Scottish Greens being sexist again

Woodburning does not produce more particulates than traffic.

Fron your source:

'...households burning wood indoors, ... contributed 12 per cent of total PM2.5 emissions and 6 per cent of total PM10 emissions in 2024.

Road transport continues to be a major source of PM emissions, contributing 21 per cent of total PM2.5 emissions and 19 per cent of total PM10 emissions in 2024.'

By the by.

And I am NOT saying everyone should get a wood burner.

Just those of us who need multiple sources of heat and energy as back up.

The main source of heat and power should be electric from renewable sources plus nuclear.

Back up heating is best served by wood not oil or gas.

If it were up to me everyone would retrofit their homes to not need much heating, and use heat pumps, but sadly that's unfeasibly expensive.

It is mad to suggest gas fires are healthier and better than wood.

Cheeky fucker.

Well done to the Ed director, though.

'The letter — sent from Mr Greer’s office last September — claimed it was “strange” that the local authority concluded it had a “legal obligation” to provide single-sex toilets.

The Greens boss also raised the case of a mum whose child had been “excluded” from a primary school’s sports day due to competition rules.

He asked the education boss: “Do you consider egg and spoon races to be competitive sport?”

Mr Ratter replied that schools had to “balance the right to participate” with expectations of “fairness in competitive sports”.

He also told how the council had a “legal obligation to maintain single-sex facilities”.

Mr Ratter added: “Our schools provide inclusive or gender-neutral toilets for pupils who have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.”

Mr Greer insisted: “There are parents afraid to send their children to school because of the hate they face for being trans. We want every child to feel safe.”

So when the girls want to race without boys, Greer sneers at it as not competitive, but when the boy is excluded he's saying its 'hate'? Or is racing with the girls supposed to be some kind of consolation?

All children should feel safe in school and be cared for without bullying.

That includes girls being entitled to their own sports and single sex changing rooms.

Ross Greer is a misogynist weirdo.

This isn't about "rural life". It's about villages, towns and cities. Where I live, everyone has gas central heating and we don't get significant power cuts, but a very large number of people have added a wood burner, and the number is growing. For some with access to cheap wood it may be about cost saving, but installing a wood burner isn't cheap, so I suspect that for very many people it's largely a lifestyle choice. And you are urging everyone to get a wood burner - not just people in isolated rural areas.

You may not open your car window and breathe in smoke when you drive through a village (or a town). The point is that if you are in a village or town in Scotland in the spring, winter or autumn you will breathe in smoke. The inhabitants of those villages and towns are living in a smoke-filled environment, and that smoke gets into their homes. One wood burner apparently produces the same amount of emissions as 75 lorries. That is what we are all breathing in. And no, that smoke doesn't all miraculously disperse. The smoke goes up the chimney and emerges into the cold air. It very quickly cools down and sinks to the ground and is breathed in by the neighbours (and probably by the people who are producing the smoke, who are also breathing it in when they put wood on the fire, etc).

From the Guardian:
"The burning of wood and coal in homes contributes to almost 2,500 deaths a year in the UK, analysis has found. Stopping unnecessary burning would save the NHS more than £54m a year, the experts concluded.
Wood-burning stoves and open fires are one the biggest sources of small pollution particles, which cause heart and lung disease, and their use has risen in recent years. The report also links this toxic air pollution to 3,700 cases of diabetes and 1,500 cases of asthma a year, although the health impacts are likely to be underestimated.
More than 90% of people have other sources of heating and only about 10% of people say they burn at home out of necessity. Many use the stoves and fires for their aesthetic appeal."

More and more people are having these stoves installed, and of course many of the very serious conditions these particles cause take years to develop, so the number of deaths and serious health conditions will rise.

So how about looking at the science - looking at the truth of the situation as you do with gender issues, rather than saying - oh, it's probably a conspiracy theory, the research is probably funded by oil companies, I think I heard somewhere that their surveys weren't very big but I don't have time to check that now, oh what about isolated cottages in the Highlands, etc etc). The fact is that for whatever reason you really like woodburners, despite knowing that they create very harmful pollution. So you are denying, fudging, diverting, making things up. Because it suits your agenda.

Wood burners linked to 2,500 deaths a year in the UK, analysis finds | Air pollution | The Guardian

I love the council’s reply though. 🤭

How anyone could have given any sort of responsibility to that useless gobshite is beyond me.

I mean there's probably a thesis to be written about African strongmen who had an affinity for Scotland - Idi Amin, Julius Nyerere, Hastings Banda...

I have less evidence for Scotland being a big player in the colonial oppression of Tamil Nadu. I have in my head that Highland regiments were often stationed on the North West Frontier (admittedly I might be influenced by that seminal text Carry On Up The Khyber)

I'm expecting him to retort to any questions on this with some sort of CLAP BACK about Lord Dalhousie and Scottish Imperialisms ravaging of India

A post about the research:

https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/governmentpublicpolicy/news/strathclydeacademicscontributetomajoranalysisof2026scottishparliamentelection/

Teh research:

https://www.electionanalysis.uk/

I'm going to assume in the case of Q that "I'm descended from a long line of oppressed outlaws" will impress Scots who know little of India.

