The Land Of Make-Believe
So it’s now official: in Scotland the words “sex” and “gender” mean the same thing, except when they don’t, and if you give a man a piece of paper because he’s asked for one, with no sort of checks whatsoever, then it literally turns him into a woman, except when it doesn’t, unless it does.
Or put more concisely: the word “sex” in Scotland now has no meaning at all.
On the direct legal reading, feminist group For Women Scotland have lost their judicial review against the Scottish Government. But today’s ruling by Lady Haldane at the Court Of Session is a poisoned chalice for Nicola Sturgeon’s administration.
It makes clear that Sturgeon’s repeated insistence that her new gender laws do not grant anyone significant new rights is a bare-faced lie. They grant men the right to change their sex – not just their gender – on request, and thereby to freely and without challenge access any women’s spaces where there is not an EXPLICIT statement in law that only biological sex qualifies (which is basically almost nowhere).
Lady Haldane justifies this by asserting that lawmakers never draft sloppy law:
That is a view that will induce great hilarity in any seasoned observer of the Scottish Government, and in particular those who have had cause to examine the Offensive Behaviour At Football Act (now repealed) and the Named Persons legislation (now abandoned due to being impossible to implement lawfully), let alone the new gender law which is basically a bagful of enormous gaping holes knitted together with air.
Lady Haldane’s judgement appears to blatantly contradict itself. In the first screenshot of this post she says “their acquired gender, and thus their sex”, a flat unequivocal statement that the two are the same thing – something she had explicitly disavowed just a few paragraphs earlier.
In short, the judgement is gibberish, which is perhaps inevitable given the subject matter. But that will only serve to greatly amplify the very considerable and blindingly obvious problems that the gender reform bill will create in terms of the UK’s internal borders, where a person will be one sex in Carlisle and the opposite sex in Gretna.
(Lady Haldane appears to actively celebrate the ambiguity of the law, which one might normally expect to be something that judges would find alarming and unhelpful. Some of us, however, have prior experience of the law in Scotland regarding the accurate meanings of words to be fluid and irrelevant, as illustrated in The Bewildering Case Of Humpty Dugdale, and were somewhat less surprised.)
It now seems almost inconceivable that the UK government will not act to strike the bill down as being an unlawful interference with reserved legislation, as it was already threatening to do before Lady Haldane’s ruling set its contradictions in stone.
Perhaps, of course, that’s exactly what the First Minister wanted all along – she’d get to burnish her woke credentials AND generate a grievance against Westminster, while also slithering neatly off the hook of having to deal with the trainwreck of appalling consequences the reforms would create. It would certainly be wholly consistent for someone whose rule has been all grandstanding and zero substance, as anyone still waiting for a new ferry or a publicly-owned energy company will be aware.
If not, it’s Scotland’s women – the actual ones – who will pay the price.
What an utter dog’s breakfast of a law. Now Lady Haldane has written a confusing and confused decision. I was feeling guilty for hoping that the UK parliament would throw this piece of gibberish out; now I am hoping they throw it out for the sake of Scottish women and girls.
No votes SNP.
Just curious. If a woman becomes certified as a man, does that mean they no longer qualify for paid maternity leave if they get pregnant and give birth? Do they no longer qualify for IVF, smear tests, breast scans and all the other health options available to women? Do they no longer qualify for free sanitary items?
Are there even any countries left that:
1) hasn’t allowed males to colonise the female sex class?
2) won’t threaten to imprison a lesbian for stating that a male isn’t a woman?
3) won’t compel its citizens to subscribe to gender identity theory as a belief on pain of marginalisation or worse? So much for diversity and inclusion. Don’t say England. Look what happened to Kathleen Stock et al.
4) won’t murder or shoot females in the genitals for demanding human rights?
If so, I’m taking my daughter and applying for asylum. I never thought I’d see the day I’d want to leave Scotland but here we are.
If the UK Government doesn’t strike the leglisation down. Then the option of a referral to the Supreme Court is available. Ordinary people having to raise money again to thwart the waywardness of the Scot Gov and Holyrood. It wasn’t meant to be like this.
@ Craig Elliot
This previous article doesn’t answer your specific question but highlights related issues arising.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Having dragged myself up off the floor having heard this news, I have moved swiftly into the ‘apoplectically fucking furious’ stage of response.
I’m also angry with myself for ever believing (a long time ago) that Sturgeon had an ounce of credibility or a genuine purpose in securing Indy for Scotland.
I can’t believe I’m now at the stage where I’m desperate for Westminster to intervene in Scottish politics – Sturgeon has reduced me to this and I will never forgive her.
Sorry for the ranty swears on your page, but I am fucking raging.
“Craig Elliott says:
13 December, 2022 at 1:48 pm
Just curious. If a woman becomes certified as a man, does that mean they no longer qualify for paid maternity leave if they get pregnant and give birth? Do they no longer qualify for IVF, smear tests, breast scans and all the other health options available to women? Do they no longer qualify for free sanitary items?”
They’ll qualify. The tiny number of females who have a problem with being female are the reason women/females are now being referred to as birthing bodies, menstruators, uterus owners et al.
For a ‘man’ to become pregnant and give birth, clearly their dysphoria (if they even suffer from it) isn’t all that bad in the first place.
Its surely off with their heads time.
The principles of statutory interpretation are a thing and unfortunately or not LH’s judicial hands are tied on that one. The judiciary won’t see themselves as asserting anything, rather they are being guided by these principles. End of story.
As for the UK striking down the bill itself, well that’s the devolved settlement we live under. If Sturgeon has been stupid enough to lead the non-binary types and others up the garden path, then maybe they will come to understand how bad her administrations have been. With a few years of hindsight now, more and more people can see that whereas Sturgeon might be politically savvy, she is next to useless at governing. So rather ironically where unionists and Indy people might agree is that for the same of good goverment, Sturgeon should retire to the country and produce another book that no-one will read…something like “How I dropped my half of the sky” a political memoir by Nicholas Sturgeon…
I keep asking what dire consequences of similar gender reforms have ocurred in, eg, Ireland or Portugal, but no-one ever comes back with anything.
Is this because
a) there have been issues but they are very hard to find because they are kept out of the media
b) the legislation contains safeguards that the Scottish legislation does not.
c) the legislation is similar but is implemented sensibly and pragmatically
Both sides of this bitter argument have failed to make their case by looking at countries that already have this legislation in place. Has anyone from either side of the argument done any research?
“I keep asking what dire consequences of similar gender reforms have ocurred in, eg, Ireland or Portugal, but no-one ever comes back with anything.”
Well then neither they nor you have been looking very fucking hard.
link to gript.ie
As if the word biological was always the most obvious and necessary descripto to include, rather than a superfluous tautology when applied to legislation about sex, until a week past Tuesday, when english ceased to be.
That woman is a moron, on the face of it
In school we learned about the Indiana Pi Bill of 1897 which legislated for squaring the circle, among other mathematical impossibilities.
But that never actually became law.
Amazing to think that in 100 years people will be able to look back at our generation and say “That was the time when the Scottish Parliament passed a law saying that men could become women, legally, for all purposes, merely by saying so.”
Please, wake me up when this is all over.
“They’ll qualify. The tiny number of females who have a problem with being female are the reason women/females are now being referred to as birthing bodies, menstruators, uterus owners et al.
For a ‘man’ to become pregnant and give birth, clearly their dysphoria (if they even suffer from it) isn’t all that bad in the first place.”
You miss the point. If they’re legally male, they’re men. And men don’t get maternity leave.
Tx for the link. Disturbing reading.
Here’s a recent incident from Portugal, which is sending biological men to womens’ prisons:
link to portugalresident.com
You highlight the conundrum perfectly, Rev., and the complete lie that access to a GRC is merely an administrative matter. We have known since its inception that this Bill will introduce self-ID IN LAW, where, previously, the lies of Stonewall have led to self-ID in fact. If you can be identified as a woman IN LAW, no door can be closed to you. Every female space, right, service, job, medical treatment, etc. is yours. However, that is not the worst of it, because we know from Stonewall’s dealings that they don’t actually care whether a GRC is there or not: they intend, and always, intended, to destroy the 2010 Equality Act and its protections for women and girls. That will not be the end of it either because Stonewall aims to bring down all laws that stand in the way of the total, complete and whole Queer Theory agenda’s march to its ultimate destination.
The SNP has lied through its teeth about this Bill and its implications. If autogynephilic/fetishistic/paraphiliac men are allowed IN LAW to flaunt their deviance and perversions in public, how can they, subsequently, be charged with lewd behaviour for such things as public masturbation, flashing and so on? You would end up with some being charged and others not for the same offence. The solution? Tear down the prohibitive laws. The SNP/Greens’ aims appears to be to have females humiliated by sexual perversions in public, as non-consenting participants in someone else’s w**k fest. Children? Yes, why not? Animals? Sure. Come one, come all, if you’ll pardon the pun.
