I have been following the gender self ID debate a little and a tweet that caught my eye is something that has come up in conversation and in this blog occasionally.
There are some people out there who believe we should put everything aside that the SNP do for the sake of independence. A fair enough view point but in my view dangerous and misguided.
All political parties must be held to account by their members and the electorate. Yes the SNP are the party, along with the Greens, who can bring about indy2 in some way eventually but to blindly trust them on everything is not a good look.
We also all have our principles, should we put them aside for indy, sometimes you can and maybe should but when a lot of small things start to add up you need to make a decision about where you stand because sometimes the means don’t justify the ends.
Let’s face it, the handling of pay negotiations with the public sector were atrocious, the teaching unions got everything they wanted and more while the rest of the public sector got their rises imposed and continue to face deteriorating terms and conditions imposed by Cosla with the SNP saying not me guv its the local councils. The debate around gender identification has been handled badly ignoring the folk out there who have concerns rightly or wrongly.
The parties handling of strategy for the next referendum has been secretive and dismissive of the wider movement. The parties failure to support their members attacked by the unionist media and being hung out to dry has left a bad taste.
The SNP are not perfect, no one is, the party have got to be held to account or they just run the risk of becoming the new Labour in Scotland, and that will kill off Indy more than anything.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
Mixed feelings, Bruce. When I criticised the SNP on some of the above points to my MP/MSP, I told them that they risked losing my family’s votes. They said “well who else can you vote for if you want Indy?”. This smug reply rankles with me, mostly because I know they are right.
They have no shortage of people and press willing to criticise, but I’m sure strong words from you and other Indy supporting online media will get their attention a lot more than The Mail or the Record would. If they don’t listen, the risk becomes much more theirs than ours.
Brian
I appreciate that’s it’s not all in the SNP who hold those views but I do think the party take the vote granted and they risk losing enough of it to lose. For myself a lot of small things add up in the end and that bothers me. There does come a point where you just can’t support something because it just goes against important things you believe in and that is the danger here. I heard some of NS speech today and I think that will go a long way to make things better, I will blog about it later as I will probably have an apology to make that it is not getting kicked into the long grass and that is really great as I don;t mind being proved wrong but they have to be careful to keep people on side.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce