Can Scottish politics be salvaged?

[SickofHolyrood]

I’m coming increasingly to the conclusion that Scottish politics has descended down a rabbit hole and I’m wondering whether it will ever emerge again to govern properly.

We pay eye-watering taxes compared to the rest of the UK and we get £2k more in spending than raised in taxes for every man woman and child, but seem to get very little to show for it.

Schooling started disappearing down the drain about 10 years ago, and withdrawing ourselves from the PISA etc stats just shows what we all know - standards are in complete free fall. My kids seem to have a succession of supply teachers, and yet there are thousands of teachers unable to secure permanent positions.

My kids aren’t deprived enough to have a reasonable chance of getting into a suitable Scottish university course, despite more than meeting the entry requirements. If they were English it would be a formality.

Despite much higher funding the Scottish NHS is only marginally better than the English NHS. CAMHS waiting lists are criminal.

The drugs death stats are horrifying and getting exponentially worse all the time.

The SNP seem to be openly corrupt - stealing £600k from their own supporters, not spending the COVID 19 recovery money on recovery from covid 19, and now not letting the auditor general know what has happened to Scotland reserves.

The SNP seem to be totally economically illiterate, best illustrated by the decision to spend millions of pound propping up a handful of Scottish jobs building ferry’s that are still not finished, leaving island communities to pick up the pieces.

The SNP spending an inordinate amount of time hankering for an independence referendum that polling shows no one wants and they would lose, after promising to respect the result of the 2014 referendum.

And the whole GRC situation makes me think that we are being run by some sort of weird q-anon cult. What part of trans women are not women don’t they understand? What part of women wanting women only spaces don’t then understand? It’s not bigoted to want
to keep safeguarding protections of penises out of female spaces. I just don’t get it.

Yes, the Tories are horrendous. No question about it, but I am 100% confident that the whole corrupt lot of them will be flushed down the loo at the next general election never to see power again for the next 100 years. But I can see the SNP shambles never ending, due to the constant lies of sunlit uplands to the not very clever gullible types who believe their nonsense. Can anyone see any light in the Holyrood tunnel at all?

Self-Id is the standard adopted in so many countries without issue.

This is absolutely not true. Wi Spa is just one example of the issues that have arisen. There are plenty more if you open your eyes.

But the most likely form of harm to any woman is the police.

Huh? Citation?

We should target predators not communities.

How do we identify which are the predators in advance?

Shelefttheweb......Thank you for your explanation. It is certainly food for thought! (I'm not able to to use the quote function for some reason}

As for your comment re racist. I'm not white so - do one.

You can be whatever you like online.

But in real life, a black South African would know that white men weren't necklaced. I'm done with you. You're vile.

Same - last time round I voted for independence and my husband who is Northern Irish voted to stay part of Union. He was on the fence though. The worse Westminster gets the more I am inclined to think that independence is the only way to get prospect of better future. Do I think things are perfectly run now? Definitely not but if we get independence then maybe the other Scottish parties would reform and actually focus on Scotland and then improve things.

All the people who shill for men claiming to be women to be allowed into women’s spaces…why were they not campaigning for disabled men, elderly men, teenage boys, effeminate gay men, any vulnerable category of men, Joyce’s lovely husband who wouldn’t hurt a fly etc etc…to be allowed into those spaces? Why is it only the ones who say they want to be women?

We discriminate against all men as a proportionate act to allow women safety, privacy and dignity in situations where we are likely to be most vulnerable. That’s safeguarding 101. Transwomen are not women. They are men. That is a biological fact. They offend at a rate consistent with other men (indeed, recent stats from the prison population suggest a higher correlation between biological males claiming a trans identity and sex offending than across the general male prison population). They are men, therefore they are included in the class of humans which society has agreed should stay out of female spaces.

We discriminate against all men as a proportionate act to allow women safety, privacy and dignity in situations where we are likely to be most vulnerable. That’s safeguarding 101. Transwomen are not women. They are men. That is a biological fact. They offend at a rate consistent with other men (indeed, recent stats from the prison population suggest a higher correlation between biological males claiming a trans identity and sex offending than across the general male prison population). They are men, therefore they are included in the class of humans which society has agreed should stay out of female spaces.
Exactly , human males can identify how they please but they should not be allowed in female only spaces.

@BenCoopersSupportWren

Well said, exactly how I feel too.