It does not appear to be enough for the SNP/Green axis, and Labour and Lib Dems, backing them to the hilt, to put females in the way of rape and other serious sexual assaults. Oh, no. Women and girls must be subjected on a daily basis to fetishes and other perversions as they go about their business. They could go to work in the morning and be faced with an adult baby yelling that it requires its nappy to be changed – by a female, of course. Or a furry could be sitting at the next desk and you mustn’t giggle or show distaste, but simper about how stunning and brave he is. Or the four foot 10 wee guy with the strange-looking beard and round feminine behind who was Elsie only a month ago must be validated as a geezer, even when the geezer decides he and his squeeze, Big Flo with the huge feet and three-day shadow, want a little one and he gets himself pregnant by the womanly Flo.
If you think, folks, that this is all a laugh, a joke, think again. Self-ID IN LAW will change the entire ball game. Be prepared, all you handmaidens who salivate over the latest version of Desperate Dan in a frock and lippy, to be sidelined on all manner of fronts. Thought you might apply for that women’s bursary to eke out your university award? Forget it. A ‘trans’ woman has beaten you to it. Had your eye on that career in female medicine reserved for women? Oops, it’s gone to that six foot three gal with the hands like shovels. That’s your future, girlies, and you did it all to yourselves, as you sniggered at the elderly, jealous ‘hags’ who have no empathy and refuse to ‘just be kind’.
Real women in Scotland need to get tough on Sturgeon and show her that she and her compliant bodies which receive funding for pushing this agenda, cannot push their rights aside to allow men to suddenly decide that they are women and enter their safe spaces.
Lady Haldane is a disgrace, she knows fine well this is utter nonsense and it will lead to some women and children ending up being abused by men dressed as women claiming to be women and entering their safe spaces, as well as prisons.
This is a clear cut case of the government and the judiciary acting together to push through laws that the people don’t want.
Humpty Dumpty got it right!
Can you imagine where we’d be if she put a tenth of the energy wasted on this into independence?
Scots Renewables: are you being obtuse deliberately? Why don’t you access the Rev’s archives? Graham Linehan? Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull? Karen Davis, of You’re Kidding, Right? (American). Women in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Norway (where a man identifies as both a woman and disabled – he’s neither, but has a sexual fetish for disabled females), Iceland… The list goes on. All of these countries have been experiencing problems with this total c**p. As the Rev points out, the ramifications and implications of this legislation will be damning for many laws, for welfare, for female-specific awards and grants, etc. The NHS cannot sustain the numbers now coming forward for treatment, and this treatment, surgery and/or hormones/puberty blockers are going to cause a generation of young people to require medical interventions for the rest of the natural lives. Above all else, the deliberate mutilation of children is evil. There is no other word for it. Pure evil – and mostly to validate sexual perversion in adult men. The daft wee lassies who get their breasts removed are suffering under a mass delusion similar to anorexia, cutting, etc. and these need to be dealt with by counselling and support, not automatic surgery and/or puberty blokers and cross-sex hormones. No one actually knows what the long-term effects of these will be, but we can hazard a guess.
@Scotsrenewables
Scottish Women’s Groups have done research on what’s happening abroad, but it’s not easy. In some countries, yes, the GRC is just window dressing and confers no extra rights (though they are working on changing it). But in countries where a GRC renders a man 100% legally female, he disappears from the records as male. One way of approaching this is to look for countries where sexual assault with a penis (what we call rape, but not all legislations do) BY WOMEN has increased – we know these are really men. But if it’s just categorised under “sexual assault” these men are invisible: all we see are rates of sexual assault by women apparently on the increase. Or we can look for places where women in prison are being impregnated by other ‘female’ prisoners. But the data are very hard to come by, so research has to rely on newspaper stories and whistleblowers, and this is easily dismissed as ‘anecdotal’. Ireland is a good example of mismanagement – Google ‘Barbie Kardashian’ for an example.
Lady Haldane seems able, like the White Queen, to believe in six impossible things before breakfast. I thought these learned judges were supposed to have razor sharp reasoning skills which could cut through the the crapola of contradictory havers and tendentious special pleading?
Standards in just about everything during Sturgeon’s dire tenure seem to be circling the plug-hole.
Beam us up, Scotty…
@Elle
Don’t look at Spain, the current socialist government here is pushing through the same nonsense.
Aged 16: too young to smoke, drink, drive or vote; old enough to change legal sex.
Fucking ragin’.
There’s a protest at HR on the 21st when they’ll grease up that bill and slide it through parliament like a vaselined non-binary pig.
Also, who is up for applying for a GRC?
Go through the process (it’s a fiver well spent) and then just as they’re about to issue it, cancel it. Then apply for it again.
Thousands and thousands of applications and emails asking them why they haven’t issued yours yet and you’ve got hurty feelz over it.
Let’s fuck them up with their own rules.
The word gender first came into general use, in order to clarify – ‘sex’ having both the meaning of biological sex and sexual intercourse.
I suspect Lady Kangaroo/Haldane (I’ve self identified her) is incorrect in her judgement that it’s always been plain, therefore they must have meant what she says they mean now.
The meanings of words can and do alter over time, as do political or religious uptakes of words.
Have a gay day now folks.
I’m away back to trying to defrosting my water pipe before it breaks.
In an independent Scotland we’ll be putting the heating back on.
The original drafters did not need spell out the difference between biological sex and gender identity because it was obvious and self evident, then and now. There is a legal phrase for this which I forget. Judge is merely following fashion not the law.
Given this judgement, if you’ve not already done so, please sign the following petition
link to petition.parliament.uk
“Update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic “sex” is biological sex”
Already has over 41k signatures, mine amongst them. Needs 100k to get a debate in Westminster.
What I cannot understand is why so many “Real” Women actively support and endorse this madness. Why do so many Women ignore the impact on Safety, Sport, Careers etc of their own sex? They don’t just stay neutral, they actively support and defend the TranCult insanity.
With 52% of the voting power in Scotland they allow a handful of “Men” to reduce them to a sub class of their sex.
Baffled by the silent acceptance of this insult by so many.
Republicofscotland @ 2:28 pm
“This is a clear cut case of the government and the judiciary acting together to push through laws that the people don’t want.”
True, RoS, tho that’s no exactly a recent phenomenon, is it – an maist Scots wirnae awfu blithe aboot thon 1707 Act o Union aither, ensclaving a hale Scots naition and fowk and aye leavin thaim exposed tae aw kin o ower strynge furrin cultural elites an influences, e’en langages, vailyies an weys o daein awthing.
Whit’s gaun on here shuirly isnae Scottis, is it?
@panda paws 3:03pm
Thanks for the reminder. Just signed the petition.
So signs in changing rooms and toilets need to state “biological women”?
Geoff Anderson.
Like these women who look as though they couldn’t give a toss, and see the woman brow beating that sniveling little shit Sturgeon, as, well.. as though she’s doing something wrong when infact she’s standing up for women.
link to twitter.com
In 2010, who ever imagined that “sex” might need the adjective “biological” so that anyone would understand what was meant? The whole thing is so fucking dishonest. The TRAs decide to use words wrongly, then they tell the dictionaries that that’s how the word is used now so they have to include it, then they claim that proves that the law is wrong because words don’t mean anything any more. The only reason there’s any confusion about this crap is because the GRA is such a terrible piece of legislation, which doesn’t even define the thing that’s being recognised and says that a piece of paper literally changes a person’s sex. The only resolution now seems to be abolishing the GRA and starting again. Nobody has the right to force other people to lie, and that’s all the GRA does.
Scots Renewables
“Both sides of this bitter argument have failed to make their case by looking at countries that already have this legislation in place. Has anyone from either side of the argument done any research”?
A strange statement. There are plenty of articles and stories relating to the horrendous consequences of this ideology taking hold around the world. Here are just two I picked from hundreds.
link to open.substack.com
link to dailywire.com
Republicofscotland says:
13 December, 2022 at 2:28 pm
…Real women in Scotland need to get tough on Sturgeon and show her that she and her compliant bodies which receive funding for pushing this agenda…
——
Not just women, real men need to start fighting to protect women’s rights too, because of this court ruling today ANYONE can declare themselves to be ANYTHING, apply for a piece of paper under GRR and by the tick of a pen in law they have turned into whatever the hell they declare themselves to be.
This is an open door for all those evil bastards that live in society to walk into places they should never be and do whatever they want – the single-sex toilets at the school your daughter uses? Evil men can now say they are women and walk right in without challenge – because they will have a piece of paper saying they are something which is biological impossible.
If you think that is scary, then we have Humza’s Hate Crime Bill which gives those evil men who have just walked into the same women’s toilet as your daughter uses (which is a protected space for biological women under the equality act’s single-sex exemptions), the legal right to take your school and your daughter, your wife, even you to court for commiting a “hate crime” by telling them to get the fuck out of there because they are a man in a woman’s single-sex space.
The GRR with the Hate Crime Bill will strip biological women of their rights and prohibit them from defending themselves.
Both of these bills need to be destroyed and the people who put them onto the statute book should be banished from ever standing as a politician in Scotland.
Loved the penultimate paragraph, I 100% agree.
There is a small part of me – a cantankerous, sociopathic part – that wants everyone to stand back and say – ‘on you go Nicola. You write it, we’ll vote for it.’ Then just sit back and watch her squirm. It might even cause her to resign because she’d have nowhere left to go… and then the non-sociopathic side of me considers the consequences.
