Archive for April, 2023
At the edge of the deep blue sea 76
So a week and a bit after the deadline, this arrived.
And it’s not quite what you were told before.
Inside The Cult 161
In June of last year, I started work at Transport Scotland. It wasn’t the best job I’ve ever had. It was pretty much an entry-level post and it was only a temp gig through an agency, but after spending almost six years out of the workforce following a bout with cancer, two frozen shoulders, and chronic knee and hip pain, it was a huge relief just to be earning my keep again.
Of course, June is Pride Month, and Saltire (the Scottish Government’s intranet) was full of news and blogs about “LGBTI+” issues.
Also on the Saltire front page was a prominent invitation to two training sessions to understand the issues facing these groups: “LGBT+ Awareness 101” and “Trans 101”.
These were both run by the LGBTI+ Network, one of several “affinity networks” for civil servants belonging to different groups. With the GRR Bill on the horizon, and having heard stories about how difficult it had been for gender critical groups to get a hearing from the Government in relation to it, I was very curious to hear what this training involved, and I signed up to attend via Teams.
The first session was “LGBT+ Awareness 101”. This session was fairly inoffensive. The content regarding gay people was about what you would expect, and the T+ stuff was clearly biased, but not terrible.
However, the tone of the event suggested quite strongly that you weren’t meant to disagree with anything that was said. Towards the end, when questions were invited, I typed my question into the chat:
“How does the Scottish Government handle conflicts between TERFs and trans people?”
And there my troubles began.
Whatever else may change 161
Scottish politics might be a binfire floating down an overflowing sewer, but it’s nice to know there are at least a few things that are reliable constants, and one of them is that George Foulkes is an idiot.
But while his tweet is wrong, it’s not VERY wrong.