Readers' Letters: Time MSPs stopped being nodding donkeys

Alistair Grant’s excellent piece on the transgender row (11 February) includes a line from a source saying that SNP MSPs “didn't understand what they were voting for” when it came to gender reforms. I find that assertion a scary one generally but particularly when such a high profile and important piece of legislation is passing through parliament.
Members of the Scottish Parliament should not merely nod through legislation put in front of them, says reader (Picture: Jane Barlow/Getty Images)Members of the Scottish Parliament should not merely nod through legislation put in front of them, says reader (Picture: Jane Barlow/Getty Images)
Members of the Scottish Parliament should not merely nod through legislation put in front of them, says reader (Picture: Jane Barlow/Getty Images)

Those MSPs should remember they are there to represent their constituents rather than blindly follow their party and leader. Hopefully this mess will remind those involved of the importance of scrutinising and challenging rather than just nodding along and passing anything put in front of them.

J Lewis, Edinburgh

Inside track?

Thank you to Susan Dalgety for focusing her latest column entirely on me personally (Perspective, 11 February). However, the campaign for LGBT equality in Scotland has never been at all about one person; it is diverse and very broad.Susan Dalgety's description of the Equality Network as “powerful insiders” is nonsense. She mentions dinners, so, for the record, in my entire 36 years as an LGBT equality campaigner since 1987, I have had dinner with a politician or civil servant precisely twice. I wonder how many times Susan Dalgety has dined with MPs or MSPs in those same 36 years? Who is the insider here?If the Equality Network has helped to improve things, it is because working alongside many diverse LGBT people, we together make the case for change, accurately, thoughtfully and publicly. We listen to those who disagree with us and we consider how their concerns can be addressed, which is why we supported a number of opposition amendments to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.Of course, false claims of powerful insider influence have been levelled at minorities throughout the ages. It is a real shame to see Susan Dalgety recycling them against trans people. Anyone with knowledge of trans people's lives in Scotland will recognise how distant “powerful insiders” is from the truth.

Tim Hopkins, Director, Equality Network, Edinburgh

Close links

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The article by Susan Dalgety (“Gender bill row was more than 25 years in the making”) provides useful background on the Equality Network and its subsidiary, the Scottish Trans Alliance. Reviewing the organisation’s published accounts is also instructive.

The most recent accounts for Equality Network (to 31 March 2022) show a total income of £620,790. Of this, £588,975 came directly from the Scottish Government. Although incorporated as a charity, Equality Network is clearly far from independent of the Scottish Government.

In the same year, another organisation mentioned in the article, LGBT Youth Scotland, received the majority of its funding from public bodies, including £400,000 from the Scottish Government, £156,000 from NHS Scotland and over £250,000 from various Scottish local authorities.

These organisations, funded by taxpayers, lobby for their policies to be adopted, participate in Scottish Parliamentary consultations and robustly defend policies once implemented. While there may be no legal impediment to this cosy arrangement, it does feel that the underlying intent is for government and special interest groups to collude in manipulating public opinion. Where a charity is reliant upon Scottish Government funding, that should be openly acknowledged; after all, "he who pays the piper calls the tune”.

Given this environment, it should not be a surprise that “progressive” politicians within the Holyrood bubble implement policies in the belief that trans identity ideology is widely accepted. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill together with other policies that have been highlighted since it was passed, show that this consensus in Holyrood is completely at odds with the views of people across Scotland.

George Rennie, Inverness

Address this

Despite being a 53-year-old patriotic Scot, temporarily living in England but continuing to pay local property taxes for my property in Scotland, I wasn’t eligible to vote in the last independence referendum. The reason being was that I was not a legal resident of Scotland. Should there be a second referendum and I’m in the same position, I wonder if I could self-identify as a legal resident of Scotland. Or is that too much of a stretch?

Ian Gray, London

MP is wrong

Stewart McDonald MP is labouring under a misapprehension (“Dangers of a de facto referendum”, Perspective, 11 February). Most Scots do not want independence, the fine details of which are never included. Most Scots are now heartily weary of the whole idea, especially when this is promoted primarily by a Scottish National Party that is displaying ineptitude on a grand scale in all manner of ways.

