SNP supporters and the hate crime bill

[Ifyourefeelingsinister]

Scottish government are passing a bill tonight that will give hate crime protection to every protected characteristic - apart from sex. Yes, women apparently don't register as far as hate crimes go.

But cross dressers will be protected so that's fine - don't insult a man in a kilt even in your own home, as you could be arrested. However, every day misogyny - that's fine.

SNP supporters - are you ok with this????

@Maduixa

Can anyone explain why Labour voted for the Hate Crimes Bill?

Obviously it was contentious. Many Lab MSPs spoke up against the exclusion of sex as a protected characteristic and were shot down, etc. They must have known the bill would pass with SNP + Greens + LibDem. And yet it looks like they whipped to vote for it. Why not allow a free vote? Why not push for section 2 to be removed and the rest go forward? Isn't this a missed opportunity with an election coming up?

Wokeness basically.

Can't risk voting against anything that would mean they weren't all in with the alternative lifestyle lobby groups.

Can you tell me how specifically the Tories are worse than the other parties for women?

Not being snarky, just generally interested.

Re above, actually didn't realise how late it was getting so I've headed to bed 😴

@WaxOnFeckOff their austerity policies are just one example, they disproportionately hit women compared to men, changes in the benefit system, public sector redundancies and pay freezes,
cuts to services etc. Of all the savings made by the Tory Govt under austerity women paid for 86% of them. They pushed so many women and children into poverty. Then remember things like the rape clause which they had to bring in as they removed child benefit from the third child etc.

Coming to this very late, but...

.... I’m not an SNP supporter, but have come round gradually to being pro-Indy

.... I deplore the HCB, but accept that I don’t fully understand the context or nuances, so try to keep an open, tolerant mind, up to a point. Is this a generational think? I recently had a conversation with a family friend who was a clever, kind, thoughtful humanities graduate who asserted there was ‘an infinite number of genders’. Am I some sort of fuddy-duddy fossil?

.... that said, the whole concept of trans gender is so ruddy ANTI-SCIENCE, and I find that terrifying.

....But: I remember what else the SNP has done, re baby boxes, period poverty, and, away way back, the pay deal for teachers (largely female profession), and I think I can forgive them for erring on the side of progressiveness even though I disagree.

.... I’m very grateful to JKR and others (though not particularly Joanna Cherry) who have had the courage and articulacy to stand up and point out what is wrong with this movement.

.... finally, I’ve not even read up in the HCB in detail, so am talking through my hat, but I find the notion that you could potentially be reported for remarks made in your own home really very chilling.

@Libelula21 out of interest- why not Joanna Cherry?

[quote OatcakeCravings]@WaxOnFeckOff their austerity policies are just one example, they disproportionately hit women compared to men, changes in the benefit system, public sector redundancies and pay freezes,
cuts to services etc. Of all the savings made by the Tory Govt under austerity women paid for 86% of them. They pushed so many women and children into poverty. Then remember things like the rape clause which they had to bring in as they removed child benefit from the third child etc.[/quote]
But Johnson's government has spent massive amounts of money to try to keep this country's (the UK's) social fabric together during the pandemic. They have spent far more than I would have expected Tories to do but this is a good thing.
Far easier for Scotland to get loads more public investment to get things back to normal post pandemic, if the SNP lose their working majority and can't keep putting 'Separation Ref2' before everything else which matters in our daily lives.

@blurberoo

It’s probably unfair of me, it’s partly just her general approach. Her successful challenge of the UK Gov’s prorogation was very much packaged as the Cherry case, not as an SNP win.

It annoys me that transgender issues take up so much bandwidth when there are so many (to my mind) more important issues... also it’s so divisive as an issue - I think wiser party politicians would steer clear, or take a more emollient tone. It’s a complex legal, cultural and ethical subject.... what gives by stomping all over the issue on social media, and in the run up to a crucial election. How many bots are feeding off this?

The hate crime bill overshadows all the other failures of the SNP. The waste of taxpayers money on doomed business ventures - Bifab, the ferries, Prestwick, the Queensferry crossing design closed by falling ice every winter, the new hospitals unfit to open, etc.
It overshadows the failure of Scottish education, and the concealment of the damning report into it until after the election.
It overshadows the Salmond fiasco and the refusal of the SNP to comply with search warrants and information requests.
Because the hate crime bill has actually ENDED FREE SPEECH IN SCOTLAND.
Welcome to tartan North Korea.
Anyone still voting SNP needs a psychiatric assessment.

Having been brought up in poverty and voting labour all my life, maybe I have become a natural Tory?

I'm certainly more for libertarianism and no-one seems to be offering that.

Public sector pay freezes and redundancies? That's what most people in private industry live with and usually without the generous packages and terms and conditions that public sector enjoy.

And if someone is planning 3rd and subsequent children around the availability or not of child benefit then something is wrong. As I understand it wasn't applied retrospectively and given that many people don't get it anyway, it's a dying benefit and should probably be included into means tested benefits instead.

I'm not sure why the vanity project of baby boxes is regularly trumpeted. What is wrong with making targeted benefits available to those who need that? The items provided can often be picked up for free or cheaply locally or in shops anyway.