IMHO, Sturgeon’s agenda was never to actually pass the legislation. Instead, it was a convenient excuse to gerrymander the composition of the SNP NEC to be able to guarantee her a majority there and thus instigate a series of changes to the party’s constitution and rules to turn it into an effective autocracy, thereby disempowering members and delaying independence. After carefully analysing her performance ahead of the 2014 referendum and since, I have reached the reluctant conclusion that she’s a closet unionist.
Interesting ruling, we can work with this. It proves that Gender Recognition Certificates do give extra rights to holders, something Sturgeon denied. It will put massive pressure on her over the next week. But the ruling also protects vital sex based rights like same-sex forensic examiners – and no-one will be able to Sue JK Rowling’s new centre any time soon.
Another reason to shut Holyrood. (Never thought I’d type that…but I’ve run out of reasons to keep it open – much like my running out of reasons to vote SNP).
@scotsrenewables I don’t normally criticise any poster but, needs must.
There have been numerous reports on the appalling treatment of women in countries with self ID.
Just cos you’re going all ostrich doesn’t means it’s not happening.
The thing that makes me damn angry is, it’s so easy to find out
Women in US prisons are being given contraceptives cos the authorities have accepted they will be raped by TIMs.
Barbie Kardashian, a totally mad TIM, threatened to rape and murder women b4 being put in a womens prison in Ireland.
Katie Dalatowski, a paedophile who has already sexually assaulted two children, was placed in Corton Vale after attacking a man in a men’s prison.
There are many more, so stop pretending there is not a problem
Well Scotland will become a perverts’ paradise. The Thailand of the UK and Europe. Interesting that for the purposes of this legislation you are Scottish if you live in the RofUK, but were born in Scotland or have Scottish parentage. However for the purposes of the Referendum you had to live in Scotland to vote. So I (born Glasgow to a Scottish father) but living in England was disenfranchised (as was the good Rev). But hey, I can hot foot back home and change my gender in a twinkle.
Why didn’t they call the act the SRA Sex Recognition Act.
Would that have alerted people to the lunacy of it all too early?
A GRC recognises your gender but allows you to change your sex on your birth certificate.
Your acquired gender does legally mean your sex.
I don’t understand this bit.
where a person will be one sex in Carlisle and the opposite sex in Gretna.
I don’t understand it for two reasons I don’t know
1. How sex is determined in England?
2. If the altering of birth certificates is a reserved or devolved matter?
There is just so much I don’t understand about this madness I could be here all day asking question.
Do you have to officially change your name before you are issued with a SRC (aka GRC)
And all this time Sturgeon has the Hate Crme legislation passed and ready to pounce
You just know its acoming after the GRC nonsense goes through
The only solution I can see to all of this lunacy is to repeal the GRA 2004.
Over to you Rachel Hamilton.
It turns out there is a campaign to RepealTheGRA
link to facebook.com
There is no human right to falsify legal documents based on belief
Slight problem with this is that a lot of people confuse the GRA with Sturgeon’s GRRB
Katie Dalatowski is in a country without self-id and so is Karen White
Does it say anywhere that you can only change sex…I mean, Gender once because I am thinking of changing my gender every 3 months just too fuck up the system.
When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean, said Nicola Dumpty, take independence for example.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
And those styled politishun
If the GRA 2004 is repealed then there can be no GRRB
This is one way the UK Gov. can stop Sturgeons GRRB
I’m signing.
link to petition.parliament.uk
Repeal the Gender Recognition Act 2004
We call upon the Government to repeal the Gender Recognition Act 2004. The Act makes it impossible in practice to keep biological men – who are statistically responsible for most violent crime – out of single sex spaces for women.
More details
We call upon Government to repeal this law because we submit that:
Ruby, and your point is?
I not going to pile on a certain poster. But offer him this perspective. My wife has asked me, what would I do, in the event of she and the apple of my eye was confronted in their safe space of the female toilet by a transmale?. Have a think about that. This leglisation would be responsible for the consequences. See these auld self deprecating females on this blog they have been doing a brilliant job. Because they know the answer to my wife’s question.
To all of you people who have supported NS and SNP towards an independent Scotland and all that it entails, especially bad laws. May you hang your heads in shame. I hope none of your women folks, mothers,sisters, wives, daughter’s,granddaughters suffer as a consequence of this abhorrent ruling.
Talking of Scottish law and ICYMI here’s just another multi-multi-million pound fraud conducted using a Scottish Limited Partnership (SLP). This one with a nice Russian bent – obviously they’re far too busy to get round to addressing these horrendous ‘instruments’:
link to nakedcapitalism.com
Scots Renewables
I think there are around 150 people who have applied nationwide, though I can’t back this up with any sources so it might be completely wrong.
Quite a few swimming pools, gyms etc have mixed changing rooms as well as men or women only. They are generally used by families where dad takes the daughters swimming, etc.
Given cultural norms here, I think any intact male would be taking their life into their hands entering a women’s changing room without the express permission of all those present.
Up to now the trans thing has very limited visibility to the general public though it’s heavily promoted in schools. It’s a hot-button issue for older folks but neither side has any real grasp of what it is or what it means, other than young folks are generally for it.
Fox had an lgbtq+ awareness campaign on their two channels Fox TV and Fox Movies that promoted the link to abclgbtqia.com website. I don’t know who paid for that but it was likely not the group that created the site, http://www.ilga-portugal.pt – the ad campaign was simply too slick for the crappy website it promoted.
You do see green/purple haired teenagers with extremely misogynistic t-shirts with wording in English – it’s debatable whether they really understand the wording or a just wearing it for lols.
It will probably become a more political issue as the disgruntled right start to make more inroads in politics but for now it’s not much of an issue other than bemusement on either side.
Adrian Kent says:
13 December, 2022 at 4:39 pm
Talking of Scottish law and ICYMI here’s just another multi-multi-million pound fraud conducted using a Scottish Limited Partnership (SLP). This one with a nice Russian bent – obviously they’re far too busy to get round to addressing these horrendous ‘instruments’:
———
Original article published by David Leask (yes, that one) on opendemocracy – an outfit that takes donations via 3rd parties from the UK establishment, including the Tory party and the Labour party.
The fact they publish propaganda drivel under the moniker of “open democracy” is a piss-take of the higest order.
FYI, this is the same David Leask who is involved with the Integrity Initiative, an outfit directly linked to the UK FCDO – the UK deep-state security services, search his name + integity intiative.
David Leask is also an out and out Russophobe – you can read that as racist towards people of ethnic Russian origins.
Lorna Campbell
You missed the goldmine this will be for employers. Hire a couple of trans women and pay them the male rate. Then you can pay the menstruators and the birthers as little as possible as you’ve demonstrably signed up 100% to equal pay for equal work and can prove it.
Wonder if this means I can use place of birth to become a newfrenchoman, move to Russia, retire at 55 and claim a pension from Finland 10 years early (hopelessly corrupt social security systems notwithstanding)
Just emailed my MSP, Michael Mathieson telling him that should he vote through the GRR bill now the lie has been exposed he wont get another vote from this household.
Thats it, no other words really mean anything now.
Action over words now.
It’s a sad day for Scotland. Once a prime mover in the Enlightenment, now the laughing stock of the world. Well I won’t bow to this shit.
Rev wrote:
“Perhaps, of course, that’s exactly what the First Minister wanted all along – she’d get to burnish her woke credentials AND generate a grievance against Westminster, while also slithering neatly off the hook of having to deal with the trainwreck of appalling consequences the reforms would create. It would certainly be wholly consistent for someone whose rule has been all grandstanding and zero substance,”
I would love to believe Sturgeon is such a great strategist in our fight to take back our right of self-determination. But, alas, experience has taught us ‘The Rev’ is being far too polite and may just be crediting Sturgeon with an intelligence level posted missing now for the best part of 8-years. Arguably more because Sturgeon’s own legal career was a short-lived failure too. Either that or he really wants that speech writers job. Crawler! lol!
Ruby says on 13 December, 2022 at 4:23 pm: “If the GRA 2004 is repealed then there can be no GRRB. This is one way the UK Gov can stop Sturgeons GRRB. I’m signing.”
link to petition.parliament.uk
“At 10,000 signatures, government will respond to this petition”
“At 100,000 signatures, this petition will be considered for debate in Parliament”
Tinto Chiel says on 13 December 2022 at 2:52 pm: “Standards in just about everything during Sturgeon’s dire tenure seem to be circling the plug-hole.”
Very much like Sturgeon’s own failed attempt at a legal career.
Seeing as there may be new readers since Wings got back in gear.
Here’s a bump of this related Gordon Dangerfield article.
link to gordondangerfield.com
Stuart MacKay says: 13 December, 2022 at 4:55 pm
IIRC, you had mentioned you are living in Portugal.
The idea that the cultural characteristics of a countries society having an impact on how self-ID worked in practice had occurred to me. Could what you say be true and would stop self-ID from being abused on a widescale basis?
I obsessions from time to time about the cultures of other countries and go down the rabbit hole of weird and wonderful facts of them.