The gender reform debacle is proof positive in a long line of failures that the SNP is not capable of legislation that actually works well. Mr McDonald saying his movement seeks to shift the “tectonic plates” upon which the United Kingdom is built is yet another insensitive turn of phrase at this time from the SNP. This is not a surprise, no-one really considers that they might have got it wrong in the SNP.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Sturgeon legacy

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

There used to be a joke in the legal profession about lawyers at a legal dinner to honour the person who had done the most to support the legal profession, being asked to drink a toast to “The man who makes his own Will”. Today the toast would be to Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government, whose actions seem to result in expensive lawyers either going off to courts throughout the land or, as reported in Saturday’s Scotsman (11 February), being asked to investigate yet another matter relating to the Ferries contract.It’s good to know that even though she is no longer a member of the legal profession Ms Sturgeon is making sure that lawyers in Scotland are not running out of work.

David Elder, Haddington, East Lothian

Time for ceasefire

I agree with Geoff Moore in that we should not send tanks or jets to Ukraine (Letters, 11 February). As Mr Moore mentions, training Ukrainians to fight in Challenger or Leopard tanks will take time and require many difficulties to be overcome, not least the fact that the Russian tanks used by the Ukrainian military have a three-man crew since they are fitted with an autoloader, while Nato tanks have a four-man crew. According to the UK Defence Journal, the average time for RAF trainee pilots completing flying training to the point of joining an Operational Conversion Unit for fast jets is 4.8 years, and Britain's military has already been cut by successive governments to the bone.

Instead of further arming Ukraine we should be looking to end the war peacefully. It is repeatedly said that this is an unprovoked war but from the Russian point of view it is not. When Ukraine's nationalist government took power in 2014 it banned Russian as an official language in the eastern provinces whose close ties with historical Russia are well-documented. When the eastern provinces opted for self-rule the Kiev government bombed and shelled them for seven years. According to the UN's Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights reporting in February 2019, the total number of conflict-related casualties between Ukraine and the eastern provinces was 40,000-43,000 from 14 April 2014 to 31 January 2019, including 12,800-13,000 killed.

There is an argument that if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine he will go on to invade Poland and the Baltic states. The poor performance of his military and their disorganised rabble-like behaviour involving looting, pillage, the wanton killing of civilians, rape and torture, and the complete lack of initiative by NCOs, suggests that that would be impossible even if that were his intention. And he would come up against Nato airpower which would be the decisive factor in a land battle. And even if the Russian Army were to be driven out of the Donbas that would not be the end of the war. Far from it. It would then become a second “Great Patriotic War”. What is required is a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement rather than prolonging the misery and suffering of this dreadful conflict.

William Loneskie, Oxton, Berwickshire

Turbine turmoil

The UK Government-commissioned review of Noise Guidance for onshore wind turbines confirms what campaigners have been saying for decades – it is outdated and in dire need of review, having been published in 1996 when turbines were tiny in comparison to the giant 260m turbines proposed today. It admits that the current guidance does not adequately address the adverse impact of amplitude modulation (AM), which increases noise annoyance. AM is explained as “a regular fluctuation of the sound level associated with the passage of the blades”. It is often described subjectively as a “swish” or “whoomph” sound and it is the main reason for wind turbine noise complaints.

The report also recommends a systematic review and meta-analysis of evidence on the effects of wind turbine sound exposure on noise annoyance and sleep quality.

Thousands of people have already been subjected to the horrors of living next to noisy wind turbines, disturbing their sleep and causing extreme stress. Current Scottish Government policy to more than double onshore wind capacity will inevitably cause a huge increase in the number of people affected. Nobody should be subjected to this. Common sense dictates that no more wind turbine applications should be entertained until the final guidance is published, however long that may take.

Aileen Jackson, Uplawmoor, East Renfrewshire

Write to The Scotsman

We welcome your thoughts – NO letters submitted elsewhere, please. Write to [email protected] including name, address and phone number – we won't print full details. Keep letters under 300 words, with no attachments, and avoid ‘Letters to the Editor/Readers’ Letters' or similar in your subject line - be specific. If referring to an article, include date, page number and heading.

Subscribe

Comments

 0 comments

Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.