A Rotten Carrot

Allegedly the SNP at Westminster are about to up the independence anti by moving to a “new phase of independence campaigning” according to a leaked email to MPs. This according to Ian Blackford will allow the SNP to hold ” the UK Government to account”, that doesn’t up anything. Stewart Hosie MP is to take over as coordinator for campaigning for independence, well hud me back. This is to take place when they all return in October, apparently “these changes will collectively enhance our ability to hold the UK Government to account and prepare for us the tasks ahead in the drive to win the arguments for independence” according to Blackford. It does beg the question, what have they been doing up to now? This just feels like a mouldy carrot for the faithful, something to drag out until Boris Johnson announces another general election in 2023 and therefor any referendum planning goes on hold yet again.

According to a report in The Times yesterday, which is well connected to the Conservative hierarchy, Downing Street is worried that by mentioning independence the Tories are simply playing into the hands of the SNP by reminding the electorate of Scotland that the Conservatives are anti-democratic hypocritical authoritarians. So I didn’t get all excited yesterday like Wee Ginger Dug in light of the latest Conservative efforts not to mention another independence referendum, like Ian Blackford, it all just feels like a game of spin from either half of the non-debate.

We really are being played by all sides just now aren’t we, Pamela Nash from Scotland in Union did cheer me up though with the most stupid statement, I know and this alongside Ian Blackford, when she said that “Constituents don’t sent their MPs to Parliament to campaign for their pet projects”, she does know that these MPs are supposed to be fighting for Scottish Independence, well allegedly anyway. So please forgive me for being cynical but this is all so underwhelming to say the least. I guess we just have to watch this space.

 

We Move Forward

There have been a lot of positive and negative comments now that Wings Over Scotland has decided to move on to pastures new, personally I wish Stuart all the best and feel he has been vital to the cause of independence over the years as I have said in previous blogs. Social media has a lot of SNP members rejoicing in the isles and that tells you all you  need to know about where they stand on the issue of holding unionists to account, they are unionists, they are hoping they are no longer going to be held to account. The official unionists are delighted as well as it means they believe they won’t be challenged like the SNP and their world will go back to normal. They control the power, they make the decisions, the small people are back in their box and all is well with the world, well if you ignore the poverty, empty shelves, lack of fuel, higher prices, failing services like health, education, economy etc.

Some people have been commenting on how we have lost a vital resource, we will struggle now, where do we go from here. The answer is actually easy, we go forward together, we go forward like the women and men who have fought for independence since 1707 to the 70’s when there were only a few thousand of them, we don’t give up, we don’t give the unionists or the New SNP an easy ride, we keep going until the end and we try to inspire the next generation to keep going, it is a cause we are fighting for not a fad like gender issues, or playing around with toilets.  

If I have one criticism of Stuart’s final article is that while he deservedly moves on to a new chapter in his life he was not alone in his battles, he was not alone on social media, he inspired many and the new media community will continue, it will continue to challenge, it will continue to fight, it will continue to put the arguments for the return of Scottish Sovereignty forward daily and it will not stop. Barrhead Boy, Yours For Scotland, Grouse Beater , Scot Goes Pop, Random Public Journal, , Pete Bell, Munquin’s New Republic, the Alba Party, All Under One Banner We go on, we move forward, and while we are not liked, while many of the New SNP or the cult don’t want to hear what we have to say, don’t want to be challenged like the real unionists, can’t bare being questioned like Labour, and live in denial like the Tories, they really don’t matter like the Liberals, because we move forward.

Stuart says “there is no “independence movement” any more, just an independence industry. It provides a very lucrative living for perhaps a couple of hundred people – SNP MPs, MSPs, party staff and apparatchiks, special advisers, quango heads and favoured civil servants lavishly rewarded for their personal loyalty to Nicola Sturgeon despite track records of incompetence, bungling and impropriety that have cost taxpayers a vast fortune”. He is not totally wrong as we know but as I have noted above we are not finished, we will never be finished, some of us will come and go over the years, when someone drops out of new media a new and exciting voice will appear to take their place. That is the nature of things and we will move forward together, not the New SNP, not the cult, but those of us who are serious will keep going as long and as best we can, independence is not something we discard because it gets tougher when we hoped it would get easier by this point, we are fighting the British, the New SNP, the cultists, it was never going to be easy, but it is just.