My current obsession is Japan. A few of the things I had learned about that country is that it is a country that has a large population packed into a relevatively small landmass. It means in large urban areas, personal living space is small and people are packed tightly together. They also have a culture of shame/public face where opinions of others whether real/perceived means a lot to them. Lastly, Japan has a legal system which is akin to hostage justice. The link about it is here:
link to bbc.com
Not sure if self-Id has been implemented in Japan abut is fair to say that due to cultural and legal factors they could keep abuses to a minimum.
Could also the ability of the authorities to monitor potential abuses be a factor as well?
The below wiki page gives the list of cuountries with number of police officers per 100k habitants:
link to en.wikipedia.org
It’s a crude way of measuring law enforcement by country but given that Portugal and Spain has more police officers per population than in the UK, could Self-ID be abused less there than here in the UK?
Could that be the ones of the reasons why we don’t hear of any problems from these types of countries?
A senior judge’s pronouncements on important distinctions are inconsistent and arbitrary? This just verifies what some of us have been saying for decades: we have a legal establishment dedicated to serving the mother country by keeping the colony in the manner of mushrooms. There is no law that cannot be overturned by a foreign court, with “Scottish” judges (and politicians) acting as cheerleaders.
Stuart MacKay
“It will probably become a more political issue as the disgruntled right start to make more inroads in politics but for now it’s not much of an issue other than bemusement on either side.”
I can’t believe you’ve just said that.
Women are incarcerated with sexual predators in prisons.
They can’t escape them.
link to news.stv.tv
Women have been seriously injured by TIM’S in sports.
link to bjj-world.com
This is as serious as it gets for women and girls health and safety.
Rest assured more court cases are coming, we are not giving in to a bunch of perverts
@cringe “judge du jour”?
Geoff Anderson says:
“What I cannot understand is why so many “Real” Women actively support and endorse this madness. Why do so many Women ignore the impact on Safety, Sport, Careers etc of their own sex? They don’t just stay neutral, they actively support and defend the TranCult insanity.”
My problem too: the card-carrying feminist-but-straight females in my extended family simply close their eyes to the creepy chicks-with-dicks aspect of it all and accuse me of all sorts of unregenerate Thoughtcrimes as a result, under the guise of their being “kind” to these utter chancers.
And I should add, I am acquainted with a person who has gone through the full difficult transition involving chemical/physical procedures to achieve the desired “gender”, and have only admiration for the fortitude displayed.
BTW is “gender” not just the sex-word for prudes? Think it started out that way.
Susan 5.49: “It’s a sad day for Scotland. Once a prime mover in the Enlightenment, now the laughing stock of the world.”
My thoughts too. To what a shallow shit-show intellectual lightweight Nikla has reduced our rational reputation and inheritance.
Never mind: she “hearts” books, usually those which struggle to reach middle-brow/Richard and Judy status (apologies for any author trapped in such a classification).
She needs a good dose of Flann O’Brien, if only to inject some much-needed humour and sparkling wit into her growling wee brain. Och, sorry, forgot: Flann was a man.
On reflection, Flann was The Man 🙂 .
The prediction is Argentina to win, and the bet (which is a different thing) is Argentina 3 – Croatia 2
There a curious element to the Constitutional Claim of Right issues being revitalised by SALVO, and the legal principle of salve jure cujuslibet, where the people were not only in effect sovereign above the King, but sovereign too above Court of Session. We, the people, can demand to have the last word, and have it.
I’m on my favourite hobby horse again; with an appropriate degree of coordination, we have the means to impeach Sturgeon, impeach a Holyrood Assembly which kneels before Westminster, and perhaps not impeach the Court of Session, but compell them to throw out a law which we, the people, do not want on Scotland’s Statute. I think that might effectively count as an impeachment.
If we want to disrupt UK Government, and derail this Self-ID insanity, making the UK and Vichy puppet assembly run by Gauleiter Sturgeon, unworkable, and thirdly, give the Court of Session a shot across the bows, then we should get these three impeachment’s into the water and running simultaneously.
Are you listening Joanna Cherry?
I couldn’t care less that Westminster “White” Sovereignty ties itself up in knots and drags Holyrood down with it. A Scottish Convention of the Estates, a Liberation Congress, and a Constitutional Convention can all, should all, be convened under explicitly “Red” Sovereignty, in other words draw their potency from Scotland’s Claim of Right.
Scotland’s Auld Constitution, the Claim of Right, the salve jure cujuslibet principle, and Common Good societal philosophy can stop this madness. It has the power to stop it. “WE” have the power to stop it.
Um ah double closet ah wiz ah double wardrobe before lady Haldanes judgement baith doors ur tight shut
@breaks that would be blissful.
Bring these arrogant wankers down.
Please let it happen
@Hatuey 7:01pm
You made me laugh. I will stick a pound on your bet. You have to be right at some point. I will go to my online bookie and tell you what the price was. I will donate the winnings to For Women Scotland.
Brilliant analysis and what many women and women’s groups have been saying for a very long time. We know this judgement is case specific but it’s tentacles reach out far and wide. We won’t stand for it.
@Hatuey 7:01pm
Put a pound on your bet, got 40 to 1. So that’s 40 pound minus the stake to For Women Scotland. We are coming to the end of serious business for women. Nothing said about the accountability of leglisators of their actions. That’s for the future but slipping it by in the run up to Christmas is not a good plan. Enjoy the game.
Liz @6:41pm
I was talking about the specific situation in Portugal. I didn’t make that sufficiently clear. Sorry.
@PacMan I think the background cultural values set the stage. Portugal is rather traditional but not so conservative as you’d expect. Men are men and women are women and both want to be seen as such. There’s a big gay scene and lots of gay tourism without any fuss. So the trans debate hasn’t really taken off here. The few that are visible don’t raise any comments. What will be interesting to see is whether the heat is turned up for political reasons. Chega (translation – Enough), the right wing party I alluded to previously might try to use it as a wedge issue but that’s unlikely. The sizeable, independent minded people of Roma descent here are the target of their ire. In general I think the Portuguese are too easy going. What is taking across the border in Spain will be more interesting.
If only a fraction of the time spent on this by Sturgeon had been spent on pusuing independence …..
Jesus fucking Christ.
I can’t believe the FM is such an absolute moron that she’s contrived a situation where I actually WANT the UK government to intervene in Scottish affairs with the full force available to them.
Maybe independence isn’t a good idea. Half the country are servile morons, the other half are indoctrinated cultists.
We need a second Scottish enlightenment before it would be a good idea again, I reckon. The fruits of the first enlightenment have wilted entirely.
“Not just women, real men need to start fighting to protect women’s rights too”
Anonymoose.
Yes of course you are correct, we all (men included) need to stand up for real women’s rights, rights that Sturgeon appears determined to impinge upon.
Breeks 7.03
The usual rambling shite we come to expect from you.
I await, with interest, the ‘WE’, whoever they are, demanding the last word and stopping whatever it is you and the ‘WE’ want stopped. Why don’t you simply hire a solicitor and get him/her to do it for you and the ‘WE’?!
Stuart MacKay no worries, thanks for the response
Stuart MacKay says:
13 December, 2022 at 4:55 pm
Scots Renewables
I think there are around 150 people who have applied nationwide, though I can’t back this up with any sources so it might be completely wrong.
Get real ya clown! Typical SNP apologist reply.
Thanks to all who contributed stories of abuse of real women by transwomen.
The atticle on pushback in some European countries is interesting. A certain amount of common sense seems to be raising its head.
Obviously not in Scotland though.
The gotcha is it doesn’t matter how many/few request GRCs, you’re not allowed to ask them to show them as proof so any pervert can masquerade. Though womanface is just a masquerade, like blackface.
Also, how long does my ‘on moderation’ regime last? Not complaining, I should not have let myself be provoked, but it is a PITA
That is exactly spot on.
Croatia didn’t show up, George. Can’t believe they haven’t scored.
This World Cup has cost me a small fortune.
As an overachiever, I’m not used to underachieving like this. Anyone got any advice on coping mechanisms? John?
The YSI which has produced a few rockets like Enema Roddick, Rhiannon Spear & Josh Minging, now there is a new idiot in town. Ladies & Gentlemen here is the utterly useless Lauren Oxley. Another better that has fallen off the SNP Twitter yout production line. Barely out of school and fresh out of last job at Dunhelm, she is now a Councillor who now has ambitions to being an MSP. Just look at this tweet where she thought she could be a total legend by slashing off JK Rowling but gets her arse handed back to her and she then switches off comments. Fucking idiot.
link to twitter.com
If the GRA 2004 act was repealed by the UK Gov would it still be law in Scotland if so could the SG repeal the GRA 2004?
@Hatuey 8:47pm
No worries it was only a pound. I have agreed with my wife a four figure sum if Women For Scotland take this issue to the Supreme Court. A pity about Modric a great player.
Instead of redefining what a woman is, perhaps instead, we should be looking at redefining what a Judge is.
The criteria for defining what a woman is, is quite straightforward.
The criteria for defining what a judge is, is becoming bizarre, unfathomable and unsettling here in Scotland.