@BenCoopersSupportWren I agree 👏

A bigot is someone who clings obstinately to an unreasonable opinion. I’d say the bigots are the trans women demanding access to an area they have no right to access.

@334bu and how's that working out? Shit. That's how it's working out...

Women's safe spaces.
Where exactly are they?
Where is it that cis men don't feel empowered to attack/assault/rape women?

Year ending September 2022 70,633 women were raped in uk as recorded by police. Only 2,616 of them were brought to trial.

The current way of dealing with gender doesn't work.
Hiding women away in pretendy "safe spaces" doesn't work.

There are no safe spaces.

Rape & sexual assault are a choice. The penis is not the problem. It's the attitude towards gender by the man attached to it that's the problem. That's why attitudes to gender need changing. Ring fencing spaces for people based on fear is stupid. It's time to fix the problem & that will
Never be fixed whilst people refuse to look behind the end of their own nose. It's difficult & complicated & nuanced but the type of bigotry & ignorance displayed on here on a daily basis is vomit inducing

I understand there are a LOT of people on here who are married to their so called gc views and will not even consider listening to other views but it really is not that simple.

Gendered violence will never be solved by hiding women away from men.

So do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem.

The amount of times I read slurs & stupid upholding of gender roles on here it makes me feel ill. "Bloke in a dress"
"Hairy arsed man in a frock" etc etc etc
I'm a women because I have a vagina etc

Well I'm in my fifties and every feminist I ever met in my life did not want to be defined by their biological bits & now it's all any of you want to talk about. It's bloody depressing & yes bigoted & yes short sighted.

@beachcitygirl are you.... are you feeling quite well?

@beachcitygirl

How does allowing males like this in female areas help matters?

www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/exclusive-transgender-fugitive-who-spurred-wi-spa-riots-bares-all/

I think the political landscape in Scotland is changing and this gender ideology lie through the GRR bill is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

none of my independence loving family and all but one friend (she’s party faithful) say they will support NS or vote for the SNP nor the Greens.

I read that membership of the SNP has dropped by 20K in the last year.

Looks like sturgeon's GRR bill has turned Scotland TERFY.

unherd.com/2023/02/scotland-turns-on-gender-ideology/

Fantastic summary @BenCoopersSupportWren. I'm getting so sick of lunatics screaming 'bigot' at anyone who believes in reality - that it isn't possible to change sex. The conflation of gender (whatever the fuck that is) with sex and the gradual erosion of women's rights, to the point where a rape victim is told to 'reframe HER trauma' for not wanting male bodies in support groups, is absolutely sickening.

Decent men respect women's boundaries and don't try and infiltrate the spaces we have, and have for very good reason. This new brand of 'transwoman' with penises includes an awful lot of straight up misogynists (and worse) who thrive on putting women in their place, and since we can't tell at face value who is a threat and who isn't no-one with a penis should be allowed in. The requirement for a medical diagnosis at least recognises the balancing of rights involved and tries to provide some safeguards - self ID (as seems to have infiltrated everywhere by stealth) removes all protections and allows them all in.

@beachbeachcitygirl a rape crisis centre is a safe space for women, a women's homeless hostel is a safe space for women, a women's domestic violence refuge is a safe space for women.......when you have 1 particular rape crisis centre saying survivors should be educated on trans and "reframe their trauma" its deeply wrong. These women need protecting at a incredibly vulnerable stage. The same person left the SNP because victims of rape could chose the sex of the person doing their exam.

I do not think for one minute that all trans people are going to use loopholes etc but that doesn't mean vulnerable women do not have the right for protection especially when they are one of the most traumatic and difficult parts of their lives.
That's not bigoted surely as a feminist you wouldn't want women who have been through trauma being more traumatised!

If your attitude is essentially “well, men are gonna rape women anyway so what can you do?” you need to learn about safeguarding, why we have it and how it works. There is no one single strategy that results in successful safeguarding. We apply multiple approaches and each one is a layer that blocks a hole which a predator could try to exploit. One of those layers is making it part of the social contract that decent men, non-predatory men, stay out of the spaces we have designated “women only”, and making it acceptable for women who find a man in their spaces to raise the alarm or ask for help removing him (where those options exist) without being accused of being bigots or “transphobes”. Remove that layer and you increase the risk to women.

Why do you think removing that layer is an acceptable or sensible course of action to take? Why do you want to weaken the protections women have, rather than strengthen them?

Excellent post.