Thread by @WingsScotland

Russell Findlay invites anyone from Scottish Labour (Anas Sarwar isn't present) to stand up and tell him what it is that they know now that they didn't know when they voted for the GRR. He pauses and waits. Nobody does.

Although Mercedes Villalba does stand up and squawk that no harm has ever resulted from self-ID, to some astonishment in the chamber.

Going to do something else for the next 10 minutes while Shirley-Anne Somerville speaks, because I don't want my IQ to drop 50 points.

Very few members other than Tories have bothered to show up.

There are more feminists in the gallery than SNP MSPs on the benches.

It appears that Somerville didn't take a single hostile intervention in her entire 10-minute speech.

I'm behind now, and just reaching Maggie Chapman. Oh lord, here we go.

Maggie Chapman is the best ever advert for a First Past The Post electoral system.

Now she's ranting in an increasingly breathless and hysterical manner about Donald Trump.

She refuses to take any interventions, but there's widespread mocking laughter as she cites the opinions of Scottish Trans/The Equality Network.

She looks like she might burst into tears. She keeps referring to trans people as "we".

She says that asking the Scottish Government to give a clear directive to public bodies about upholding the law amounts to "collective punishment" of, among others, "tall women".

Three or four people clap as she sits down, and now here comes Alex Cole-Hamilton to give us Beth's perspective.

Unsurprisingly, Cole-Hamilton indicates that the Lib Dems won't support the Conservative motion.

He claims that the Tory motion seeks to "reverse" all the gains that trans people have made towards equality. It does no such thing. All it does is ask the law to be upheld. He's such a snivelling dishonest wanker.

Audrey Nicoll, who the SNP have shoved aside in the hope of getting Stephen Flynn into Holyrood, demonstrates why nobody has ever heard of her and nobody will miss her, with a speech of epically tedious droning waffle saying absolutely nothing.

After five minutes of that I have literally and honestly not the slightest clue which side of the debate Nicoll is on.

Pauline McNeill quite reasonably asks why so many Scottish public bodies appear to be ignorant of the law.

Very strong and simply factual speech from Murdo Fraser. God help us all, Emma Harper is up next.

Harper tries some shitey deflection about the rape clause and a bit of general-purpose "TORIES BAD".

Claire Baker now speaking, and Lorna Slater intervenes to make sure everyone watching knows what a fuckwit Lorna Slater is.

Fucksake, can someone tell Marie McNair to blow her nose?

McNair whines about entirely imaginary attempts by the opposition to "shout down women in this debate". Another wasted few minutes in which nothing of any solidity was said. Hopefully Ash Regan will do better.

Mercedes Villalba appears to be the designated idiot for Labour today, stringently and repeatedly putting forward their old "transwomen are women" position.

Ash Regan packing a lot into a small amount of time and still managing to take interventions.

Evelyn Tweed announces that she's going to spend her time not talking about the subject of the debate, and I'm all out of fast-forward time 😭

That's actually an insult to the chamber.

What the fuck even is this? She's just rambling on and on about "gender-based violence". This is a debate about single-sex spaces.

Now she's rambling about "gender-based violence in black and ethnic minority and transgender communities", refusing hostile interventions but accepting a bullshit one from Mercedes fucking Villalba yet again.

Now she's wittering about "rape myths" and I would give my left arm for a button that opened underneath her and led to a crocodile pit.

That was an absolute fucking disgrace. She might as well have been talking about bus timetables for all the relevance it had to the debate.

Lorna Slater, who's constantly tried to interrupt everyone, butts in on Rachael Hamilton before she's even said anything, basically just to bellow "TRANSWOMEN ARE WOMEN!" again.

Fuck me, there's Mercedes Villalba piping up AGAIN, shouting at Rachael Hamilton that nothing bad has ever resulted from transwomen in women's spaces.

Now here's Clare Haughey dishonestly pretending this is all about the 2010 Equality Act, and nothing to do with the 1992 Workplace (Health, Safety, and Welfare) Regulations, which are at the heart of Peggie vs NHS Fife.

Literally no idea what Haughey is droning on about now. My brain shut down and it's just hearing noise.

"We move to winding-up speeches, and I call on Lorna Slater." Yeah, that should fucking do it alright.

Oh my fucking god Slater pulls the "you've got a gender-neutral toilet in your house" and the chamber is in uproar.

Brian Whittle asks how Lorna Slater felt about watching men punching women in the face in the Olympics. She ignores the question.

She starts fulminating about the "Equalities Act" [sic] and how transwomen using female toilets hurts nobody. She's almost screaming now.

Murdo Fraser intervenes with a beautifully-timed point about Katie Dolatowski. She stutters that it's "a horrendous example" but says that men can just barge into women's toilets and assault them without being trans. This is an awful speech.

Slater now just spewing out a non-stop stream of lies, insisting that self-ID policies in other countries have never caused any problems.

Presiding Officer thankfully cuts off Slater's mic as she runs out of time but keeps talking after several warnings.

What an absolute embarrassment to the Parliament she is.

Paul O'Kane's summing-up for Labour is entirely in keeping with their waffly, vague, content-free amendment.

O'Kane continues: "QWARK QWARK QWARK BLAH BLAH BLAH FLEEP FLOOP FLAPP BUM BUM DE DUM."

He ends to total silence because nobody has a fucking clue what he just said.

Here's Kaukab Stewart to explain the best way to decapitate a TERF.

This is amazing. The entire chamber is just talking amongst themselves because Stewart's speech is so boring. The PO has had to call for quiet twice.

Ash Regan raises a point of order enquiring whether they should engage with the substance of the debate, given that Stewart is just droning on about nothing to do with it.

The PO says that it's up to the speaker whether they should give a speech relevant to the debate or just wank on about whatever they like. (I slightly paraphrase.)

Stewart says, with no intended irony, that trans people are 0.44% of the population who "receive disproportionate levels of attention". 🤦‍♂️🤣🙄

Widespread groaning in the chamber and the PO eventually cuts Stewart off. Murdo Fraser calls "RESIGN!" several times.

Edward Mountain angrily points out that Stewart refused 13 interventions during her speech.

Tess White says only 13 of 243 Scottish secondary schools have single-sex toilets. Wow.

Fergus Ewing points out that it's disturbing that neither of the SNP ministers who spoke referred to the 1992 workplace regulations, only the 2010 Equality Act. Ignoring the former won't make it go away, he observes.

"You cannot have a women-only space and let biological men have access to that space", says Tess White, in a statement that ought to be laughably blindingly obvious but isn't under the SNP.

And that's the end of the debate. Almost nobody actually showed up for it except the Tories, but having listened to none of it they'll all be voting on it shortly. Here are the four versions of the motion that could result: wingsoverscotland.com/signal-and-noi…