Frustrated fan of competent government in Scotland. Freelance HE researcher. Never nuanced enough apparently. Also one of https://t.co/94Wf6ZzlXN.
Apr 29 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is the second man in Scotland to be convicted of violent threats against women because they argue that sex cannot be changed and there are times that that matters in policy and law, and we need to be able to talk about that freely in clear language.
This deserves some dissecting, as the degree of chutzpah going on here may well be missed by those who have not been following Mr Cole-Hamilton's behaviour closely in recent years. Long🧵just for all the evidence, but feel free to skip straight to the last tweet for the point.
Mr Cole-Hamilton high-mindedly asserts that "it's time to put the national interest first" and call an election.
But what, Alex, has happened that means such a possibility has suddenly opened up?
It is - of course - that the coalition has fallen apart. How so?
Apr 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Here are the relevant bits of the Scotland Act on the the office of First Minister, for people who like primary sources. There will be more about this in the Parliament's standing orders, but this is the basic legal framework. legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/…
The FM must resign if there's a vote of no confidence in the SG.
Apr 1 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Right, with my account working again, I can post the thing I've wanted to for a while (it needs my threads to work).
A Modest Proposal for dealing with concerns about the new hate crime legislation in Scotland.
A 🧵** in satire font**, with apologies to Jonathan Swift.
The chilling effect happens because people fear being drawn unfairly and too easily into the criminal justice system, even if eventually no charges are brought, or charges are dropped, or Crown Office decides not to prosecute, or the prosecution fails./
Mar 11 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
This letter contains in its annex a short story that illustrates as neatly as anything that's happened over the past 5 years the arrogant dishonesty that we and others have encountered from government, for being the wrong type of people, outside the tent, annoying, unwelcome.🧵/
In February 2021 a row blew up over the lack of protection for freedom of expression in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. There was an emergency extra committee meeting on 22 February. At it, Humza Yousaf made a very clear promise, that came at us out of blue.
Jan 19 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
In autumn 2019 a very close long-time friend of mine who was raped when we were both younger was traumatised - there's not other word - by a meeting she attended. For a long time, she and the other women were too distressed to say anything in public/ rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/news/news/our-…
It was this one. The behaviour of the people who were there from RCS, ERCC and Edinburgh University could have been made public much sooner, but the women they had left so distressed *could not bear to say anything*. /
🧵The Labour MPs in yesterday's debate had not been briefed by people who cared about those MPs' personal reputations as competent, let alone skilled, legislators./
*Labour* promised to make sure the overseas list only included countries with a similar approach to GRCs as the UK, when it passed the GRA in 2004.
The govt is fulfilling a *Labour* commitment (which it has neglected but that hyperbole was not about that).
Oct 1, 2023 • 27 tweets • 10 min read
I'd be less interested in the funding of Open Democracy if it hadn't behaved like this. 🧵
When the article associated with this inquiry finally ran, months later, oddly enough it didn't mention this response at all (and didn't make this sort of mud stick to anyone, albeit not for want of a bit of smearing about). x.com/mbmpolicy/stat…
Jun 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Women politicians! Your job is to smile. If done while standing in front of a sign saying people should be decapitated, it's a trivial error. You must not, however, roll your eyes or pull faces when people say ridiculous things. That's so serious it invalidates all your arguments
I think it's worse in a debating chamber to be performatively bored and disdainful of the speakers, than to engage with what they're saying, including with obvious exasperation. It's an adult debating chamber not an S1 modern studies class.
Jun 12, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I really don't like abortion being located in the "bodily autonomy" debate. When I was frightened of getting pregnant, my concern wasn't the nine months of pregnancy, it was the impact on the whole of the rest of my life - and my capacity to raise a child in my then circumstances
When I was pregnant, by choice, and knew abortion was an option if things went badly wrong, it wasn't my bodily autonomy I cared about, it was the state of my and my child's future life - up to and including if I would stay alive at all.
Jun 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The way to establish if women are made to feel uncomfortable by the presence of someone obviously male in any women's space is not to ask the male person if anyone challenged them, but to give the women somewhere they can safely tell people how it felt for them.
I can hardly believe any serious person in politics who has paid any attention to any discussion of women's lives needs telling that, much less that it could be seen as a prejudicial statement. But it appears to be where we are, so let's say it.
Jun 12, 2023 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
I think we're due another round of this game. (Not Austen, I know, don't @ me etc).
We're getting to the bottom of a difficult question here in Scotland. The way to tell if someone is a man is to ask a politician when they think their career might be affected. Not 100% reliable yet (see the FM earlier) but early testing showing some promising results./
Unfortunately this test will never be available to women and girls out in the real world, in any circumstances where making this distinction might matter to them. But hey, who cares about them much anyway?
May 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Once more for those at the back. This is about *maleness*, nothing else. And how rubbing out all our permission to notice it and act on that is unsafe (to use a currently popular word). And we will go on saying so, no matter how much we are smeared, misrepresented and shunned.
It doesn't matter, of course. He'd have been easily able to show he met the Bill's requirements prior to coming to police attention. And even without that, Girl Guides would have accepted him as a woman leader, and SYHA would have let him into a female dorm./
Recording this as male offending and not putting him in women's prison is really not the be all and end all of this case.
May 17, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Time travel, a short thread.
I asked aged 16 if they'd like to go and do something nice after their last exam today, and the request was a trip to Dynamic Earth, a favourite of theirs since they were 4 or 5./
For those who don't know it, it's the science centre in Edinburgh; it starts with a trip to the big bang and then takes you through the formation of the earth, geology, the arrival of life etc./
May 17, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
My atheistical belief that this organisation has only given up God, but not religion, is being reinforced by this anti-pluralist turn and embrace of witch-hunting. (And I'd just have put that in a reply, if they'd not switched them off.)
My existential void and I are very happy knowing that we are not signed up for any form of institutional co-option.
May 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This thread is a perfect case study of the short-comings of the way the Bill was (and still is) discussed in public - misunderstandings perpetuated and going unchallenged (even where some of us tried to flag them up)./
This is a bold gambit by the politician who dismissed certain arguments as "not valid" (and then showed in plain sight she couldn't follow through her own, when they were tested by reality).
There is a sensitive, difficult discussion to have about the proposals coming forward on the handling of sexual offending trials. Many women will find this horribly close to home. Of course it should be done in a grown-up way./
May 13, 2023 • 85 tweets • 19 min read
For decades, thousands and thousands of young women working at fringe venues have had to put up with listening to unpleasantly sexist material, drunk pushy sleazy men in the audience and male comedians hitting on them, with no outpouring of support./
So forgive me if I find the sudden outburst of alarm about "workers' rights" at the fringe opportunistic shallow tosh.
May 11, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Short thread
If you're wondering why the cap on the number of places for Scottish domiciled undergraduates in Scottish universities is suddenly generating far more headlines, the answer lies at least partly in demographics./
For the past 10+ years, population stats have been kind. Of course, it's not only 18 year olds who take up undergrad places reserved for Scots, and application rates have been rising - but this chart (from UCAS) shows falling numbers, helpfully creating some headroom./
