Normally she's pretty sensible, but in this case I just can't get my head wrapped around this bollocks:

Nicola Sturgeon apologises to people accused of witchcraft (BBC)

Nicola Sturgeon has offered a formal apology to people accused of witchcraft between the 16th and 18th centuries, many of whom were executed.

The Scottish first minister said she was choosing to acknowledge an "egregious historic injustice".

It is thought 4,000 Scots, most of them women, were accused of breaking the Witchcraft Act between 1563 and 1736.

I can fully understand such apologies to people who died within living memory (whose friends and relatives may still be alive). I can also understand them to racial or minority groups who have been disadvantaged through discrimination since. But I can't understand such an apology to people who have been dead for over 200 years.

Or are there massive numbers of highland covens who've been persecuted ever since?

Or is the witch vote is so vast in Scotland that she's seriously courting it.

Or could it be that she herself is... nah.

And when am I going to get an apology for the discrimination I suffered from those christian bastards? (Every morning at school, grovel to the lard and yes I have read their big book of fairy tales because I was fucking forced to!)

And I think there are a few apologies owed for atrocities like the Harrying of the North that those Norman gits perpetuated.

Seriously, isn't there some kind of statute of limitations for this sort of thing?

Edit: Yes, I do know that it's just gesture politics - but it's just a bit of a weird thing to highlight when there are far more current women's issues that could be addressed.

Perhaps pressure from Wiccans who would like to be a recognised religion??

In years to come when historians write about the new coming dark ages I wonder if 2022 will be in every history book as the year the West fell again? Don't get me wrong I'm all for universal rights and that but with the wider political malaise and legalisation of what appears harmless but could grow into unfathomable evil/stupidity as these things can?

aufbahrung wrote:In years to come when historians write about the new coming dark ages I wonder if 2022 will be in every history book as the year the West fell again? Don't get me wrong I'm all for universal rights and that but with the wider political malaise and legalisation of what appears harmless but could grow into unfathomable evil/stupidity as these things can?

You realize that witchcraft doesn't actually entail the possession and mastery of dark magic, right?

Spearthrower wrote:
You realize that witchcraft doesn't actually entail the possession and mastery of dark magic, right?

You mean J. K. Rowling lied to me?

Religion does not have to hold legit supernatural power to have a Aztec remove your heart to please the gods. Same with the supernatural in witchcraft. It does not need to be true to be dangerous. Indeed I am considering a career as a Witchfinder General if society continues to dumb down and there is a need for my calling.

aufbahrung wrote:Religion does not have to hold legit supernatural power to have a Aztec remove your heart to please the gods. Same with the supernatural in witchcraft. It does not need to be true to be dangerous.

Witchcraft contains no elements involving removing organs or harming any humans.

aufbahrung wrote: Indeed I am considering a career as a Witchfinder General if society continues to dumb down and there is a need for my calling.

I'm not sure that you meant what you've written there.

Spearthrower wrote:

aufbahrung wrote:Religion does not have to hold legit supernatural power to have a Aztec remove your heart to please the gods. Same with the supernatural in witchcraft. It does not need to be true to be dangerous.

Witchcraft contains no elements involving removing organs or harming any humans.

aufbahrung wrote: Indeed I am considering a career as a Witchfinder General if society continues to dumb down and there is a need for my calling.

I'm not sure that you meant what you've written there.

Things change fast, the collapse of industrial society which some predict is at hand means the rapid return to medievalism at best. I've nothing to lose in wearing a big hat and saying I can determine if someone is a witch...it's just a job, five or six days a week. I'm sure it'd keep my mind active - healthy. Also it would be ethical. My duty as a vanguard of the new post-industrial civilization would be to see it didn't fall any further into backwardness. I know the ones I've experienced who hold back human progress - the paper shufflers, the astrologers and the downright ignorant dumb. All would be given a straightforward classification of 'witch' quickly limiting their damage potential...

So charging women with an entirely fictional crime presumably resulting in them being imprisoned and/or executed is a logical way of preserving a high watermark of civilization?

I'm pretty sure that inventing fantasy crimes for which people get harmed isn't really any direction but right back to dumbfuckistan.

But anyway, the number of witches killed back in the bad old days amounts to tens of thousands - I know a lot about England's criminalization of witchcraft as it was the first ever essay I had published - but I know very little of Scotland's history in this regard - a cursory Googling suggests the number of 'witches' killed in Scotland would be in the hundreds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sco ... nt_of_1597

So I think that stands as being a sufficiently deplorable history for a modern leader to comment on, to raise awareness of, and to gesture politic at considering the victims were overwhelmingly women.

Thou shalt not suffer a Christian to yammer, who remains ignorant of their ideology's abhorrent actions.

aufbahrung wrote:I've nothing to lose in wearing a big hat and saying I can determine if someone is a witch...

This guy must be the ultimate witchfinder...

Shady character, if ever there was.

I want that hat for when I go outside of Maine. It's hot out there! I could possibly fit it in my van diagonally or strap it to the roof.
Maybe Sturgeon is vying for Stevie Nicks' endorsement. I kid.

Macdoc wrote:Perhaps pressure from Wiccans who would like to be a recognised religion??

If this happens I will declare myself a wiccan or whatever the formal process is. I can see loads of benefits

Seabass wrote:

aufbahrung wrote:I've nothing to lose in wearing a big hat and saying I can determine if someone is a witch...

This guy must be the ultimate witchfinder...

A peculiar method to enforce social distancing.

Sturgeon's main problem is that she's a fucking gobshite.

Carry on.

aufbahrung wrote:Religion does not have to hold legit supernatural power to have a Aztec remove your heart to please the gods. Same with the supernatural in witchcraft. It does not need to be true to be dangerous. Indeed I am considering a career as a Witchfinder General if society continues to dumb down and there is a need for my calling.

Your calling is already being met in the form of your indispensable role as the metric for what constitutes 'down'.

Is she also going to apologise to those found guilty?

Or only the accused?