Stuart goes on to say that “The SNP, and in practice the wider Yes movement, is now firmly under the thumb of Sturgeon and her tiny closed cabal”. No we are not, if we were they wouldn’t hate us as much, they wouldn’t be using the State arms to try to silence us, Craig Murray would not be sitting in jail, I wouldn’t be getting the levels of abuse I get from mostly SNP types via email and direct messages. Stuart is correct when he says “The pivotal Altamont moment for the Yes movement, it seems beyond any reasonable argument, was the failed fit-up of Alex Salmond on false charges of sexual harassment. In embarking on a desperately-escalating attempt to silence her predecessor, motivated by baseless paranoia, Sturgeon revealed her true self: a power-crazed careerist prepared to throw under the bus anything and anyone that might conceivably ever threaten her grip on the keys to Bute House”. I thank Stuart for showing many of us the real Sturgeon, he unmasked one of the greatest obstacles to our independence, he allowed us to see that the enemy within was as challenging as the enemy in front of us and you know what, that is fine too because we are not giving up, we are not going away, we are standing up as best we can and we will continue to fight as best we can with what we have, to give up now would be the greatest shame and we will win.

5000 people at least marched in Edinburgh at the weekend, in a pandemic, and yes while 40,000 went to a football match and many go to night clubs those 5000 did more than we know, they made a statement to the old and the new SNP unionists, they are not going away and neither should the new media. We may not have the resources, we may not be trained journalists, most of us don’t have inside links and contacts to feed us information but we will do our best, we will challenge when we can, we will argue for our independence, we will fight and we will not let down all of those who came before us and if need be we will leave something for those who come after us.

All the best Stuart for the future, it will be my turn in the future possibly as well to move on, but right now we are still here, we are never going away, and new media together will keep a light on, no matter how small that light is it will stay on and to the unionists and the new unionists in the SNP don’t get comfortable because we are going no where, we will still be standing when you have left to infect some other party, when Sturgeon and her invisible (husband) and cult followers have moved on after milking the tax payer for all their worth, we will still be here. You see there are times when holding your head high matters, when your self-respect matters, it might not to Sturgeon and her gender and anti-woman crusade, maybe Sturgeon is a unionist plant, maybe she always has been if some are to believed but Sturgeon will go down in history as a failure, the rest of us who keep going will go down as patriots who never gave up, I know what side of history I am going to be on. So as Barrhead Boy says “welcome to Through a Scottish Prism, the programme that is unapologetically pro Scottish Independence, and anti-Westminster rule” that is what new media is folks and Together we will move forward and tackle our greatest challenges.

 

 

 

Paranoid McDonald and Abject Failure

I don’t normally read anything that the SNP’s Stewart McDonald says, yes him of cybernat fame, and a total clown but Pa Brown pointed me to this article on Twitter and it really is an example of unionist SNP paranoia going bad, in some ways you have to feel for McDonald as he has bought into the unionist Westminster paranoia hook, line, and sinker. Apparently China, Russia, the YES Community, and anti-vaxcers could target “a second independence vote would be a target for disinformation operations and Scotland needs to make sure democracy is resilient“. McDonald is so concerned that he see the “rising tide of disinformation around culture war issues like trans rights and vaccines leaves him fearing violence on the streets”. There will be riots if this doesn’t stop, riots I tell you.

McDonald wants a new UK strategy on countering dis-information because he is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he wants to involve all arms of the state from MI5 to schools and the NHS. Earlier this month anti-vaccine demonstrators tried to storm the offices of the UK’s medicines regulator, and according to McDonald “it’s the most violent yet”. More violence wow. Scotland has been targeted by a number of foreign states, even by Iran, and just to be clear, the Alex Salmond Show on Russia Today, however, lends “legitimacy and credibility” to Kremlin propaganda. It’s Alex Salmond, Leader of the Alba Party, fault, he opened the door to all of this. He doesn’t miss the bloggers either when he says “that some online disinformation actors “got high on their own supply … Some started off quite well – you think, ‘this is a good asset’ – then they become off the wall.”

McDonald has a solution to this problem, he wants to send lying unionist “vetted” journalists into schools explaining how the media works and teaching skills to check facts and sources. He is an avowed supporter of “the mainstream media –and I don’t use ‘mainstream’ as a slur, I like my media mainstream”.  You can’t make this up can you?

McDonald has lost the plot completely, the man really needs to be voted out and brought back from London for his own mental health if this article is anything to go by, the man is all over the place.