I still think about that poor couple that lay dying and dead in their car for days because of the merger of police forces meaning that the local knowledge wasn't used. The money given by Westminster specifically for the NHS that was spent elsewhere, the poverty money they had ringfenced and hadn't spent despite many people relying on foodbanks.

I've never had to rely on benefits though so might have a different view. I've worked full time since I was 17, been redundant twice, supported my family all my life. Certainly we've been lucky not to have to factor severe illness or disability and I think as a country I'd like to see more done to support the vulnerable. I'm also happy to pay more for that instead of chucking money down the SNP shitshow well.

I saw blackford's tweet - what a ginormous hypocrite.

wax funny I was ruminating about joining a cross party pressure group for civil liberties because it doesn't look as though you can trust any one party, they all are comfortable with liberty infringements in different spheres.

Funny/sad how the Liberal Democrat's have given up on tolerance and freedom to disagree, quite a change to their heritage.

The SNP have had income tax changing powers for a long time that they've hardly used to offset austerity - it is THEIR fault women and children have borne the brunt of benefit change and nobody else's.

Amazing the SNP get away with acting like a protest party when austerity was their choice too. Just like the council tax freeze - their choice.

@WouldBeGood

Blackford now ranting against the English Bill. These people are appalling

A joke. Look to the mote in his eye.

The new Bill should have those anti protest measures removed; every time something similar has been put forward it has always failed.

That Bill is about lack of police resources and operational failures. Like Clapham. It cannot be admitted that the Met have made a huge mess on public order in London and so this rubbish has been advanced. It won’t work but it needs opposing.

The council tax freeze does my head in. Some things that don't really cost a lot but are of great benefit to the community get dropped due to lack of sometimes sums such as £30-50k a year.

There are apparently something like 40k households in my area. If you discount say a quarter as being council tax exempt, and multiply even £1 a week increase for the rest, that's something like £1.5 million. Plus I don't think higher level households would complain at doubling that. You then ringfence it for community projects to benefit the elderly/disabled etc. at very little cost to people.

And yes that gobshite blackford - do you think he genuinely doesn't see the hypocrisy?

I can't imagine being in Blackford's head, genuinely cannot imagine the mental partitioning he's able to do. Probably requires animal farm levels of denial.

Agree on council tax, we've all spent so long in our council areas, isn't it time we invested more in them? If the case for parks, waste collection and community groups deserving good funding hasn't been made by now i despair.

Not only that if there is a tail of unemployment or fewer hours of work available to people for a while, what a good time to invest locally.

See the thing with council tax being frozen, I'm sure our's sky rocketed when they put through some adjustment to the upper levels. Does that not count?

(I think it was Scotland wide but might have been just Stirling).

Lizzie I am a bit on "frozen" Council tax also. The "education precept" was indeed Scotland wide. It was around 10% increase on bands E and upwards and was on top of a return to 3% annual increases.

The issue is not the Council tax which makes up about 20% of Council funding. It is the continuous cutting of the other 80% from both WM (in the name of efficiency) and Holyrood (in the name of vanity projects and centralisation - eg health and social care and education largest areas but also eg transport and housing.)

As a Glaswegian it is easy to draw comparisons between the money poured into trams and deficient bridges in Edinburgh while the Glasgow airport and hospital link hasn't progressed in 20 years and conclude we are being taken for mugs by the politicos in Holyrood. (that's before you get as far as the state of street cleaning and bin collections and public parks).

Freedom of speech already in jeopardy at Aberdeen University Students Association:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/17/student-banned-discrimination-saying-rule-britannia/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

They’ll be taxing windows again next...

@SheldonesqueIsUnwell

They’ll be taxing windows again next...

Nah, they need us to have windows so we can see what our neighbours are doing and report them.

Does anyone know where this drive for some of these pieces of legislation comes from?

Why was the hate crime bill thought necessary? Why was existing legislation not enough? Why the draconian interpretation of measurable activity for what constitutes a hate crime?

Where on earth did the notion for the failed named person's legislation come from? Who in their right mind thought it a good idea to bring in legislation so that every child in Scotland would have a state guardian who could overrule the parents? (not forgetting that the pilot project saw one of the state guardians convicted of a possession of child pornograohy offence, they still went ahead until a challenge was brought in court).

Does no one understand human rights in the Scottish Parliament, so that some basic checks can be made before legislation gets this far?

I keep pointing it out, but the SG is unicameral - there is no revisionary body checking its output. It's decisions are only overseen by its own members, sitting in Committee. Yet it yields power enough to severely impact upon peoples' everyday lives. Until this is addressed, these sort of unhappy events are going to keep occurring in Scotland so that its international reputation as somewhere to live, visit and do business in is damaged for decades to come.

@WaxOnFeckOff 😂

@GreenlandTheMovie I agree. There’s a peculiar drive to meddle with the minutiae of people’s lives, under the guise of care, which has been going on long before Covid.

I think it appeals to a certain demographic who like being “looked after” by the state, and believe the promises of milk and honey. And who never question things like human rights or personal freedoms. Lots of people just have to try to get on with life the best they can and no time or motivation to think about the big things.

Tories bad, England bad, Scotland good is the mantra for lots of people in Scotland.