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?”
While idly browsing Twitter this morning, we made a startling discovery triggered by the SNP leadership election, and it was this: nobody in Scotland really knows what the nation’s law on abortion is.
It was prompted by these two tweets, both of which appear to be true:
The thing they agree on is that Humza Yousaf has just declared that he wants to change the law around abortion so that women can abort babies in Scotland solely on the grounds that they don’t like which sex they are. And that seems like something that should probably be bigger news.
But until this morning we’d regarded Kate Forbes as a decent consolation prize – no plan for indy, but at least someone who’d lead to the withdrawal of the toxic Scottish Greens from government and probably a mass exodus of the SNP’s Twitler Youth, leaving the party in a better place to rebuild for the future.
And after her disappointing chickening-out from the vote on the Gender Recognition Reform bill, we’d been impressed at the fortitude she’d shown by carrying on in the contest after the (justifiable) furore around her views on abortion and equal marriage, and her combative showing in Tuesday night’s STV debate.
Erin Lux, the co-convener of the extremist SNP affiliate Out For Independence, is the ultra-woke Canadian activist who tried to have Forbes kicked out of the election for “transphobia” almost as soon as she’d declared her candidacy.
OFI, whose membership is measured in dozens, has a disproportionate influence on policy but a microscopic percentage of votes in the election. The chances of any of its members ever voting for Kate Forbes under any circumstances are less than nil. She could have waded into the crowd and decapitated Lux with a chainsaw for all the difference it would have made to the number of votes she’s going to get from OFI.
But Forbes still folded like a deckchair in a hurricane.
If you’re talking about “transwomen”, you’re almost always talking about people with a fully intact and functional penis. More than 95% of people who identify as trans have NOT undergone any genital surgery, and that’s a fact that’s still not widely understood.
Last month this site ran an article entitled “All The Nice Greens Love A Rapist”, and two days ago the Scottish version of the party officially confirmed it.
Last month Wings broke a story about a “survey” being conducted by dozens of primary schools in the Aberdeen area in which children as young as nine were being asked about their sexual orientation and “gender identity”.
We read some harrowing tweets this week from an Edinburgh SNP activist. Sensitive readers should look away now, as the following article contains potentially triggering information about the wild and lawless streets of [checks notes] Corstorphine.
So this is interesting. Last week we were about to release some results from our latest Panelbase poll when events intervened. Naturally we’d asked a few questions about gender issues, and one of them concerned the Scottish Government’s potential legal challenge to the UK government’s use of a Section 35 order to block the Gender Recognition Reform bill.
There were three options in the question, and as luck would have it the three potential new leaders of the SNP each advocates a different one.
The SNP constitution states that a leadership election should take place over a period of four and a half months. Having not had one in almost 20 years, the SNP are now to conduct one from start to finish in the space of four and a half weeks.
The voting period of two weeks (who needs two weeks to vote after three weeks of debate?) means that it’ll be over just a week too late for the party to be able to hold its “special democracy conference” to determine its independence strategy for the next couple of years, but also that the new leader will be in place just in time to file a legal challenge over the Gender Recognition Reform bill before the April deadline.
(Something the party president Mike Russell publicly called for today, in an apparent attempt to influence the outcome of the election. Indeed, he called for candidates not to go back on ANY of the outgoing leader’s policies, which rather invites the question of why they should bother electing a new leader at all.)
Chas on Response Level Upgrade: “I assume that you would include the esteemed professor in the group that seek to ‘polish their own reflection?” Jun 16, 13:58
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: “Another critic of poot killed. We don’t have to look far to see real oppression, real tyranny, real denial of…” Jun 16, 13:48
Southernbystander on Response Level Upgrade: “It’s a famous quotation from a quintessentially Scottish film, as you know, Nothcode, and a silly play on words of…” Jun 16, 13:23
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: ““It’s clear that the Americans love the Scots” It’s wonderful what you can imagine if you pretend no Americans are…” Jun 16, 13:11
Ebok on Response Level Upgrade: “‘Trying to bring all those figures under one umbrella is always going to be a doomed enterprise…’ Evidently, my sarcasm…” Jun 16, 13:09
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: “Perhaps you have missed those occasions when “real folk” exemplar and champion, Northy, self-identified as a thousand year old, space…” Jun 16, 13:03
Confused on Response Level Upgrade: “your reading comprehension does you shame, as usual” Jun 16, 13:02
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: ““word-salad nonsense” Brilliant. But not for the reason you will assume.” Jun 16, 12:51
Northcode on Response Level Upgrade: ““It’s shite being Scottish (Fanni)” You must be very proud of your magnificent contribution to this thread’s ‘conversation’, Inglis. Racism…” Jun 16, 12:50
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: ““independence not as a matter of politics but as a matter of national culture; which is what we see in…” Jun 16, 12:48
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: “Wow! A raft of educational and informative posts since 10 AM this morning, mapping out the route to Indy, along…” Jun 16, 12:44
Northcode on Response Level Upgrade: “Well, that’s very kind of you to say so. However, I couldn’t care less about England’s self-inflicted woes and am…” Jun 16, 12:39
Northcode on Response Level Upgrade: “Aye, Alf, it is a joy to see Scots fans enjoying themselves and showing Scotland in such a magnificent light.…” Jun 16, 12:33
Confused on Response Level Upgrade: “The cry of the middle class everywhere seems to be : I’VE GOT A GOOD JOB – THE SYSTEM WORKS…” Jun 16, 12:22
Spartan 117 on Response Level Upgrade: “The above groups you list are part of the Soviet-style State Culcha Engineering who’s aim is to tell us and…” Jun 16, 12:13
Alf Baird on Response Level Upgrade: ““the complete failure of the members of his illustrious roll call” Fanon explains independence not as a matter of politics…” Jun 16, 12:03
Spartan 117 on Response Level Upgrade: “A good post Northcode that sums up my perception also of the political classes and their supporters both in the…” Jun 16, 11:49
Northcode on Response Level Upgrade: “Watch out for this bunch… the cultural-NGO-creative class. Because whether they know it not not this is the layer of…” Jun 16, 11:44
Southernbystander on Response Level Upgrade: “‘It’s shite being Scottish’ (Fanni)” Jun 16, 11:30
Northcode on Response Level Upgrade: “I have been moved to pen my deeper thoughts on Scottish independence after reading the Mark Saunders piece that was…” Jun 16, 10:55
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: “Memmi to the rescue! You haven’t addressed Ebok’s point, Alf, which is the complete failure of the members of his…” Jun 16, 10:30
Aidan on Response Level Upgrade: “Whilst there are some serious and competent people on that list (e.g. Joanna Cherry) there are equally quite a number…” Jun 16, 10:28
Southernbystander on Response Level Upgrade: “You’re imagining a Springtime for Hitler scenario, hmm yes, it could be a disaster, securing the Union forever. Maybe in…” Jun 16, 10:25
Alf Baird on Response Level Upgrade: ““our latest convert: George Galloway” Yes, in a colony even ‘the more assimilated native starts to become uncomfortable with events’…” Jun 16, 10:08
Cynicus on Response Level Upgrade: “your list omits our latest convert: George Galloway.” Jun 16, 09:32
Hatey McHateface on Response Level Upgrade: “@Southernbystander I note you completely ignore the issue of religion. Yet religion is the most important characteristic of any person,…” Jun 16, 08:20
Captain Caveman on Response Level Upgrade: “Oh do fuck off, you thick fat twat.” Jun 16, 07:21
Aidan on Response Level Upgrade: “Have you actually seen this above? “James”, who has never posted anything that hasn’t been demonstrably and obviously false is…” Jun 16, 06:52