The Implosion of the SNP

Some of us suspected that the SNP would implode at some point, but nobody thought it would happen so quickly, or over such a tangential issue as trans rights. Resignation of the Hun-loving Nicola Sturgeon, no offense intended, is now being openly talked about. That would threaten her strategy of breaking up the United Kingdom, scrapping the pound as Scotland’s currency, having a hard border with England and making Scotland a German client state inside the EU.

Of course with so many panzers going to Ukraine the German plan to base an armored division in Scotland would no longer be viable in any event. I have been warning about the dangers of a break-up for nearly 30 years. With the advent of the Common Foreign and Security Policy after the Treaty of Maastricht EU membership involves defense commitments.

In practice an SNP government in a German client state would be unable to resist French and German demands to base naval, air and ground forces in Scotland. Such a deployment could never be accepted by Britain of course and would lead inevitably to war, indeed the French and German forces would probably never reach their new bases.

It would be unwise to underestimate the anti-English hatred of the SNP, or their contempt for the Scottish people, whom they see as mere cannon fodder in their war against Britain.

The SNP can never forgive us for defeating their beloved Germany in two world wars. The party is also anti-semitic, no offense intended. It has never gotten over its disappointment at the failure of Admiral Canaris’s plan to exterminate the Jews.

Put another way the SNP are a deeply unpleasant, xenophobic lot, again no offense intended. Their sheer nastiness has led to a counter-intelligence review of the extent of their assistance to Germany in both World Wars. This in turn is related to bases, in particular naval bases. Allow me to explain.

Scapa Flow

In the good old days when our likeliest enemy was the French the most important Royal Navy fleet in home waters was the Channel Fleet. They exercised on the basis that they would be fighting the main body of the French fleet, either in the Channel or in the Bay of Biscay. French naval developments, such as the world’s first ironclad, La Gloire, were responded to promptly by Great Britain.

La Gloire’s commissioning in 1860 was followed by the British commissioning of the world’s largest warship, the mighty 9,210 ton HMS Warrior, in the following year. I have trodden on the decks of Warrior, which has been beautifully preserved in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard – she would have given the Frenchies a run for their money.

By the first decade of the 20th century however it was clear that the enemy in a future war would be Germany, not France. Moreover it was also clear that Germany, which had already invaded France (in the Franco-Prussian War) would probably do so again. Whilst the Royal Navy never went so far as to introduce croissants for breakfast, thank goodness, the Admiralty made plans for fighting the Imperial German Navy alongside the French. For a period of nearly 40 years, ending with the Battle of Oran in 1940, the French were our allies, difficult though that is to conceive now.

The battleground for the anticipated clash between the British and German fleets was always going to be the North Sea. German battleships were cramped and uncomfortable (a factor in the 1918 naval mutiny, which helped precipitate the collapse of the German Empire). Unlike the Royal Navy, their crews lived ashore when not at sea. They were quite unsuited to the North Atlantic – essentially the German High Sea Fleet (note the singular) was a North Sea Fleet, not a high seas fleet at all. Naval strategy dictated the need to find a new naval base, sufficiently far from Germany to protect the Fleet against a surprise attack, the sneakiness of our community partner the Hun not being underestimated by the Admiralty. That meant Scotland.

Well in advance of Germany starting the war in 1914, the Admiralty selected the great anchorage of Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands. Over 125 square miles in area, Scapa Flow is one of the greatest natural anchorages in the world. By 1918 it housed the most powerful fleet there has ever been, the British Grand Fleet, which of course included Admiral Hugh Rodman’s fine American squadron.

The Grand Fleet was so powerful that when in 1916 Admiral Jellicoe surprised the High Sea Fleet in the Battle of Jutland, crossed its T and opened fire, a murky and misty evening was transformed almost into day. Confronted by the terrifying sight and sound of over 200 main battery guns hurtling thousands of tons of steel and high explosive a minute the German commander, Admiral Scheer, turned and ran.

In fairness he couldn’t have done any differently if he did not wish to lose the war by nightfall. The German Navy has always practised retreating assiduously (no offense, boys) and again in fairness (I am nothing if not fair to the dastardly Hun) Scheer’s 180 degree battle turn was superbly executed.

Sadly, Admiral Jellicoe had an exaggerated fear of a massed German torpedo attack out of the gloom, compounded of course by the smoke of fifty mostly coal-burning battleships and battlecruisers steaming at full speed and drifting clouds of cordite. He held off pursuing Scheer until daybreak, a strategy which overlooked the possibility of German spies in the Admiralty blocking accurate intelligence from reaching him about Scheer’s line of retreat.