Another thing that caught my eye, and something I get a bit grief about for pointing it out, is the abject failure of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP Government in many policy areas over the last 5 years and how their record is actually really bad but they are protected by the unionist mainstream media that McDonald trusts so much because the SNP are no longer a threat to the union. The list of failure is a long one indeed, throw in Sturgeon’s handling of Covid-19, independence, the Harassment Enquiry, the various court cases from Alex Salmond, to Mark Hurst, to fighting against the question if the Scottish Government are legally able to call a referendum, to the jailing of Craig Murray for daring to report the Alex Salmond defence case and you see a picture of a First Minister if she was thought to not be an asset to Queen and Country would have been hounded out of office a long time ago for failure and incompetence, but what do I know, I am just an Alba blogger now seemingly ( I think that is supposed to be an insult ). I am one of those McDonald would hate I suppose.

The SNP really are losing the plot big time now, the pressure of paranoia and failure appears to be getting to them, but all is well, we will not be taken out of the EU against our will and there will be referendum in 2021.

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Shafting the Members

Labour Party members, like SNP members, need to make up their minds, are you members of a cult or are you members of a political party. The trend recently in leaders of political parties weakening the control of the members is somewhat alarming to say the least. Keir Starmer has been at it this week trying to scrap the one member one vote rule in the Labour Party, on this occasion he was stopped but is still trying to put a fix in that would effectively stop a candidate like Jeremy Corbyn from ever being able to make leader of the party again. Starmer has still proposed the following

• A rule that any candidate would need the backing of 20% of party MPs to get onto the leadership ballot – up from the current 10%.
• Increasing the percentage of local party members needed to trigger a reselection process for their MP – up to 50% from a third.
• Scrapping registered supporters – where voters can pay a one-off fee to vote in the leadership election.
• Another rule where people will have to have been a party member for six months before they can vote for a leader.

The 20% rule, if adopted, when Starmer stood for election would have meant he was the only candidate, a fix anyone. According to Starmer these changes will allow the Labour Party to win the General Election, can I have some of what he has been smoking. Labour under Starmer couldn’t win an egg and spoon race, let alone a General Election. He is not electable as a potential Prime Minister. This is about removing democracy from members, just as the SNP did, this is about courting the establishment and saying look vote for us we are not a risk to you, this is about money and power, nothing to do with democracy and improving the lot of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. A move like this would put most of the power to decide the leader of the party into the hands of the MP’s , the same as the Tories, you just can’t make it up. How far the Labour Party have fallen.

Now I don’t really care what the Labour Party do, Starmer and Labour are a joke, the abstention party is what they should be called. But I do care about democracy, I do care about members controlling the parties they fund, they campaign for, they put their emotional capital into to bring about change, especially parties that profess to care about issues such as social justice, poverty, injustice, that is not Starmer and if he gets his way that is not Labour. I really hope the members can block this disgrace, if they support this then there is no where for the genuine left to go in England, we already know that Scottish Labour are Red Tories and have been for a long long time now. What we can end up with is jobs for life for career politicians, we see it in the SNP now and we will see it in Labour, and when that happens we might as well not bother anymore we will have given up.

This is just another nail into political engagement, and it is a very dangerous path to go down.

 

I’ll just leave this here for SNP members

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll just leave this here for members of the Scottish National Party to have a wee think about before it is no longer news. Tell me, are you a member led party? Do you really believe the current crop of SNP MSPs have Scotland’s best interests at heart? Do you think they believe in party democracy? Do you think they take your opinion seriously, or do they just want your money and your blind devotion? Tell me, do you think they really want independence or just a nice little middle class job and pension?

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The Never Ending Gravy Train

Michelle Thomson, a former MP, said she did not think there will be a referendum by 2023 and the SNP should instead use the next UK general election to “shift the dial”.

Ms Thomson said: “I don’t believe for a minute that Boris is going to give us a referendum. It’s not in his interests to do so. “Scotland is so asset rich, he’d be a numpty to let us go.” (let us go, the SNP mindset)

None of us will be surprised by these comments from Michelle Thomson SNP MSP and they did not go down well with some on social media so I have done this short blog for those of you who are not on social media.

While there is some truth to the comment regarding Boris Johnson I am more inclined to see this as certain people, comfy slippers anyone, being happy to just keep milking the tax payer tit for another five years while the cult bow down and tell the Sturgeon how wonderful she is if she wins a majority of seats yet again at Westminster. Can’t wait for more Blackford platitudes until the sun sets. Michelle also says that the “SNP and the wider Yes movement have a “great deal” of work to do around issues such as currency and a central bank”. It’s not the YES community that have been sitting on their bank accounts for the last 6 years is it.

