Scotland on Sunday readers' letters: What a difference a salary boost makes to Green principles

If ever an example is needed of the total lack of integrity or sincerity of the Green Party in Scotland, the “vaccine passport’’ vote is it.

Scottish Greens co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Very recently, before the Green coalition with the nationalists, the leader of the party, Patrick Harvie, was slamming the very idea and the inequalities that would ensue if the bill was passed. But he and his fellow Green MSPs happily voted it through.

What a difference a taxpayer-supplied £30K salary boost, a ‘’ministry’’ and a limo at your disposal can make to Green principles about the unfairness of it all.

Incidentally, despite holding strong anti-nationalist views on almost everything else, I believe the vaccine certificate plan to be a necessary one.

They must get something right, now and then.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Usual tropes

Alexander Brown (Scotland on Sunday 12th September) is confident that those who are opposed to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) will be embarrassed in years to come.

He then comes out with the usual tropes – they are transphobic, repeating section 28, misguided, anti human rights and worst of all ‘not wanting peoples lives to be better’. Mr Brown just knows that he is right.

But manages to avoid the key issues. What if those who are opposed to the GRA are so because they want peoples lives to be better?

What if they are standing up for womens’ rights? He claims that "trans women are women”.

So perhaps he could answer the most basic of questions – what is a woman? I have yet to hear any supporter of the proposed GRA – whether politician or journalist answer that question? Perhaps he could be the first?

David Robertson, Artarmon, Sydney

No time to be upset

Alexander Brown (Scotland on Sunday 12th September) says of Ireland’s introduction of legal gender self-ID that, “The country acted quickly, doing it before people could notice so there was no time to be upset”.

Many Irish women are very upset now. This is hardly surprising since there was no public consultation on the change from medical safeguardin g to “self-ID” which happened just six weeks ahead of the Bill becoming law in 2015.

A poll of Irish adults in June commissioned by grassroots women’s group The Countess found just 17 per cent of respondents agree with the law as it stands.

Mr Brown asserts that “GRA changes nothing about access to spaces” but that is exactly what it does.

Three men with Gender Recognition Certificates have already been sent to the women’s wing of Limerick Prison.

Jill Nesbitt, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland

Greenwashing

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon cleverly lured the Green MSPs into her cabinet with fat ministerial salaries and promises of adopting Green policies to get their help in forming a majority in Holyrood.

The reality of the matter however is that Nicola Sturgeon was merely "Greenwashing" to get them on board as she has no intention of promoting the Green policies in the sure knowledge that she would lose thousands of Scottish votes.

Nicola Sturgeon will continue to sit on the fence in matters such as banning any further oil/gas developments in Scottish waters, making the support of Green MSPs looking like a complete sell-out.

Dennis Forbes Grattan, Bucksburn, Aberdeen

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