Unable to sink British battleships in combat the Hun towards other methods, using German sympathizers in Scotland. At 2320 hours local time on Sunday 9th July 1917 the mighty 20,000 ton St Vincent class battleship HMS Vanguard blew up in a devastating explosion, killing 843 of her crew of 845, including a Japanese observer, Captain Eto. The men were murdered.

The Board of Inquiry was never able, officially at any rate, to determine the cause of her magazine explosion. Theories about raised temperatures in the magazines because some boilers were online and not all her watertight doors were closed, the ship being in harbour, fail to take account of the Royal Navy’s extremely tight magazine regulations. (These were later extended to hangars in British aircraft carriers, which is why no British carrier has ever sunk from fire.)

The Vanguard was blown up by an IED, probably in one of her 4 inch magazines, which would cause sympathetic detonation of her 12 inch magazines. It is one of World War 1’s dirtiest and darkest secrets. I have no doubt that the leadership of the SNP are aware that Scotch nationalists were responsible. Interestingly the Royal Navy made a huge show of honoring the men of the Vanguard on the 100th anniversary of her sinking.

                                                           HMS Hood

In 1941 SNP activists placed an IED on board the battlecruiser HMS Hood, again in Scapa Flow. This time it was detonated by remote control from KMS Bismarck as part of the German plot to unseat Winston Churchill. The traditional explanation for Hood’s loss – plunging fire at long range – is a nonsense. The final range at the Battle of the Denmark Strait was no more than 16,000 yards. What’s more Vice-Admiral Sir Lancelot Holland was closing the enemy fast – Hood was after all the world’s fastest capital ship, capable of over 30 knots.

Photographs taken from the accompanying heavy cruiser KMS Prinz Eugen show Bismarck’s Bruno turret guns well below maximum elevation. Moreover the forward turret (Anton) wasn’t even pointed at Hood. Very obviously Admiral Lutjens knew that his opponent was about to be blown up. There is no way that he would not have directed his entire main battery at such a powerful opponent, with 8 15”/42 caliber guns, broadly matching his own (the British Mk 1 fired heavier shells, but at a lower velocity).

As that fine naval historian Norman Friedman (we have met) points out in his magisterial work The British Battleship 1906-1946 (Seaforth, 2015) Hood was radically redesigned after the Battle of Jutland. In effect she was the world’s first fast battleship. Her magazines were nearly as heavily protected as Bismarck’s, thousands of tons of additional armor having been worked in to the original design. Hood’s design was heavily influenced by theory that the battlecruisers lost at Jutland had been hit by plunging fire. As Friedman points out they were actually lost because of dangerous magazine practices adopted to speed up the rate of fire.

The efforts to increase the rate of fire were a mistaken lesson from the Battle of Dogger Bank, where Beatty’s powerful battlecruiser fleet had been unable to annihilate a German battlecruiser squadron, much to Beatty’s frustration. The reason for the failure was nothing to do with rate of fire, but rate of hitting. Thanks to the German spy David Lloyd George advanced, gyro-stabilised, fully synthetic fire control equipment, permitting guns to remain on target whilst the ship maneuvered, had been denied the Royal Navy and handed over to the Hun.

That is why German gunnery was generally better in World War 1 than the Royal Navy’s, despite the latter’s better opportunities for training. (The Germans were understandably nervous about leaving port, in case they got their feet wet.) When the High Sea Fleet finally surrendered all of its fire control equipment was carefully removed. Lloyd George of course was still in power.

The rapist conundrum

The trigger for the crisis was the conviction of double rapist Isla Bryson, who is, as you might imagine, a bloke. However he’s claiming to be transgender. You guessed it – ‘she’ was moved to a women’s prison! The idea of a bloke in a dress, complete with willy, being housed in a women’s prison, in this case HMP Cornton Vale, only has to be stated for its absurdity to be apparent.

Nicola Sturgeon and SNP, already tied up in knots over a gender recognition bill, which the British government has very sensibly vetoed, tied themselves up in even tighter knots trying to justify the move, before forcing a reversal. Bryson was transferred to a male prison, HMP Edinburgh. The damage however had already been done.

Prisons can be violent and unsettling places. Having been locked up, as a gay man, in a Category B prison, I speak from first-hand knowledge. Women are absolutely entitled to be housed in prisons of their own. Under no circumstances should they be expected to share accommodation with a male rapist, whatever gender they are claiming to be. Women prison officers are also entitled to a safe place of work.

The whole issue of gender self-recognition is fraught with difficulty. Aside from any other consideration some men derive sexual pleasure from dressing up as women, J. Edgar Hoover being just one. I have absolutely no problem with this, although you won’t find have any dresses in my wardrobe. Autogynephilia however is a long way removed from gender dysphoria.

