Scottish Parliament votes to accept Cass Report - Forbes made Deputy First Minister

[fromorbit]

The amended motion that passed was as follows

That the Parliament welcomes the report submitted by Dr Hilary Cass on gender identity services for children and young people; recognises the report as a valid scientific document, and calls on the Scottish Government to thoroughly examine the recommendations of the NHS England commissioned report, and its applicability to NHS Scotland services, and to update the Parliament on the outcome before the summer recess and further calls on the Scottish Government to publish all papers relating to the multi-disciplinary clinical team work in assessing Dr Cass’s recommendations, and to urgently prepare a progress report on the existing strategy for reducing long waits for children and young people to access specialist gender services.

It passed 113 to 7 [presumably the Greens voted against.] It was amended to give the Government a longer period to formulate a response. Note the insane Green motion undermining the report was not even tabled.

Turns out the difficult women were right ALL along. Take a bow ladies.

Check out the full debate with the rabid contribution from Harvey and good ones from most other parties starts 15:15. Lots of Ferrets to be seen.

https://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/meeting-of-the-parliament-may-8-2024

Meanwhile in not unconnected news Kate Forbes became Deputy First Minister with various other important roles too. This makes Forbes more or less certain to be the next SNP leader one suspects.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68976320

She couldn't have done it without the Greens getting rid of Humza and then voting to keep the SNP in power. Which I am sure they are totally fine with :) Once again the Greens lack of competence comes to bite them. It could be that the SNP is starting to grasp reality we shall see.

Yep. I want to hear from Anas Sarwar. What's he doing to do once Labour are in power?

Bearing in mind Scotland is often used as a testing ground for controversial policy.

Here's Swinney talking about 'enhancing' the rights of LGBT people, including the ban on 'conversion therapy'.

https://twitter.com/Political_AlanS/status/1788847987193524247

Out for Indy:

'The FM's team reached out to us last night and we will be meeting this evening. We are reassured by his swift response to our concerns and those raised by the wider community, and we look forward to being able to share the results of the meeting with our members.

Kaukab Stewart is new Minister for Equalities.

That is not good news.

Having courted this lobby for so long, I presume they do not want to lose them to the greens.

I had hoped the SNP might want to quietly step away from all of this nonsense. but maybe they will just blame Westminster for not getting the GRA through and will want to be seen to do what they can.

Of course they want to say it's just Westminster holding them back - that way they can place both sides of the fence and it's someone else's fault.

Hopefully he is just trying to buy some time, by blaming Westminster, to wait and see how all of this pans out post-Cass.

Patrick Harvie is currently making himself and the Greens look like utter nutjobs. The Streisand Effect that he is creating by digging in will allow all sorts of reverse ferreting, including the more subtle types. People will fall over themselves to throw him under a bus, I'm sure (pointing out that they are just nice, whereas he is taking it too far). I wonder how hard John Swinney will actually work to remove the section 35 block. Presumably it's just better to keep it in place for now and then forget that you were angry about it later, once nobody wants the GRR bill anymore. He'll be able to practice some lines like "we didn't have the evidence before", "it was complicated" and then move on if he's grilled on it in future. He's pivoting at the right time for that to be a plausible approach, particularly as the bill/law would have allowed 16 year olds to "change gender".
Meanwhile, Patrick Harvie rants on. I can't imagine too many more politicians, in Scotland or in Westminster, will do so. Kate Osbourne, Dawn Butler and Kirsty Blackman perhaps... It'll interesting to listen to their incoherent doubling down too if they do. Bring it on....

Harvie (along with Slater and person person) is a complete loon who will go down with the ship. wonder where he will be in 5 years time?

Given the list situation and the depressing number of people I see on X saying they're leaving the SNP (yay!) and joining the Greens (WTF???), I suspect he'll still be seatwarming in Holyrood. :(

The Greens may pick up a few hundred new members. On the scale of things, this will have no impact at all.

All I need to know is how on earth to tactically vote to try and get as few Greens in power as possible.

Swinney committed to gender reform.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c97zv90d77do