The most accurate thing Michelle says though is “There’s a great deal of work to be done, because if there were to be an independence referendum tomorrow, as it stands at the moment, without those worked-through answers, we would fail.” I’ve been saying that for a long time and whose fault is it? The SNP that is who, the question we need to be asking SNP members is, You Alba Yet? If not, you’re part of the problem and a Boris Johnson and Sturgeon foot soldier.

Chris McEleny, general secretary of the Alba Party, said the suggestion “that the next UK general election should be used to seek yet another mandate for an independence referendum simply won’t wash with the independence movement”. Chris is correct of course but unless the cult change tact that is exactly what is going to happen, an SNP win in a 23/24 general election is not a mandate for independence it is a mandate for greater enrichment of middle classness for those elected and increased pension contributions by us for comfy slippers Wishart if he were, no matter how unlikely, to win in Perth again.

The sad thing is I am not all that bothered by what Michelle has said at all as it was what many of us have known for a long time and we don’t expect anything less from the SNP any more, they are a devolution party which means they might as well be unionists.

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It’s soul destroying

So Monica Lennon, Scottish Labour MSP, amendment on a not for profit, publicly owned, national energy company failed as we knew it would. I am not naive to not understand that political parties play these games with amendments, if they agree with it it will pass, it fits into their policy agenda it will pass, or if it costs nothing it will pass. At every other time it will come down to political parties and posturing and it will fail. That is the problem that I find so depressing about all of our politicians and all of our political parties.

The SNP voted against this amendment, to be expected after their initial betrayal to set an energy company up, but the so called Scottish Greens voted against also and that sends a clear message to all Green voters doesn’t it, once your feet are under the ministerial table your beliefs change.

This is where I get really pissed off with the whole thing and question why I even bother to vote. We elect politicians to run the country, maintain services, bring about appropriate change, find common ground, and to do what is in the best interests of the whole country, how often do any of them do that anymore? We have allowed not only allowed a political class to see election as a career, which is bad enough, but the standard of politician in Holyrood gets worse every single term , the standard falls. These so called educated representatives of the people live in a comfortable bubble for too many of them now. Michelle Ferns during the Deputy Leader of the Alba Party hustings said we need different voices in Holyrood, I have agreed with that for so long and yesterday highlighted how broken our politicians are. We need honest ordinary people in parliament, people with passion, people who care, people who have lived the same lives we have, not these middle class clowns who don’t know what cold is, hunger is, living in a flat is, not going more than 50 miles from their community their whole lives.

We need politicians who know what it is like to sit in the dark crying about how they are going to pay the bills, we need real people in our government, I wish I knew how to get them because most of our political parties are a middle class closed shops now with a membership embracing a cult leader or too unthinking for themselves they are as big a part of the problem, just look at the SNP now.

Scotland, and the UK, is facing a standard of living crisis, an energy crisis, a Brexit crisis, a food crisis, a poverty crisis, you just can’t make up the state the UK is in at all, and certainly not if you watch the mainstream news who just don’t report it. We are on our knees and millions face hunger and cold this winter, that is no understatement. A national energy company, not for profit, while taking time to set up would in the medium term make a huge difference to our society and to the poorest and most vulnerable in Scotland.

It won’t happen because our politicians do not have any honour or decency, they are not interested on doing what is best for Scotland or it’s people. They are only interested in themselves, their ignorant parties, and playing the middle class version of political risk with our lives, with our futures. As I have said before if independence is not about making Scotland a better place I want no part of it, votes like last nights just piss me off no end and make me angry, they make me wonder why I vote and why I bother when I don’t see real anger about these people infecting our parliament.

It’s all so soul destroying.

The stupidity of Scots no longer surprises me!

The UK consumer pays by far the most for their energy in the EU. It should come as no surprise really as we pay the most in the EU for most things, not because things must cost more as soon as they arrive here but because of Rip off Britain, and the fact that we put up with it on a daily basis. That’s why it amazes me that Nicola Sturgeon remains the most popular politician in Scotland with a plus 14 rating with Alex Salmond the least popular, especially after her betrayal on a Scottish energy company .  Data from the latest Scottish House Condition Survey shows that 613,000 households (24.6%) were living in fuel poverty in 2019.

