Scottish Government win review for the right to place men in women's prisons

The fun part is proving the detriment in court.

I don't get it. How can someone be given special dispensation to break the law?Is this a normal or usual thing? Why even would you want special dispensation in this case? How come you feel so strongly that men should be allowed in women's prison that you actually want to be allowed to break the law?

So many questions. I will never cease to be astounded at the idiocy of this ideology.

The EHRC can enforce (through the courts) but I don’t think they have much of a budget to do so anymore.

Breaching the EA is a civil offence. However there is a criminal offence within it - I think where someone knowingly makes false statements about the EA to encourage someone else to break it. Which would seem to me to be Stonewall and SNP ministers but I wasn’t very clear. Maybe someone else can clarify? I doubt the police would be interested as they would appear to have fallen foul of that too. So it would have to be a private prosecution but the CPS/PF can simply take over those and drop them.

As far as I am aware the EHRC has enforcement powers but never seems to use them.

Forgive me if I am ignorant of the facts.

If the EA is breached is that a criminal or civil offence, or any offence for that matter? The reason I ask (and I don't know...) is that it appears to me that it is not a criminal offence to break the EA law, therefore each individual or class/group detrimentally affected must take a case either to Tribunal or civil court.

As I said, I haven't a clue, I'm just musing, since it appears to me that breaching the EA is very easy for the "breacher" but very difficult for the "breached" to get redress.

If that is the case, it is surely not right, as getting redress is dependent on a person/organisation's etc. means to take it to law. What about Human Rights here?

I know it was designed that way.
I don't mind coalitions per se, I grew up in a country that pretty much always has coalition governments but they require politicians with talent and maturity and the desire to make them work and I can honestly not see any of those at Holyrood at the moment (there are a fewer and fewer of them in my home country too).

To be strictly accurate, the government also has access to the pockets of thousands of ordinary women- and men- whether they are willing and can afford it or not!

That’s why this action seems so bizarre. It’s so simple. I presume they’re not arguing that they want to make all prisons mixed sex, in which case they are going to lose this case (presuming FWS don’t run out of money first, which may be what the Scottish Government are counting on)

I don't know who to vote for either next May. It's a total mess.

I'm so angry with the SNP and all their shrilling allies. It just feels so dystopian; how much my government hates me and all other women who live in this country.

Yes, and someone, possibly Kemi Badenoch mentioned ages ago about the legal concept of ‘’where there is a right, there is a remedy’.

Meaning that for every legal right, there should be a corresponding legal remedy.

There are legal remedies that are applied for not providing single sex spaces (compulsion to provide, fines etc) so provision of single sex spaces is clearly recognised as a legal right and therefore must be provided.

Is my understanding as a non lawyer reading what expert lawyers have written.

The whole design of the Scottish Parliament is based around the need for coalitions with no clear winner. The idea being this requires a more consensus approach. One clear winner was never the intent of the designers (though the SNP have been a minority government for two cycles). The design has been a failure as it has allowed the SNP/Greens, with a Green presiding officer (voted on by MSPs so chosen by the parties in power) to avoid accountability in parliament and committees.

This is the thing. They already have the means to protect vulnerable male prisoners from the general prison population in make prisons.

What they don’t currently have is the means to protect the general female prison population from resident male prisoners without violating human rights laws on solitary confinement etc.

I am always puzzled by the argument that the Equality Act 2010 doesn’t require people not to discriminate against women and girls.

I think we are going to end up with no clear winner and various coalition options and it's going to be one almighty mess.
I have no idea who I'm going to vote for come May, even my usual "who ever might have the slightest chance of getting the SNP out in my constituency" fallback is not really an option this time round.

The Equality Act requires single sex spaces where mixed sex would lead to women suffering detriment - which quite clearly a mixed sex would as was recognised in 1823. And where single sex it must be single sex. It can not be women and some men.