Conniving Conspirators have their identities protected while innocent men are smeared and vilified, arbitrary charges for an unspecified crime on the whim of a judge are used to jail journalists trying to expose a conspiracy in the public interest, a Lord Advocate apparently collides with the conspirators, and bias is not a resigning matter. The Conspiracy which failed to jail an innocent man as a rapist and sex offender, but were frustrated by the diligence of a jury, now conspire to do away with jury trials for rapists. It seem journalists are already denied trials by jury, and indeed appeals.
An our new Lord Advocate charged to defend Scotland’s Constitutional Rights doesn’t happen to believe in those rights herself.
What a bloody shambles.
Scotland an International laughing stock. Perhaps the Court of Session and Faculty of Advocates need to put their fucking house in order. I know from first hand experience the Scottish Courts are extremely sloppy, casual and indifferent about ruining innocent people.
Who judges the judges? Are they asleep at the wheel too?
Interesting article about the facts concerning the case of Irish teacher Enoch Burke who has been reported to be jailed for not using a pupils preferred pronouns:
link to 12ft.io
She knows how to hand pick her judges does Oor Nikla:
Right Kind of School:
Class of 1984 and Former Head Girl St George’s (private) School, Edinburgh
We want to recognise and congratulate former Head Girl Shona Haldane, who was installed as a Senator of the College of Justice on 22nd February 2021. This appointment is made by Her Majesty the Queen on the recommendation of the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.
Right University:
She graduated with a law degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1987, and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1996. She was appointed as a Queen’s Counsel in 2010.
And of Course Right Training in the corrupt Crown Office:
She was appointed by the Advocate General for Scotland as Standing Junior Counsel firstly to the Forestry Commission in 2001, and then to the Home Office (2008-2011). Between 2010 and 2016 she served as an ad hoc advocate depute with the Crown Office.
= Right Result
Tinto Chiel @ 6.59pm
I can’t comment on the womenfolk in your family as you know them best. However, I do recognise some of the features of female behaviour that I encountered growing up as one of them.
It is something I can only comment on almost as an outsider, having never really joined. Some other feminists might also recognise the frustrations of struggling against this all-pervading female desire for approval. It has nothing to do with intelligence but everything to do with belonging and being accepted, with which many women are often neurotically obsessed.
Some feminism seems always to be blaming men as individuals(and I am sure you brought your daughters up to be questioning and not submissive little helpmates) but in the end, unfortunately, their peers have a stronger influence all their lives in the social sphere. You might think that their views on society at large would broadly align with yours but society’s sway over women at a deeper level has a stronger effect.
Without being aware of it, men of impeccably liberal ideas of equality might not notice, or think it a perfectly natural expression of their femininity or personality if their daughters play mostly with girls’ toys and as teenagers begin the kind of behaviours that most fathers would prefer to ignore as ‘not their business’ – I’m talking experimenting with make-up, shopping with their girlfriends etc. After all, if their mothers are endorsing it, why would fathers be concerned?
Yet, have you ever considered that this female obsession with image and appearance is society driven, reinforced by their peers and the ever-present media arbiters and might have been oppressive to some of us, who disliked its suffocating underlying uniformity? If it is an inherent part of being female, as the trans ideology insists then why do people like me, biologically female, feel that is not an intrinsic part of being female?( And no, I never wanted to be a man either or claim to be ‘binary’ – whatever that is.)
As I said, I never quite joined and always felt like an interloper being forced to adopt a guise that didn’t fit me as an individual. Eventually I realised that that’s what I had to be – an individual who was a human being first, female second but couldn’t be that artificial construct called a ‘woman’.
To belong within the social hierarchy just like all the other social hierarchies, whether class, race or sex, people will embrace the behaviour that gains them advantage. In the sex class you will be rewarded for being what men desire. Just as in the other hierarchies, that doesn’t just mean how you look but how you act. From their earliest years, girls learn that being kind, amenable and agreeable (the antithesis of ‘masculine’) will earn them approval. It’s why in every generation, those women who want to change things, often find that their hardest challenge is other women because their being is heavily invested in being the norm. (You find similar problems with warring, incompatible identity battles in the other social hierarchies too.)
Susan: “… The gotcha is it doesn’t matter how many/few request GRCs, you’re not allowed to ask them to show them as proof so any pervert can masquerade. Though woman-face is just a masquerade, like black-face… ” Spot. That was my point. Stonewall doesn’t actually give two hoots about the GRC. It is the principle. They will dare us to challenge them.
Ruby: if the 2004 GRA was repealed at Westminster, it would be taken to be repealed everywhere in the UK because the MPs from all parts would have voted for or against it. If carried, that’s that. The only thing the SNP government in Scotland could do would be to appeal the repeal. If they did that, they would have to show their Achilles Heel on this issue. Imagine Sturgeon laying forth about bad old Westminster: they won’t let us destroy female rights, wah….
Nah. We have to start fighting back properly. No more ‘just be kind’. Time to set up a Biological Women’s Party. Withdraw your votes, ladies, from all the parties who support this tripe and, by implication, do not support your sex class. Call for ‘trans’ men to be treated like men in all things. There must be equality for ‘trans’ men comparable to that afforded ‘trans’ women. Up their wages, disqualify them from maternity leave, put them to construction sites to carry hods up and down ladders all day, if they want to enter the military, give them the same courses, etc. Campaign against the SNP, the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems on this issue and demand that counselling services be offered before surgery or hormones. Cruel? No. This is what the ‘trans’ lobby is demanding. Absolute equality of outcome. Let them show that they are interested only in men, not in women or children except in the sense that they are fodder for the male ‘trans’ lobby. By their actions (and inactions) shall ye know them. Let compassion fatigue set in.
Interesting judgement re the assumption that laws are drafted by intelligent people.
Brought to mind Lord Dennings statement re the Birmingham Six when he refused their appeal:
“If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further’.”
The B6 were later acquitted.
Denning was a fool.
@Gravelli Princip 9:55pm
Congratulations excellent research. However it doesn’t change the judgment. So what will it take it? We have to rely on the UK Government to strike down the legislation or a Supreme Court referral. The latter will take lot’s of resource as has been done in the recent past and by ordinary people. So the despairing thing for me, is Holyrood a functioning leglisator?.
Jesus suffering Christ…no idea when the Cambridge Dictionary changed their definition of ‘woman’ – anyone know?
link to dictionary.cambridge.org
FFS…I have no words, not that words seem to fucking mean anything these days anyway!!!!
“Jesus suffering Christ…no idea when the Cambridge Dictionary changed their definition of ‘woman’ – anyone know?”
Yesterday, as far as we can tell.
The Cambridge dictionary states there are two types of women and men who identify as women.
Then they go on to say
‘More men than women suffer from high blood pressure.’
To be accurate they would need to say.
More men & men who identify as women suffer from high blood pressure than women and women who identify as men.
I would think any statistic referring to men & women while ignoring the sex they were born would be pretty useless.
We could end up with mad statistic like
50% more women are rapists than men.
Anyone know what has happened to the census?
Correction
The Cambridge dictionary states there are two types of women, women and men who identify as women.
Definitely worth signing:
link to petition.parliament.uk
A response to Elizabeth Hagan @ 4.37pm
If you are so interested in apportioning blame you may want to look at who is supporting this reviled legislation , EVERY party in the Scottish parliament is ACTIVELY supporting this legislation APART from the tories who previously supported it as they did in WM but when it was outed to the blue rinse brigade they had a fit of the vapours and it was immediately pulled
The good old tory party have been involved in more SEX scandals than any other party and have never been averse to the kiddy fiddling for which they are renowned but due to their power it has never reached court
And before you go bad mouthing independence supporters many of us with Stuart Campbell exposing the truth have been fighting for this aberration to be BINNED
I would beg fellow wingers to sign the petition that Ruby linked to link to petition.parliament.uk , to force the uk government to RECIND the whole GRA 2004 bill
Let’s show sturgeon that her WM bosses will bring her down to earth
link to archive.vn
What the fk is this referring to?
The colonial outpost expounding the colonial encroachment of the White Sovereignty of Westminster wants to change the white sovereign elements of the colonial Scotland Act, which the colonial UK “Supreme” Court just said it couldn’t legislate upon,
Another circuit of the scenic route gravy train, to celebrate the impotence of Holyrood under Nicola Sturgeon.
FFS. The SNP evolves from a chronic toothache into a festering abscess. Useless beyond belief.
Nicola is proving herself to be as an effective First Minister as she was a solicitor.
Talking of the Humpty Dumpty question, my understanding is that, having sentenced a man to prison for it from a specially contrived court in the Hague, ALL prosecutions under international law for the Lockerbie bombing must fall within Scottish jurisdiction so, amidst all the distractions, it appears (from the lord advocates carefully chosen words) that Scottish justice is either completely in the dark about the ‘extradition’ of Masud or is even more hopelessly corrupt (but nonetheless better at keeping secrets) than the English one (vis a vis its own apparent abduction of Julian Assange).
Hopefully the truth is that its the American system thats been more dodgy than either (or, arguably much better yet, simply that an overenthusiastic Us marshal forgot Scotland existed/ had jurisdiction) since, as attractive as thoughts of a secret Scottish court in Washington may be, the idea that it would create precedent to facilitate fast tracking of the Assange extradition (ie under a subservient English/’UK’ law) should be abhorrent to all Scotsmen regardless.