We can all see how much we are paying for energy now as winter approaches, not just energy of course, look at the prices of food now and how much more you are spending, but in the case of the poor, how much more they are going to be going cold or not eating this winter. It should be classed as a crime, yet the stupidity of my fellow Scots just does not surprise me anymore. All of our politicians have failed on this but especially the SNP, who are also presiding over a now consistent fall in support for independence due to their lack of action on that front in the last 6 years. While the SNP scrap the Scottish Energy Company idea which was supposed to bring affordable energy prices to the poorest and most vulnerable the Alba Party continue to be attacked but how many people know that we have policies such as

Introduce a fuel poverty package with regular monitoring of an indicator of fuel poverty, a major programme to reinsulate houses to keep bills low, a review of the Energy Company Obligation to include more households, incentivise and if necessary punish landlords to make them improve energy efficiency and the establishment of a Scottish Fuel Poverty Fund to help out those in acute need.

Scottish voters need to wake up quickly to what is around them and get off the cult bandwagon around Nicola Sturgeon. We have some of the highest and worst outcomes for Covid-19 in the world, we have some of the highest child poverty levels in the western world at 24%, Scotland has the highest rate of persistent pensioner poverty in the UK with the number of older people struggling to make ends meet equivalent to the population of Dundee. We have increasing levels of food poverty and poverty in general.

I am sorry to keep banging on about this but enough is enough, wake up FFS.

Where is the proof?

Very serious allegations, so where is the proof? I saw this last night and thought wow even this might be a new low even for the SNP. According to the Herald a leaked report from within the SNP claims that A FACTION of the SNP who left to join Alba have been branded as destabilising agitators and blamed for racist abuse, a series of leaked reports reveal. The documents, obtained by The Herald on Sunday, reference members of the “split away party” as being responsible for abuse against BAME SNP members, particularly online. They have also been accused of disrupting the party and launching attacks from within, before some left to join Alba in March this year.

I started to doubt the veracity of the article when I read that the reports had been written by and were submitted by the party’s BAME convener Graeme Campbell and national secretary Stewart Stevenson prior to the party conference last weekend. Apparently they were under “significant attack” from within for the first time in decades, following its conference in 2020. Stevenson goes on to claim “The National Executive Committee of the party, for a few months, was no longer a safe place to debate options for action. Distorted posts on social media appeared from within NEC even while meetings were in progress. “A small faction bombarded the national secretary with ‘complaints’, in some cases very large numbers from particular individuals over a very short period of time.”

There was a small faction as Wings Over Scotland pointed out in The Fix and they aren’t the members who left to join the Alba Party, talk about re-writing history folks. It is also worth reading what you didn’t hear, there is a nasty element within the SNP and a certain Mr Campbell is right in the centre and to be fair to people who are being blamed in this article as Wings pointed out about the SNP NEC

So let’s just recap what actually happened:

– the SNP rode roughshod over several established procedures and rules in order to pass a motion they’d been advised against by a QC on the grounds that it was probably illegal.

– ignoring that advice is highly likely to cost the party a six-figure sum of money that it really doesn’t have to spare, and wreak absolute havoc with its election campaign.

– if enacted, the policy would effectively bar disabled people from any chance of getting an SNP list seat in all of Scotland’s most populated regions.

– if enacted the policy would effectively bar BAME people from any chance of getting an SNP list seat in all of the other regions (except South Scotland, where we suspect the BAME population is very close to nil).

– if enacted the policy would allow people who weren’t actually disabled or BAME at all to self-identify as such and steal list places/seats from real disabled or BAME people.

– if enacted the policy could let a white person, who hadn’t received a SINGLE vote from members, to be parachuted into the top list spot in a region and be counted as a black person.

– if enacted the policy would actually bar transgender people from any chance of getting an SNP list seat in ANY of Scotland’s regions (unless they were also BAME or disabled). Sounds a bit transphobic, frankly.

Ironic that Graeme Campbell, the SNP’s BAME convener, wrote in an internal review that there had been “severe racist hostility” against “prominent” black and minority ethnic party members over the past two years, but “particularly in late 2020 as what became the split away party developed”. Self-aware not at all.

One Alba party source told The Herald on Sunday that the SNP were “very keen” to blame the new party but should instead concentrate on their own problems. They said: “It’s clear from all these reports that the SNP are trying to paint Alba as the bogeyman, and blame former members who have now joined Alba for their own mistakes and failings without any evidence to back up these claims.

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?

“Instead of trying to blame Alba, the SNP would do better to concentrate on their own problems and failures, including the woeful lack of progress on securing independence.”

A member of Common Weal at the time commented “There was no attempt to destabilise the SNP, or attack its leadership, by launching a campaign for election to the NEC. That was not the intention. People were frustrated by what was happening from within the party.

