Times: Sunak preparing to block Scottish gender reform bill

[ResisterRex]

Sunak preparing to block Scottish gender reform bill

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c845bae2-9377-11ed-beb4-99fcdfa7645c?shareToken=217d9586d687af757742096583505820

"Rishi Sunak is poised to block Scottish laws that make it easier for people to change their gender, in an unprecedented move that will provoke a constitutional row.

The Times has been told that new legal advice will pave the way for the government to stop Nicola Sturgeon’s gender recognition laws from getting royal assent next week.

The advice states that the legislation will have an adverse impact on UK-wide equality legislation, enabling ministers to block it. The government will make its case on technical and legal grounds but ministers have repeatedly expressed concerns about the potential impact of the Scottish legislation.

Sunak will make a final decision with Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, next week on invoking section 35 of the 1998 Scotland Act, which will prohibit Holyrood’s presiding officer from submitting the bill for royal assent. The Times has been told that they will follow the legal advice."

Continues at link

I think we are all going to be disappointed. They will wave this through and continue to fudge the issue hoping it will go away. How do you think we got into this mess in the first place? It will be up to women to continue to crowd fund cases against government funded lobby groups and against actual government departments. Also they will not clarify the Equality Act.
All guess work of course but knock me down with a feather if I'm wrong.
They hope it will eventually all blow over but the mistake they are making is that they have given birth to a political movement and the resistance will grow until it sweeps this crap away.

Very sadly, I'm beginning to wonder if you're right.

And what this may hopefully eventually lead to is the rise of grass roots parties the populace might actually vote for and feel represented by, and the end of professional politicians, since I think that idea has now been destruction tested.

it is public knowledge that many of her own party are against this bill but were pressured to vote for it through fear.

I have voted SNP every now and then, but won't ever again. I find the fierce discipline with the SNP MSPs a bit unnerving. No dissent tolerated. It goes way beyond other parties.

During the Indy ref it made me so angry when, with one voice, they'd parrot something blindingly false and deny deny deny. Also the belittling of those voiced valid reasonable concerns. I saw it again with the named person bill, which also inflamed anger, and now again with this. I do wonder if this is the 'nationalist' element ... anything can be said or done to achieve an objective. Blindly faithful, because the end goal - independence - is the big prize.

But I hate it. I hate the shelving of intelligence and critical thinking to march like soldiers obeying a higher command. I don't know if 'nationalism' attracts a certain character that is more susceptible to this sort of capitulation.

I used to think, I'm afraid, that Westminster attracted the Scottish politicians of calibre because that's where power is concentrated, leaving Holyrood with second-class thinkers. However, the Tories' current time in power has me reverting back to believing that nationalism is not good for intelligent critical thinking.

Both the SNP and the Tories have given me a deep loathing and distrust for nationalist movements. It's their end goal that matters, not people. (Please don't mention civic nationalism ... that's just gaslighting BS).

I’m Scottish and I completely agree with the observation that Scottish MSPs cannot run a decent government.
I have sat in Parliament & at the committee hearings on this bill and I’m totally appalled by the quality of MSPs at Holyrood. They couldn’t run a bath, never mind a country.
At present the SG is funding many projects that actively undermine women’s prisons & safeguarding children, millions of pounds given to misogynistic, homophobic organizations.
The SG HAS MANAGED TO CUT funding to Men’s Shed projects which helps hugely with men’s mental health, & Food Train which delivers food to elderly & disabled house bound people.

99% of the politicians at Holyrood are an embarrassment to Scotland.

I'm Scottish too and I'm afraid I agree with the worthlessness of the current Scot Gov. With a few exceptions, most MSPs currently in Holyrood are worthless, useless, positively dangerous (Maggie Chapman is a LUNATIC of epic proportions) and the whole fucking lot needs to be gone.

We fucked it up. We had a chance, and we right royally fucked it up.

The SNP can wait until my shite shines like the moon before they get a vote off me ever again.

I voted for Independence in the last referendum, I've voted SNP in the past, and I completely agree with nils.

If the Scotgov are going to fuck things up this badly (this is what, the 4th or 5th law they've tried to shove hastily through that has met with outrage from the public and relevant experts - after Named Person, Football Sectarianism, Hate Crime Bill and the UN Rights of the Child) then they appear to be incompetent at making law, unwilling to actually listen to anyone and really nothing but an enormously expensive vanity project that repeatedly fails to get the legal mechanisms right.