Interesting that the latest polling analysis from Prof. Curtice. His take based on the polls since the UKSC decision is that the move from No to Yes is statistically significant. The breakdowns show that BOTH men and women are now in favour (53% and 54% respectively). That suggest that even if female voters disapprove of the SNP and/or their extremist and misogynistic policy on TWAW, it hasn’t impacted support for independence. Remember that the majority of women voted No in 2014.
The figures also show that the age differential continues as we already knew – younger generations are overwhelmingly Yes, but over 65’s are 60% No.
Interestingly 23% of 2014 No voters believe the Scottish Parliament should be able to hold a referendum, and 51% of all voters believe the Scottish Parliament should have the ability to hold a referendum without UK government agreement, with only 39% opposed. The anti democratic stance taken by British nationalists may therefore be beginning to jar with some voters, even those opposed to independence.
Worryingly 52% oppose the idea of using the next UK election as a plebiscite, with only 39% in favour. 23% of those who voted SNP in 2019 oppose the idea, so there’s obviously some education and persuasion to be done there, although it’s possible the numbers might be different for a Holyrood election as plebiscite?
Be good to see Rev Stu commission a poll to drill down in to the various plebiscitary election options. It’d be harder for the devolutionists in the SNP to backslide on their commitments if there was clear evidence people supported an early Holyrood based plebiscite.
Overall, depressing as the Scottish political environment seems at present, perhaps the figures give some indication of light at the end of the tunnel?
I think it is currently very difficult to poll people on a plebiscitary election, as few even understand the concept and no-one knows what the exact mechanism would be.
Garavelli Princip @ 9:55 pm
“Right school”
Aye, the ‘Scottish’ unionist establishment and ‘meritocratic elite’ are still mostly ‘selected’ on the private school basis, as it has aye been. That privileged group do also appear to have benefitted from a rather large share of the limited student places at Edinburgh Uni law faculty – as I myself, as a mature student ex state school applicant, found to my disquiet in the 1980s.
A nationalist government might have been expected to change this institutionalised unionist Cultural Hegemony, but has opted to leave it in place. We might therefore imagine an independent Scotland still ‘managed’ by the same unionist elite! That would not be independence.
Fowk cannae ser twa maisters – thay aye luve ane an laith the ither. As Mandela said, ‘social institutions oppress the people’ in the colonial environment, where the native is forced to exist between ‘two psychical and cultural realms’ (Fanon), each holding to quite different ‘values’ and allegiances, as we see here and in certain other ‘judgements’.
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Just completed the latest poll, be interested to see the results! Take it was you that had at least a few in it rev?
Last poll with 56% support for independence included 16 year olds.
The majority of women voted No in 2014.
That sort of statistic may have been valid in 2014 but it is now meaningless.
52% oppose the idea of using the next UK election as a plebiscite
These people probably expect a referendum to be a referendum. Anything wrong with that?
@JGedd 9.56 p.m.: I don’t suppose you have to go full Colin Wilson to feel you don’t quite fit in the world you encounter but your comments on a strong female desire for acceptance seem borne out by my experience of it as an onlooker.
This may be why teenage-girl psychological bullying (so insidious and largely under the radar to a male) has such power because being “othered” by that group can leave a girl isolated and if all you crave is acceptance or fitting-in then its results can be very painful.
Conversely, perhaps a male in a bullying situation (usually merely physical) may even take pleasure in being a kind of a maverick, I suppose, or relish fighting back (literally).
I have also seen it extend into adulthood, where an Abigail Williams type can control and manipulate other young women, supposedly in their fight against the “patriarchy”, while building a career and power-base and at the same time currying favour with the same group of men by dressing or behaving inappropriately (at least in my old-fogey opinion).
Anyway, may main point, which I probably didn’t express clearly, was simply my astonishment that so many women whose general opinions could pretty well be classed as All Men Are Barstewards are the very ones wishing to be “kind” to the male chancers cynically self-IDing to exploit women.
@Viscount Ennui 10.17: yes, that statement by Denning was quite shocking and I have never forgotten it. He should have been immediately and gently led away to some retirement home for the Somewhat Addled but he hung around for quite a while to shore up an establishment which didn’t like to be questioned or challenged (and still doesn’t, of course).
52% oppose the idea? Or maybe they just don’t support the idea.
The subtle difference matters.
Maybe if someone explained the proposition, more would support it. Or, at least, less would oppose it.
The SNP hasn’t done a thing in terms of explaining it. SNP politicians themselves seem confused and uncertain.
Sturgeon is low-profiling it.
Breeks @4.21am.
It sounds like Flynn is trying to charm the indy masses by indicating that the SNP will use the next GE as an indyref, after shooting down the Holyrood route and stating that he wasn’t too keen on Westminster being used as a de facto indyref, troughers don’t want anything interfering with their troughing.
So, Flynn like Sturgeon wants to let a whopping two-years pass us by after letting nearly eight years pass us by to hold an indyref, we must remember Sturgeon’s proposed 2023 indyref was to be a mock indyref and if yes had won it would’ve had no impact whatsoever on the status quo.
We have a perfectly good route out of this prison of a union, and we could be out by next year, but Sturgeon won’t use that route, her MSPs won’t try and compel her to use it, and the YES groups of which they are nearly over 0ne-hundred of, also won’t compel Sturgeon to do the right thing.
That leaves the grassroots of the indy movement and the SNP membership, and the latter looks as though they’ve been cowed into submission.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Those who support the idea of using the next UK election as a plebiscite must support the idea of a politician promising us one thing and and delivering something totally different.
These people probably agree to substitutions in their online shopping and are happy to receive fish instead of ice cream, tampons instead of shaving cream, duck paste instead of duct tape.
link to petition.parliament.uk
Have you signed?
Brilliant analysis and what many women and women’s groups have been saying for a very long time. We know this judgement is case specific but it’s tentacles reach out far and wide. We won’t stand for it.
“BREAKING NEWS: A prominent leader of the British Heart Foundation has conspired to cover-up research linking mNRA jabs with heart inflammation, says British MP“
link to twitter.com
What a world we live in.
@Hatuey
The distinction you make may indeed be a meaningful one. The mass of voters may simply not be that clued up on the various alternatives on offer. They have the precedent of 2014 and decades of being told that a referendum is the preferred route to independence, as well as the way used in other places like Quebec and Catalonia.
Doubtless with more discussion and publicity – and hopefully an actual campaign behind it, people will come round to accepting that if a referendum on the 2014 pattern is frustrated then plebiscitary elections are both valid and necessary.
If the upswing in pro-independence support continues then hopefully supporting for a plebiscitary election will increase and pressure for it happening sooner rather than later might also increase.
No surprise that the devolutionists and Sturgeonites are stonewalling it. Flynn appears to be all over the place on the matter, which gives the lie to anyone who thought he was a new broom sweeping clean, or that he was about to take Sturgeon on. Turkey’s don’t vote for Christmas, so the only way we’ll see progress from the SNP on the issue is if their members force them, or if it starts damaging them in the polls or at the ballot box.
Given current polling I’m not convinced that the SNP have any incentive to do anything different to what they’ve been doing for the past 8 years?
Why let Sturgeon off the hook by accepting substitutions?
Sturgeon promised us a referendum.
She has failed to deliver. She must resign.
And as the Supreme Court overturns this ridiculous nonsense, headlines will read,
“The Union saves Scotland “.
Which sturgeon is fully aware of.
All going to plan…
Make believe #2 in «Great Britain»
“If we want to go to a point at which you can only describe it as entirely built in the United Kingdom, then no car in this country is built in the United Kingdom and no aeroplane is built in this United Kingdom, because modern technology doesn’t work that way.”
Tell that to Norwegians, Koreans etc….may well be that Ukania is become so deskilled and dependent on foreign manufacturers….like Algeria, Tunisia etc.
Hey, when you build stuff you can’t work from home.
link to archive.vn
Another freezer of a day in Scotland, in a country that’s swimming in energy sources yet Scots either freeze because they can’t afford the extortionate energy prices, or they go deeper into debt to keep their homes warm, many Scots with children don’t have the latter option available to them.
There’s no one to blame for the above except Sturgeon, she has allowed the energy firms and a foreign government in England to steal our energy resources when she should’ve gotten us out of this prison of a union, she still can by resigning and collapsing Holyrood to allow an election that can be used as a de facto indy vote, in which a result for independence would allow us power over our own energy sources to a greater degree, and this undoubtably would lead to lower energy prices for Scots.
However, Sturgeon isn’t the slightest bit interested in heating Scots homes or ditching this prison of a union her record as FM on independence proves that she’s done nothing to forward the cause, infact a solid case can be made for the exact opposite.
Self-interest, the party and her own agenda, are what Sturgeon is interested in, the majority of us elected her and her MSPs to get us out of this union she’s broken that promise she has betrayed us, and her MSPs who we also elected to carry out this task have also betrayed Scots, they too aren’t interested in freeing Scotland from this prison of a union.