Actual Indians might be more sceptical of a scion of the Chennai professional class giving an account of his origins that make him sound as if he came from some backwater village in Bihar.

Really interesting article, Waitwhat, thanks.

' Of Holyrood’s 129 MSPs, just one came from a working-class occupational background

“What we’ve seen grow up under devolution is a professional political class which I think is dominated, broadly, by people from professional and managerial backgrounds,” said Dr Ewan Gibbs, a historian and lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
...
James Mitchell, professor of public policy at the University of Edinburgh, has described Holyrood as a “middle-class parliament for a middle-class electorate”.
“The policies that have been pursued have been much more for the interests of the middle-class, but always articulated as if they are progressive, and I think the term ‘progressive’ has lost its meeting in Scottish political parlance because of that,” he said.
...
The people whose voices have been heard least are working-class women, he argued'

This is an interesting article about social class in the Scottish Parliament -

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/is-social-class-holyroods-hidden-inequality-8634020

I'm sure many MSP's would self identify as working class but whether that is true is debatable. Q has tried to paint himself as such but it is clear that it is not the case.

And Zack's dad the property.developer... the Greens do seem to come from privileged backgrounds but then rant about 'taxing the rich'. Much of their politics looks like sublimated tantrums at their parents.

The Lad knows how to build up his origins story

Times shortcut

https://archive.ph/FJ3bZ

A newly elected Scottish Green politician who claimed to be from a disadvantaged background in India in fact had a privileged upbringing, including attending an exclusive private school, it can be revealed.
Q Manivannan became a Holyrood MSP this month despite being on a student visa, meaning the politician may be forced to leave the country before the term ends.
Before being elected, Manivannan, who <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/FJ3bZ/www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/holyrood-presiding-officer-kenny-gibson-trans-pronouns-c6rfbq5dh" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them, told party members that as a “queer Tamil immigrant” they would be a voice for the “working class and marginalised”.

Shortly before being elected MSP for Edinburgh & Lothians East, Manivannan also claimed “[I had] saved and worked and lied and begged” to get a PhD, from the University of St Andrews, while loved ones back home faced the “full force of digital, infrastructural, carceral, and affective violence in India”.
However, an investigation by The Sunday Times has found that Manivannan comes from an upper middle-class household in Chennai, one of India’s wealthiest, most cosmopolitan cities. Although the Scottish Greens want to ban private schooling, Manivannan attended both private high school and university, and went on to run a subsidiary of an Indian business that coaches the children of the super-rich to access the world’s elite institutions.

Manivannan claimed to have been descended from “courtesans, dancers, musicians, hunters, and prostitutes”, but the MSP’s family has in fact held professional, high-status roles for at least two generations.

The politician’s father, Manivannan Dasarathi, a tennis champion in his youth, has degrees in chemical engineering and business administration. His public profile says he has “43 years [of] industrial experience in government and private sectors in senior management positions”, including running his own advisory firm since 2004.
Manivannan’s paternal grandmother ran a medical clinic, the MSP revealed in a blog. Manivannan’s mother, Rajachitra Manivannan, has a successful career in academia and the family’s maternal grandmother was a trailblazing gynaecologist who built a hospital in the town of Tirupattur, according to an online interview with Q Manivannan’s sister. It is understood that their parents are now retired...

Of course they know what a real woman is. The Greens are deplorable. I hope she rescinds her membership to the Greens. Or, better still, sets up an actual Green party that A. Knows what a woman is and B. Is actually about the environment.

I bank my wood burner down overnight

oh its been years since I heard anyone talking about banking down a fire... 😥

TWETMIRF · Yesterday 18:28

Nothing will stop me using my fire, especially with oil prices as they are. Just wish I could still buy proper coal as this smokeless stuff is rubbish.

I bank my wood burner down overnight with anthracite substitute. Stoveheat Premium, its usually still glowing when I get up.

I'm a bit embarrassed that I've only just worked that out. I pride myself on understanding unfamiliar acronyms!

Ha ha. Just feels like a more accurate version. For those that haven't got it transwoman excluding transman including rad fem. I'm not a terf, I'm a twetmirf.

I saw that story today too, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g - it comes as no surprise that the Greens are bending over backwards for MANnivannen, but an actual, real woman was discouraged from continuing with her candidacy.

They just love shooting themselves in the foot, don’t they!

Quelle surprise.

Absolutely agree. But I really posted to say that I've noticed your username/acronym at intervals over the last few years and, well ok, maybe I wasn't trying that hard, but I could never work it out. Then a week or so ago it burst upon me like Saul on the road to Damascus. Feeling very, very stupid now...!

Yep. Nothing will stop me using my fire, especially with oil prices as they are. Just wish I could still buy proper coal as this smokeless stuff is rubbish.

The Greens care far more that I use correct sex pronouns for trans people than that I have an open fire in my house.

As ever, urban people have little idea what rural life is like.