Catriona Selvester resigns from Fresh Start Foundation

Yesterday morning Catriona Selvester posted a letter of resignation from the board of directors of the Fresh Start Foundation:

The question on many people’s minds on hearing this news was, “Did she jump or was she pushed?”

Certainly, we’ve been doing our best on this blog to point out the disparity between the stated aims of the Fresh Start Foundation and the behaviour of some of its directors.

Clever Cat though, had clearly anticipated that we might wonder, and kindly filled in the details for us:

Riiiiight. This makes total sense.

The thing is, if she quit a month ago, the electronic filing would have gone up on the Companies House site shortly thereafter.

And unfortunately, we’re still left with a few burning questions, such as “if she quit as director a month ago, was she (until yesterday morning) still a director of FSF, with all the responsibilities of that position?

If she quit a month ago and Companies House wasn’t immediately notified, as they are meant to be, what were her fellow directors playing at?

We could also ask what she was doing “confirming” her resignation at 1:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, but that almost seems excessive.

 

Oh, and one more thing, ma’am…

Cat’s resignation wouldn’t have had anything to do with an email received by several BBC Scotland journalists last week, would it? As we understand it, the letter noted, in part:

In brief, Janine Rennie, who heads Wellbeing Scotland, is also on the board of directors of the Fresh Start Foundation. David Scott, who is a regular correspondent for the conspiracy site “UK Column”, is a founding board member of Fresh Start, and in June was appointed as a director on the Wellbeing Scotland board.

Another very troubling member of the FSF board is Catriona Selvester, aka @calamiTcat (Twitter), aka “WildCat Scot” or “Cat Scot”, whose online activities consist primarily of promoting anti-Semitism, homophobia, and above all, belief in SRA. She maliciously trolls any who don’t believe in her, and has been responsible for videos such as ‘Glasgow Bin Lorry Bollox, Parts 1 and 2’, in which she claims that the tragic crash which killed six people in December 2014 was staged. Throughout the videos, she chuckles away to herself, and seems to find it all very amusing.

Another example of the sort of conspiracy nonsense Ms Selvester peddles can be found here: https://www.scribd.com/document/384289848/Bloody-Royals-the-X-Factor

The Fresh Start Foundation has attempted to position itself as an alternative to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, which excluded Wellbeing Scotland from official status in November 2017. One month later, Ms Rennie joined the board of the FSF. Shortly thereafter, FSF began planning a ‘travelling road-show’ to various communities in Scotland, with the goal of attracting adult survivors of child sexual abuse as participants.

This is alarming in view of the fact that FSF offers no trained support, no discernible confidentiality protocols, and no mandate to connect sexual abuse survivors to the police. In fact, they openly state in the above blog post that they don’t trust the police, and propose instead to bring cases to ‘freeman on the land’-style ‘common law courts’.

I believe the public has a right to know that one of its trusted mental health organisations is intimately linked with a group which promotes blatant conspiracism, and which stifles criticism by falsely accusing people of belonging to a Satanic cult, committing child sexual abuse and/or cannibalism, etc.

Mmm…no, on second thought, probably not.

After all, Cat says she quit a month ago of her own volition. And as we all know, she has never told a lie.

Care for a biscuit with those sour grapes, Cat?

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