As the Scottish Parliament (or the Reichstag as one wit has taken to calling it) prepares to wave through the SNP’s Offensive Behaviour Bill there have been some interesting articles on the subject over the last few days. Here are two one from an SNP member and one from a Labour Party member. Lalland Peat Worrier has an interesting piece on the SNP manipulation of opinion poll data. And below is an article which appeared on Scottish Law Reporter dealing with the SNP destroying the statistics which showed Catholics were overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of hate crimes.
Scottish Government fear Sectarian attacks against Catholics and other religious minorities may endanger EU view of independent Scotland.
On Wednesday of this week, whether Church burning anti-catholic Scots and the rest of us want it or not, the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill better known as the Scottish Government’s anti-sectarian legislation aimed at targeting insulting songs at Football matches, will be waved through into law by the SNP’s majority vote in the Scottish Parliament (no doubt after a tumultuous debate) on the pretext of strengthening the powers of the Crown Office & Police to prosecute rising numbers of sectarian attacks against Roman Catholics and other religious minorities in Scotland.
However, it appears the motives for the bill’s violently quick passage are anything but clear, and nothing much to do with tackling crime with some now claiming the badly planned anti-bigot legislation, brought about at the instigation of Police Forces & Prosecutors (who themselves appear to be institutionally sectarian as well as corrupt), and seized on by the SNP as an appropriate pro-independence headliner targeting Unionism is more to do with cleaning up the historically high anti-catholic & anti-religious minority crime statistics to allow First Minister Alex Salmond to advance a particular part of his independence policy, that of joining the predominantly catholic European Union.
Speaking to Scottish Law Reporter over the weekend, a Crown Office insider claimed the real reason the ‘potentially dangerous’ historical statistics on anti-catholic crimes were shredded by Crown Office officials before they could be produced at the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee is more to do with the fact the current SNP Scottish Government feared any revelations of the now destroyed statistics could damage Scotland’s chances of being accepted by the EU as a stand alone member if it breaks away from the United Kingdom.
Within the now destroyed data, such was the level of reported anti-catholic crimes, the severity of the crimes, the lack of prosecutions, especially in sectarian complaints made against in some cases, still serving Police Officers & even COPFS staff, and the many questions the historical statistics on sectarian offences may have raised in debates at Holyrood, Scottish Ministers felt revealing the truth could lead to questions being raised in the EU over whether Scots authorities could handle sectarianism and prevent Scots based individuals & groups from spreading their hate message & criminal activity against Catholics & other religious minorities throughout the European Union.
The insider, who claims to have seen the now destroyed data which SLR reported on in an earlier article HERE, commented“If the information on sectarian crimes had been published rather than being destroyed on political orders, there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind the statistics would show Scotland is a dangerous place for Roman Catholics. The fear was if the figures got out, this would affect the SNP’s independence agenda and how the predominantly Catholic EU might view an independent Scotland asking for EU membership.”
The credible claims by insiders come on top of ample evidence to suggest that Police & Prosecutors have their own agenda to bring in the new anti-bigot legislation which will allow them to even-up the sectarian crime statistics by arresting more Catholics to blur the statistics, rather than tackling the root of the historically huge ant-catholic bigotry problem which has been endemic in Scotland for years. Scottish Law Reporter has covered the new bill in previous articles HERE, noting there are even allegations of sectarian jibes among the SNP’s own ranks, some of whom have proclaimed their own support for the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill and for the idea that more Catholics should be arrested to ‘even-up’ the figures.
While debate continues to rage on the anti-bigot legislation and the SNP’s true motives for waving it through the Parliament, some media organisations have privately acknowledged they are being pressurised more than ever NOT TO MENTION or report on crimes where sectarianism is thought to have played a role in what took place.
At least seven murders in the West of Scotland this year, some of young men, others involving family members, all widely reported in the press and on television are thought to have been motivated in some way by anti-catholic hate however as yet not one news report or newspaper article has mentioned the fact Police officers investigating the crimes viewed the possibility each incident had an element of sectarianism to it.
In other shocking incidents, the desecration of Roman Catholic churches in Scotland has continued to rise, with a recent report on STV news regarding an incident of vandalism of St Leonard’s RC Church in East Kilbride which was so heavily sanitised, the incident as reported by the media took on a completely different view to the actual details of what is very much a sectarian crime, more accurately reported by Scots composer James MacMillan in the Telegraph, HERE.
Commenting on the sanitised STV report, Mr MacMillan said : In this report on the vandalisation of St Leonard’s RC Church in East Kilbride certain details have been withheld. According to parish sources the vandals removed the statue of Our Lady and placed it on the altar where they covered it in paper and cloth and set it alight. Also, the Tabernacle – one of the most sacred objects in any Catholic Church was covered in graffiti. This was clearly a sectarian attack, motivated by the intense anti-Catholic attitudes which have so disfigured Scotland and continues to do so. The fact that a police spokesman, in full knowledge of the specific details of this assault, then claimed it bore no hallmarks of a sectarian incident, speaks volumes.
The details of the burning of the statue of Mary have since been confirmed through local sources.
Mr MacMillan went onto point out while Catholic Churches are being burned in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, none have been targeted in England, even during the Pope’s visit last year.
Other incidents such as the burning down of an empty priest’s house in High Valleyfield, Fife appear to have suffered from misinformation put out by the Police, who claimed at the time the fire was caused by an electrical fault. Yet the fire which burned down the parish house of St Serf’s Church in High Valleyfield near Dunfermline came immediately after death threats had been sent to priests in the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
Another incident where the Police appear to have misled the public occurred in Leslie Fife, where the local Roman Catholic Church St Mary Mother of God was burned to the ground. The Police immediately briefed the press about ‘music’ lyrics spray-painted on a wall nearby yet suspicions over the true nature of the crime pointed to connections to a major Orange walk taking place that same day in the area.
And in a twist to electronic data gathered by Police Forces across Scotland on many forums & websites which appear to spread online sectarian hate messages & racist abuse, it appears there will now be few if any prosecutions of “threatening communications”, due to the fact IP addresses, emails and other identifying traces left by those spreading sectarian abuse online have been traced back to computer networks used by Police, Prosecutors and even offices of the Scottish Government.
The electronic data gathered from internet providers by the authorities is also rumoured to implicate local Government offices across Scotland, several high profile public bodies, surprisingly, several well known law firms and even some Hospital computer networks.
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