Their grasp of logic seems woeful, their inability to consider a variety of viewpoints and possible weaknesses is infuriating. The defensiveness and consequential inability to listen and correct errors is actually dangerous.

The only SNP legal victory I can think of in recent years is Joanna Cherry's blocking the proroguing of parliament.

That's in addition to the failings on Health, Education, Infrastructure, the ferries, etc.

What's the actual point of a government that is incapable of making competent law in the best interests of the electorate?

Holyrood and the Welsh Assembly make the case for keeping the Lords.

The BBC is focusing on the constitutional aspects because it is ideologically captured. The people of Scotland have overwhelmingly rejected all aspects of the GRRB when polled. It just shows how authoritarian wokism is.

Quite a powerful article about those who believed strongly in the SNP. No more:

twitter.com/agentp22/status/1614575026908397572?s=46&t=-9Wt70NZludCFhlTnaPDZA

(Don't think it's online, just that capture)

This matches the Indy-supporting women I know too. This morning I said to my husband: thank heavens we ARE not independent now, because if we were, women and children and same-sex attracted people would be absolutely screwed with nowhere to turn.

This was after reading a news article about a serial rapist currently serving life in a Scottish prison, trying to get moved to a women's prison. We were lied to and told this would never happen, but the fact this horrendous individual thinks he's in with a chance is a very very good indicator of how the SNP/greens have changed things for the worse for women in Scotland. It is gob-smacking.

I absolutely loathe the SNP even more than I loathe the Tories, and that's saying something. I will never forgive them for this.

Meanwhile, if any people here have not yet done this, perhaps they would like to sign this petition started by Sex Matters to Update the Equality Act to make clear that sex means biological sex, not sex modified by a gender recognition certificate.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243

Quite an interesting analysis from Conservative Home on this. In particular, this observation: "the story of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill suggests that what voters think about an abstract proposition may be one thing and particular measures another, as the issues they raise come into focus."

This feels on the money: "many voters who have lost faith in the Conservatives, especially perhaps in those crucial midlands and northern marginals, have persistent doubts about Labour’s values, and those of its leader."

(Yes, I did have to look up "tergiversations"!! )

https://conservativehome.com/2023/01/16/scotland-trans-self-id-and-a-headache-for-labours-leader/

"Sir Keir backed Scottish Labour’s original position yesterday, thereby signalling discontent with the Bill in its final form. Government movement of Section 35 will create another headache for him.

For much of the Labour Party in Scotland will oppose it, while some Labour unionists at Westminster will support it – or at least smile on it in private.
I don’t expect these tergiversations to have any short-term term effect on the poll ratings either of Sir Keir or the party. Most voters are preoccupied by rising prices, the NHS, strikes and living standards – not culture wars; nor constitutional debate.
Nonetheless, many voters who have lost faith in the Conservatives, especially perhaps in those crucial midlands and northern marginals, have persistent doubts about Labour’s values, and those of its leader.
And as the next election approaches, his economic offer will come under intensifying scrutiny. Yesterday, Rob Colvile wrotee_ that Starmer is promising “Rolls-Royce services on a Skoda budget”.
...

His backing for self-ID will find support among some voters: young people, Labour voters and women in particular, according to YouGovv_. But the story of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill suggests that what voters think about an abstract proposition may be one thing and particular measures another, as the issues they raise come into focus.
YouGov reports that Leave voters are among those least likely to recognise that transgender people now hold a new gender status. Sir Keir is angling for their supportt_, but it’s a long way from guaranteed."

and so we don't all have to Google:

Tergiversation

1: evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement : EQUIVOCATION

2 : desertion of a cause, position, party, or faith

Did you know?
The roots of tergiversation are about an unwillingness to pick a course and stay on it. The Latin verb tergiversari means "to show reluctance," and it comes from the combining of tergum, meaning "back," and versare, meaning "to turn." (While versare and its related form, vertere, turn up in the etymologies of many English words, including versatile and invert, tergum is at the root of only a few, among them tergal, an obscure synonym of dorsal.) While the "desertion" meaning of tergiversation is both older and a better reflection of the meanings of its etyma, the word is more frequently used as a synonym of equivocation. The related verb tergiversate is a somewhat rare synonym of equivocate.

Well, that's my schooling for the day!

Well, that's my schooling for the day!

Thank you for passing that on BoiledBeetle. That is a useful word, and it is fascinating to learn of ur.

@ScrollingLeaves I will give the internet it's due, it saves me having to go into the other room to search the big dictionary!