“Nicola Sturgeon was thought to be trying to consolidate too much power and only allow a small number of her close allies to set the direction the party would move in.

“There were many of us who felt that our concerns and views, about issues like gender recognition act reform but also on the timeline for another referendum, were not being listened to.

“That is why we decided to try and effect change from within. When Alex Salmond launched Alba, it was a natural fit for some people who had been unhappy with the SNP leadership and the lack of progress they were making on independence, and so it makes sense that some people left.

“To suggest there had been an attempt to organise NEC membership deliberately to try and attack the party, our own party at the time, is just nonsense.”

This is really desperate stuff from the SNP and is all about their own internal and impending wider problems within the yes movement when they fail to deliver on their promises. This also shows how much they fear the Alba Party and what we are bringing to the debate, the SNP is a party in trouble and out of ideas, a party riven with division and a leadership determined to place the blame at anyone but themselves, this is a party that is suffering from death of a thousand cuts and I for one won’t miss them if they implode.

 

 

 

 

Scottish National Labour Parties, where the abuse appears rife

“I suspect I won’t be a member of parliament for much longer, but while I am I will still try to be an independent and thoughtful voice, and I will always fight for Scotland to be the kind of country, regardless of whether you are a unionist or a nationalist, where everyone, everyone, has equal rights, and everyone has free speech.” The damning words of Joanna Cherry SNP MP in the Herald today. This was followed by Rose Duffield Labour MP who said today in the Times “LGBT+ Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they’d have a massive go at me at conference,” Duffield said. “The people who threaten me I don’t think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly.” 

The SNP and the Labour Party are infected by increasingly militant transgender activists and yet Nicola Sturgeon and Keir Starmer are conspicuous by their absence, in Nicola Sturgeon’s case she will do a tearful video if the young wing threaten to leave the party but remain quiet when members bully and threaten one of her own MP’s, in fact an SNP Parliamentarian was quoted as saying at the time Joanna Cherry received threats against her and was then sacked from the front bench at Westminster that ‘It’s been well known that Jo and Nicola have not been getting on well for a long time,’ they said. ‘Ian Blackford was the willing stooge to wield the knife. There is no way this would have happened without Nicola Sturgeon. Not a chance.’ (Daily Mail) At least Starmer sent a text to Duffield, couldn’t call no, but a text is fine.

We have all seen the gender warriors from both parties on social media, and when women decide to fight back to defend their rights with peaceful protest they get arrested for displaying ribbons or find that the Scottish Government make it a criminal offence to protest outside Holyrood, the people’s parliament, so called.

The High Court in England ruled, in the Maya Forstater case that her “gender-critical beliefs” fell under the Equalities Act, and were a genuine and important philosophical position that deserved to be protected and that the right of individuals to free speech, even in areas that are hotly contested, has been upheld in law. Remember when Scottish Law was so enlightened, now we jail journalists.

The Gender Reform Act has caused more trouble in the last few years yet will be forced through by politicians, especially Nicola Sturgeon, against the wishes of the majority of voters if a YouGuv poll in July is to be believed that found 47% were against the changes. Now of course Transgender men and women need to be protected against discrimination and abuse, I don’t know anyone who would disagree with that, but that has to apply to those who are critical of the whole debate as their voices are equally valid in the debate, as are their concerns. Some women argue that enabling individuals to change their gender in law by a process of self-declaration would have profound implications for the safeguarding of children, women and vulnerable adults. This is not because transgender people as such represent a safeguarding threat. (The Guardian), they are entitled to that view and should not face threats and require Police protection for holding them.

Joanna Cherry MP is one of the most effective and talented that I think I have ever seen coming from Scotland. I am often very critical of the standard of MP we send to Westminster, Wishart and Law anyone, but in Joanna Cherry we genuinely have a decent human being representing our interests, when Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP should be protecting her their silence emboldens the haters and the gender warriors. Something is seriously broken in the SNP and Labour Parties, something is seriously wrong when MPs feel the way they do and the concerns of women can be ignored or at worst result in imprisonment.

Joanna Cherry is concerned she will be de-selected at the next General Election, she probably will be and we could lose someone who actually makes a difference. Why Joanna remains a member of the SNP Westminster Party is beyond me to be honest, she would be better, and safer, as an independent, or better yet join the Alba Party. That is for her to decide, but I do know that this debate is toxic, is not needed in my opinion at this time, and probably puts women and the transgender community at greater risk, and why, because of the gender warriors and people like Nicola Sturgeon and Keir Starmer.

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