Neither Sturgeon or her MSPs will sit cold in their homes this Winter, but plenty of Scots and their children WILL, because she and her MSPs have sold us out, party and self-interest in their eyes comes before we the people who elected them to office.
I doubt the YES Groups or the SNP membership, or even Sturgeon’s own MSPs will urge Sturgeon to do the RIGHT thing by Scots and collapse Holyrood to lead to a de facto indy vote.
Meanwhile Scots continue to freeze, or pay through the nose for power, in a land where energy is plentiful.
Here’s the list with the shameful SNP/Green MSPs on it, if you wish to give them a piece of your mind via an e-mail.
link to parliament.scot
And the route out of this prison of a union the SNP are avoiding like the plague.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
And then there’s this lot, no mention of the route out of the union that could see us out by next year, this lot are playing us as well.
link to yes.scot
The benefits of Brexit.
link to archive.vn
¡Ay! ¡Ay! ¡Ay!
¡Muchas gracias, muy bonito señores!
@ Hatuey says:14 December, 2022 at 11:34 am
It’s mRNA Hatuey.
Important to get the basics right, otherwise you just look …
(NRA is something else again. Freudian slip? We deserve to be told.)
Hatuey @ 10:22 am
“SNP politicians themselves seem confused and uncertain”
They are indeed behaving like buffoons, or raither heidless chookies. This is because the party’s ‘pampered bourgeois nationalists’ have never undertaken a reasoned analysis of colonialism and colonial society (Fanon).
They still don’t understand what independence means or why it is necessary. Do they really believe we are in a voluntary ‘union’, despite all the evidence proving Scots and our nation to be exploited and doun-hauden by an aggressive imperialist culture and political ideology – whose intent is to extinguish the Scottish nation and Scottish culture and national identity with it?
Honestly, why do they think Charles III, like his mither, will wear only an Imperial Crown, tho nivver oor ain naition’s Scots croon? An thay SNP MP’s wad nae doot boo doon agin an gie lealtie tae thon Englis doun-hauders an aw. Naw, fowk cannae ser twa maisters.
link to cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com
@ Susan says:13 December, 2022 at 8:07 pm
womanface is just a masquerade, like blackface
Innarestin comparison.
One is just grand, while the other is some kind of outrage against everything holy.
I wonder if they should be aligned?
So that both are just grand, or both are beyond the pale.
Pun intended.
@ Alf Baird says:14 December, 2022 at 12:55 pm
It may be contentious to point out that King Charles is rightful King of Scotland, being just the latest in a royal line extending back earlier than the political union of Scotland & England.
But, if anybody has a better contender with a more deserving line of descent from James VI, lets hear from them.
Every day a school day.
The problem with Scottish politics is indy voters are content to continue voting SNP regardless.
So how does wings think this can be changed?
@ Ottomanboi says:14 December, 2022 at 12:17 pm
Tell that to Norwegians, Koreans etc…
Well, well, it’s a world full of coincidence.
Just took delivery of my new gennie today, after weeks of waiting. It’s a Hyundai BTW.
I like the Koreans and I was congratulating myself on having given the Covid Spreaders two fingers.
But there, in small print, on the label: Made in PRC
Curses, foiled again.
@Ottomanboi
UK government ministers are of course being disingenuous in their responses to the exporting of UK jobs to Spain. As so often in the past, it’s a shell game. It’s an oft repeated pattern in matters of defence procurement, any thought of long term strategic planning is quickly jettisoned in the name of political expediency, immediate cost savings, or to meet a pressing deadline often caused by years or decades of deferring necessary action.
It’s highly unlikely the French or German government would either want to or allow such programmes to be built by foreign yards. So much for the National Shipbuilding Strategy!
Of course building things here might actually end up costing more, which is why large projects going back decades have often been multinational to save and spread R&D and manufacturing costs. Even though such systems often end up having higher unit costs however, they’re still cheaper than trying to develop and build them solo.
They also have the advantage of ensuring spending and the indirect benefits of taxes, and national expertise are retained, and that you don’t end up beholden to other countries for the supply of vital defence equipment.
For shipbuilding however there is really absolutely no excuse for the UK government to be placing orders for vessels classified as warships with non-UK yards, irrespective of the whataboutery involved in saying the majority of the recently announced order will be spent in the UK.
If a women now qualifies as a man officially and UK law does not change the gender back to birth male and female,
Does that mean that the (women ?) that were born in 1950s group have been discriminated against, because they are actually men.
Will there be years of unequal pay, payed back by the Westminster / scottish government to these people that were supposed to be born women,
The new laws in Scotland affect pensions, wages, housing and taxes, are the scottish government going to cough up for past discriminations and present onesif we are now one and the same sex gender and apparently always were, but the government had made an error all these years.
Which law will UK follow?
@John Main
But, if anybody has a better contender with a more deserving line of descent from James VI, lets hear from them.
Why John, ye auld Seumasach! We’ll have you toasting the wee man in his velvet jaiket yet! 🙂
I think it’s been discussed here before: the current Jacobite pretender to the throne – although he’s carefully disavowed pressing the claim – is Franz Duke of Bavaria, head of the House of Wittelsbach, who is also titular King of Bavaria. As he has never married (I believe he’s gay) the direct line of succession passes via his brother Max who had five daughters. The eldest daughter Sophie married Alois, Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein, which makes their son Joseph Wenzel the claimant on his mother’s death.
So a future restored Stuart monarch would be King of Scots as well as Hereditary Prince of Lichtenstein and titular King of Bavaria.
Perhaps post independence we should be asked if we want a republic, a monarchy and in the case of the latter whether we want a Stuart restoration?
“It is estimated only between 425 and 510 people in Scotland have legally changed sex since the law changed 17 years ago. The Scottish Government projects that, if the law changes, 200 to 300 people could apply for a GRC each year.”
link to christian.org.uk
So according to Scottish Govt projections there will be approximately a 10-fold increase in gender changes once the new law is passed.
I imagine the bulk will be troubled adolescents saying their biological sex is the cause of their teenage angst. And changing sex will become the “in” thing to do
Otherwise people of Scotland ask your male friends, relatives and workmates if they plan to be among the 200-300 annually
‘womanface’ lol. That is a great.
Imagine if a white guy identified not just as a woman but as a black woman. So full blackface before getting the lippy etc on. That would definitely put the cat amongst the pigeons. I think their tiny minds would implode as they tied themselves in woke knots. Or better yet if a black man identified as a white woman… that would melt their melons.
When you think about it identifying as black man when you are white man or vice versa is a far smaller leap than identifying as a woman when you are man. Skin colour is relatively superficial in comparison to biological sex.
The whole thing is hilariously nuts.
Alf Baird says:
14 December, 2022 at 9:57 am
Garavelli Princip @ 9:55 pm
“Right school”
Aye, the ‘Scottish’ unionist establishment and ‘meritocratic elite’ are still mostly ‘selected’ on the private school basis, as it has aye been.
============================================
Too true, Alf Baird. And as Alf already knows after Scotland’s betrayal by its lairds and gentry in 1707 destroying the peculiar in Scottish education became an increasingly urgent project for Scotland’s new masters.
for Scotland’s cherished regard of education as George Elder Davie in the Democratic Intellect well recognised:
“…the pride of the Scots …was interwoven with their peculiar academic arrangements as constituting the great evidence and effect of their former nationhood ..the Scots had an almost religious attachment to their inherited ideal of a culture in which the general should take precedence over the particular, the whole over the parts even if (the opposite) should prove profitable to themselves as individuals (involving) a regrettable declension from the highest norms” -Davie p4
Supreme of these “highest norms” was that in return for an education, the recipient was expected to repay with some service to the community. Many did this by becoming school teachers – the Scottish Dominie– responsible for the best educated population in the world for over three centuries. Education was generally free – public schools (and universities) in Scotland were and are public – fee-paying came with the “Englishing” of the system. Bursaries were provided for poorer students.
Writing on the acceleration of this process (of Englishing) by the1830 (Education Reform) Commission, Davie writes:
“The policy here recommended obviously involved a ruthless Anglicisation. Pressure was exerted to force all schools to the pattern of Edinburgh academy” (Davie p58) – consciously founded by Henry Cockburn and Leonard Horner specifically to compete with England’s ‘public’ (private) schools.
So right frae the aff, the Scots system hid tae be dinged soon – neawhar mair sae than in Auld Reekie.
That toun his been ivver syne Inglis in its ‘elite’ private scueels.
There to provide the man(woman)power for the occupation.
Bloody autotext
Should have been:
“So right frae the aff, the Scots system hid tae be dinged doon”
I have no idea what John Main is pointing out regarding mRNA. What I’m seeing includes the “m”. As usual, the important point is lost in a see of nonsense.
If it’s true that a prominent leader in the British Heart Foundation is covering up a link between mRNA vaccines and heart problems, it’s a massive story — it means there is a link. And if there’s a link, we should be investigating and asking how many have been harmed, how many died, and talking about what we are going to do about it.
I listened to Flynn at PMQs. He’s crap. He seems to be trying to distinguish himself from his predecessor by avoiding any talk of independence. I can see the appeal of that, but not talking about it gets us nowhere too. When will they stop playing games and do something that might make a difference? Useless.
