend on global resistance to US terror.

Featured image via the Canary