The Lib Dems have just won a council by-election in Edinburgh.
The party of Ben "Toxicity" Maguire, Alex "Standing Ovation" Cole-Hamilton, Christine Jardine, Sheila Ritchie and so many other allies would want voters to know how important self-ID is to them, wouldn't it?
1/n
Someone who lives in the ward has kindly been collecting all the election leaflets she got through the door for this election.
2/n
The Lib Dem Group recently helped pass a motion putting pressure on Edinburgh Women's Aid, after SWA made clear that trans-identifying men could only access those of its services which don't involve direct contact with women survivors using them. 3/n murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2025/06/16/the…
So it would be timely and relevant to say something to local voters about how much it believes in self-ID, wouldn't it? 4/n
And the Lib Dems did do several household drops. 5/n
So there were a few chances for the party to use this opportunity to promote its position on self-ID to local voters, and do its bit to challenge the (as many of elected representatives would say) "toxic debate". 6/n
And with the Supreme Court decision so much in the news, voters might have been more interested in this issue than ever? Maybe in relation to what the Lib Dems think this should mean in schools, as a key local service? 7/n
But I think a whole bunch of "fascist" (as Mr Maguire put it, before deleting) women activists must have infiltrated Lib Dem leaflet production in Edinburgh, literally erasing the party's passionately-felt position about self-ID from its election literature. 8/n
The party must know how much its voters want to hear how important this issue is to them. Time for @scotlibdems to act! 9/n
Otherwise this terrible act of sabotage and erasure of party policy may be repeated in future election literature.
FAO @LibVoice4Women @hollowood_zoe
10/10
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Just to pull this apart really precisely, and illustrate why the responses to the story are so weak and inadequate, there are two parts to this tale in which the state repeatedly failed to disclose to a woman’s defence lawyer the entire criminal record of a convicted murderer. /
First, Police Scotland kept sending back blank replies to the Crown Office when asked, until the defence lawyer produced one of the several press articles reporting on the man’s change of name and self-identification, and consequent move into the women’s prison estate./
Police Scotland is now snarking about the way this error is being described, holding an internal review with no mention of bringing in any external check on that (PIRC is obvious), and has already, without having held that review, assured the minister it’s a one- off error./
What Darren McG describes is related to a policy culture that prefers “lived experience” to careful data collection & analysis. Yes, statistics have their limits. But stats also protect people; they require no-one vulnerable to step into the limelight to prove something matters.
I worry that we have a political class/generation which finds it hard to absorb ideas in an abstract sense, based on numbers and other depersonalised information (“what if” cases eg), and can’t take things properly in unless a “lived experience” story is put in front of them. /
In recent years, one lobby group has put a few people in a room at Holyrood to have drop-in chats with MSPs, and called it a “living library”. So a tiny number of lobbyist-selected vulnerable (on their own argument) people were literally put on display, to justify legal change./
Today, class, we will be interpreting this sign, with specific reference to the messages it conveys about nappy changing. I’m delighted to announce we have a guest lecturer from a major Russell group university. I have however concealed his identity because… well, you’ll see./
Does the class have any questions about this interpretation?
Let’s not always see the same hands.
And if there’s a fire alarm, it’s not planned, and I’d be grateful for help getting our guest out the emergency exit without running.
For the first full edition of The Frontline's regular Policy and Power section, we had a look at what's on the agenda of legislatures around the UK over the next two weeks.
Committees are critical to the Holyrood system, is the theory - where the detailed discussions mostly happen. So having an idea about what dates they are planning to look at things helps people who might want to contact members in advance, tune in or even attend in person./
How do you find out what's on their agenda? You can look on individual committee entries on the parliament's site, or you can look at the Business Bulletin, which is a bit quicker, as it pulls together all the information in one place./ parliament.scot/chamber-and-co…
So, just as for slopping out, if a case is goes ahead, it will be Ministers who are in the spotlight defending the decision to allow some male prisoners to be housed with women based on self-ID. Potentially as we head into the 2026 Holyrood election. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/…
It means the risk of headlines that look a bit like this. But, unlike slopping out, which was due to inaction - specifically failure to invest faster in modernising the prison estate - cases here will be about active choices made by ministers, particularly since 2014./
So before I come off Twitter, a short thread about a conversation I’ve just had with a woman in the street. This is someone I’ve known for years, who knows what I do, but isn’t in anyway a campaigner or activist on this subject. One of the actually kindest people I know.🧵
And she stopped me, to say (a) how that grateful she was to @ForWomenScot and (b) how “angry” she was at the coverage. Esp on the BBC. And the 2nd word really took me aback, as this is not someone who I have ever seen express anger. It’s way off the range I associate with her./
@ForWomenScot But she really is angry at how the judgment is being reported, particularly by broadcasters, the focus on one side, the lack of women putting their point of view. She’s noticed it. Not someone who is on Twitter or in a campaign group. She’s just noticed it, spontaneously./