Sea*
John Main @ 1:18 pm
“King Charles is rightful King of Scotland”
A wheen o Scots fowk micht say he an thon UKG/SG eejits dinnae uphaud oor constitutional richts awfu weel, an thay’re taes oot.
link to salvo.scot
Only The Telegraph has this story on their front page, sigh.
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command” – George Orwell 1984
Our treacherous FM (Sturgeon) has the cheek to put up a STV link to the Seagreen wind farm on her Twitter feed, possibly in an attempt to make her look good.
link to twitter.com
It boasts of 100 local jobs for Scots, Seagreen is a £3bn joint venture between TotalEnergies (51%) and SSE Renewables (49%), Seagreen will be Scotland’s largest and the world’s deepest fixed bottom offshore wind farm.
SSE is owned by OVO energy, and Mitsubishi has a 20% stake in OVO energy, Scotland has no holdings in the world’s largest wind farm, nor will/has ANY of the turbines been built in Scotland.
Just the other day Alba’s Kenny MacAskill pointed out clearly how Scotland is being robbed of its energy and shafted on the jobs for building the turbines.
link to twitter.com
Scotland is being robbed blind by foreign energy firms and our ain folk are either paying extortionate prices for their energy or they are sitting cold in their homes because they can’t afford to heat them, but our Judas of an FM thinks the Seagreen wind farm is wonderful for Scotland, when Scots will NOT prosper from their own assets.
The insanity drives relentlessly forward heedless of any public backlash.
Why does the Permanent State pursue this demonstrably unpopular., monomaniacal obsession?
Cui bono??
?
The CIA has a classification of associate called “Change agent”. Rather than direct employees these are ostensibly independent individuals who receive covert funding to push a specific agenda approved by the CIA. The general agenda the Change agent concerns themselves with may be approved of or disapproved of by the CIA, the important thing is that the Change agent maintains their specific agenda within the bounds of acceptable thought defined by the CIA.
In 2010, Wikileaks disclosed that long time, prominent, American feminist Gloria Steinem was registered by the CIA as a Change agent. That Steinem was pushing a feminist agenda was a matter of indifference to the CIA, the crucial thing was that Steinem’s feminism remained with limits set by the CIA. It is to be presumed that had Steinem started to draw links between sexual inequality and systemic, class income inequality or the dramatic wealth inequality between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, her funding would have been withdrawn.
Steinem was a pioneer in the post-war wave of feminism. In the context of the time, feminism could be considered “identity politics”.
Identity politics is the Permanent State’s preferred instrument of Distraction, Diversion and Division.
Feminism has since passed rightly into orthodox social discourse. Similarly, LGB has more recently, passed rightly into accepted social constructs.
The Permanent State would wring the last drops of usefulness out of “weaponised” LGB identity politics by the enforced celebration of the Rainbow cult. Rather than allow LGB to pass quietly into accepted normalcy, the Rainbow Unicorn is to be worshiped on pain of social ostracism. Heaven help the Civil Servant that eschews a rainbow lanyard.
Recognising the passing utility of LGB identity politics, the Permanent State had to conjure up from a near nonexistent reality, a new IDENTITY. And so, we have seemingly from nowhere, ubiquitous Trans identity. Ubiquitous because the spectrum of Trans has been purposefully and disingenuously set to include all and sundry.
That resistance to the “T” adjunct should come from long time activists within LGB (eg. Cherry and Hanvey) is something I suspect the Permanent State had not anticipated. Nonetheless, some of those with genuine history within the LGB community as opposed to those duplicitously riding and abusing the bandwagon (Sturgeon) can separate the few, genuine cases of gender dysphoria from the avalanche comprising the broadband definition of Trans. This all encompassing spectrum includes bad faith actors, sexual deviants, the mentally ill, victims of social contagion, immature individuals in thrall to the cult of Woko Haram and children seduced by the odd, seemingly spontaneous trend within msm to declare Trans as somehow “special”, “brave”, nebulously “virtuous”.
The Permanent State cares not a jot for the welfare of individuals caught up in its Machiavellian, social engineering. If LGB and genuine T individuals suffer from the inevitable backlash resultant from compulsory, public supplication to the Rainbow Unicorn Totem, then “tuff luck” (says they).
Identity politics is the means by which the Permanent State ensures Power remains unalterably in the grasp of the self perpetuating, elite, managerial caste.
An excellent article posted by Grouse Beater on John Jappy, and Jappy’s article, on how Scotland sends far more revenue to England than is spent in Scotland, in other words Scots are NOT subsidised.
Another reason why Westminster will never willingly let Scotland go. Mind you, they need not worry their woman in Bute House will never attempt to get us out of this rancid prison of a union.
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
Garavelli Princip @ 2:51 pm
“on the acceleration of this process (of Englishing) by the1830 (Education Reform) Commission”
Thankyou. Yes, this process is part of what we now know from postcolonial theory to be ‘cultural assimilation’, which was introduced as ‘English Studies’ in India first, in the 1820’s, then ‘rolled-out’ empire-wide as a colonial education policy.
Imperialists discovered that once you take away a peoples language you take away their national identity and desire for independence. By this mechanism it was possible to divide the native elite from the native masses, culturally. Many colonized peoples would readily think of themselves as ‘British’, even to the extent of loving that ‘superior model’ and casting aside their own culture, language, history etc., whilst their resources were plundered and native culture obliterated.
As you demonstrate, this process also included the Scots (and Irish, Welsh) within the UK ‘internal colonialism model’, and this explains the rise of independence movements in each country reflecting the solidarity of oppressed ethnic groups. Many Scots still seem totally unaware as to why they are deprived of learning thair ain braw mither Scots tongue, which is a standard feature of colonial oppression.
Mick Lynch gives it to those b8stards at the BBC.
link to bbc.co.uk
RoS , thanks for that , I really enjoyed his slap down of that silly interviewer.
People are being led by the nose to criticise strikers for ‘spoiling ‘ Christmas – the most effective strike action is an action which gets noticed , not one that goes on quietly in the shadows.
I wish we had someone like Mick Lynch on the side of the yes movement, and on the side of ordinary Scots having our massive natural energy resources stripped from us right in front of our eyes while we freeze! While our water pipes freeze and burst and flood. Nights of -13 to -16C, no let up in sight before end December, and we who have the lowest incomes – pensioners, unemployed, disabled, low-paid have had even our £25 cold weather payments stolen by Turdgeon so she can pay the media to protect her and she can pay men to be woman rape counsellors and she can throw our cash at the English supreme court, all while our English and Welsh counterparts at least have that small £25 consolation for each week that the temperature drops below freezing point average. We have days when the temperature didnt rise above -13C, yet we get no help whatsoever here in Scotland, thanks First Minister Turdgeon and have a nice xmas, with a top notch steam iron in your black stocking!
@ Hatuey says:14 December, 2022 at 11:34 am
Here you go. Here’s your original post, cut and pasted, with a wee embolded section for the dyslexic:
“BREAKING NEWS: A prominent leader of the British Heart Foundation has conspired to cover-up research linking mNRA jabs with heart inflammation, says British MP“
Geddit? RNA? NRA?
Honestly, sometimes I think I am wasting my time.
@ John Main
Hatuey’s post is quoting the tweet as you can see with the text between “—“, so it’s not his / her / its / their words for you to have a go at.
And what’s a “Brexit”eer like you doing buying a Hyundai genny? Just picked up a couple of Lister Startomatics myself… 😉
Ah okay, I see now. it’s an even more tedious point than I suspected. I just quoted it, it’s not my error.
Jesus.
THIS:
Scotsrenewables says on 14 December 2022 at 9:43 am:
“I think it is currently very difficult to poll people on a plebiscitary election, as few even understand the concept and no-one knows what the exact mechanism would be.”
Only thing i’d change in that quote is *most* don’t know what the exact mechanism would be, instead of “no-one knows”.
AND THIS:
Hatuey says on 14 December 2022 at 10:22 am:
“52% oppose the idea? Or maybe they just don’t support the idea. The subtle difference matters. Maybe if someone explained the proposition, more would support it. Or, at least, less would oppose it. The SNP hasn’t done a thing in terms of explaining it. SNP politicians themselves seem confused and uncertain. Sturgeon is low-profiling it.”
ALSO SEE ANDY ELLIS’ COMMENTS AT:
08:54 am on 14 December 2022 and 11:44 am on 14 December 2022
@ Hatuey says:14 December, 2022 at 11:16 pm
So you are quoting from and working up synthetic outrage over an article that is so shite it can’t even correctly name what it is supposed to be about. And your knowledge is itself so shite you are blind to the error.
Thanks for clarifying.
I was planning to take a wee keek across the Taiwan Strait, as a result of your recommendations, but now I won’t bother.
@Dan
A wee link for you:
link to unherd.com
The EU is yesterday’s solution to yesterday’s problems. iScotland can’t get ensnared in it.
All those biological women who wanted to be validated as Male are now fcked when it comes to employment law?
I wonder how many won’t fking bother with a certificate after all.
The lunatics have taken over the assylum.
I stupidly thought the highest court in Scotland would be fucking sensible!
Independence would have no hope!