As all y’all know I am a social liberal, but that does not mean that I espouse every daft, trendy lefty theory going. If a person has a willy they are biologically male. If they force themselves upon women and are convicted of rape they should go to a male prison. Only if their male genitalia have been surgically removed should they be housed in a women’s prison, but of course that wouldn’t be for rape, assuming that their offence was committed post surgery.

Even then care needs to be taken. Males tend to have a greater lung capacity and greater muscle mass than women, which is why having transgender women compete against women in sporting events is so unfair. Transgender women could pose a real threat in women’s prisons. Whatever their crime (in my case none, of course!) prisoners are entitled to decent treatment. In particular they are entitled to feel safe. Loss of liberty is punishment enough, without loss of life and limb to add to it. And yes, I have sat in a cell whilst prison officers moved the body of a fellow prisoner (on another floor) off the wing in a body bag. At least one prisoner was murdered by his cellmate (albeit on a different wing) whilst I was banged up in Wandsworth.

I try to practice what I preach. No prisoner asking for legal help was ever turned away from my cell. I didn’t waste time feeling superior to men who were sent to prison because they had actually committed their crimes. I tried to fit in. At any rate I formed a number of friendships and although threatened (never from fellow prisoners on my wing) I was never actually attacked.

The balloon

Well done to the Raptor boys from 1st Fighter Wing at Langley – nice shooting with the Sidewinder! Well done too to Raytheon on the all-aspect AIM-9X version, which has 90 degree off boresight capability and is a lovely bit of kit. I’ve visited the plant where they make them, in Tucson, AZ. Raytheon are lovely people. I just don’t know how they do it for the money! At a measly $400,000 a missile the AIM-9X represents outstanding value for the US taxpayer dollar.

My query however is why a missile was used at all, indeed why wait until the ChiCom spy balloon had crossed the coast? The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is equipped with a gun, the excellent M61A2 Vulcan rotary cannon. Moreover the aircraft has a ceiling of 65,000 ft, presumably higher still with zoom climb. Why not put a few holes in the balloon with the cannon, allowing it to sink gently to Earth?

Exactly how many people does the Pentagon think there are in Montana anyway? It’s not Manhattan. The good folk in Montana are pretty patriotic in my experience (hi General!) and I am sure wouldn’t mind too much if a Chinese spy balloon came to rest on one of their trucks. If the truck were damaged I’m sure that the Air Force would always buy them a new one, American  made of course. (I don’t think they go in for that many Japanese trucks in Montana.) In the meantime I sincerely hope the pilot’s allowed to paint a red-colored spy balloon on the side of his (or her) Raptor! Four more and he (or she) will be an ace.

The Turkish Quake

There is reporting that Monday’s 7.8 Turkish quake was triggered by a SHEWS weapon. I suspect that’s right, probably retaliation by Germany for Turkey’s blocking of NATO expansion. Watch that video of a little four year old boy being rescued and tell me that I’m wrong to call for the classification of Scalar High Energy Weapons as Weapons of Mass Destruction and the complete dismantling of the existing German system.

You can forget the early figures for the death toll. It’s already 25,000 and climbing. Sadly whatever the final figure is it won’t be enough to get the Cabinet Office, DNI or the EU to move on SHEWS. They’re that far gone, I’m afraid.

                  This week’s TV review: Happy Valley, Series 3, BBC 1.

Happy Valley was probably the British TV event of the year, and it’s only February. Series 1 and 2 were broadcast in 2014 and 2016 respectively. The title was inspired by the amount of drugs being distributed in the Calder Valley in what used to be the West Riding of Yorkshire. The star is gritty gran Cath Cawood, brilliantly played by Sarah Lancashire. There are a number of Bad Guys, not counting the Chief Constable, but the principal meanie, so pathological with respect that he could be a Cabinet Office official, is murderer Tommy Lee Royce, played, again superbly, by James Norton.

In the final episode however Royce displays some humanity. It’s doubtful that he would be happy with knocking over 25,000 innocent Turks and Syrians in an earthquake, for example, so he probably wouldn’t make Cabinet Secretary. Since it’s not been shown yet in the States (I hope it is) I won’t spoil the plot. If it’s not on cable try and stream it. It’s high-quality television drama and well worth watching.

Burt Bacharach (1928 – 2023)

This week sadly has seen the passing of the great Burt Bacharach. Very few elevators in the Western world have not played at least one of his songs. He came along way from Kansas City. He was a lot better than a composer of elevator music of course. His compositions were technical masterpieces, displaying a real mastery of his craft. There was no doubting his musicianship.

A regular theme of this column is that it is not wrong to be popular. He was a much-loved songwriter because he wrote great songs. He will be remembered, not for decades but for centuries to come. Rest in Peace Burt.

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Michael Shrimpton

Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.

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