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Lucy Hunter Blackburn Profile picture
Lucy Hunter Blackburn
@LucyHunterB
One of @mbmpolicy. Co-editor of The Frontline @ethelwrites and of The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht. Freelance HE researcher. Joyful and reparative.
Aug 19 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
A short story about this line, given to The Times by the National Library of Scotland (NLS) on 12 August.

A fishy tale of a red herring, but more than that, a red herring with a bit of a whiff.

Are you sitting comfortably etc etc 1/14 Image The NLS line about reading room is obviously a red herring - as the issue is reversing its the decision to put the book on open shelves in the centenary exhibition, after staff complaints - but even taken on its own terms, it's not what it seems./
Aug 8 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Good to see Janey Sutherley getting this attention. It took two years to clear her, in court, of criminal charges. She had refused to say that a man with whom she was imprisoned under Sturgeon’s self-ID policies, was a woman. She lost parole while awaiting trial.

Oh no, wait. Image Sutherley’s experience runs almost exactly parallel to Sturgeon’s, from spring/summer 2023 to spring/summer 2025. But she spent the period in prison, for longer than she should have, and formally charged; and definitely not earning £75k pa plus a £300k advance.
Jul 20 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Over about 20 years of office life I worked with lots of people, some I really liked, some I rubbed along with fine, some I didn’t warm to, and the feeling was evidently mutual. And one who nearly broke me, who was not junior to me./ The last is the only one where I ever looked for formal processes to sort out the situation.
Jul 19 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Let’s say, for a moment, you are someone who thinks this is good decision and is concerned about the quality of Dr U’s experiences in the hospital. But you know that Upton is not like the other users, because when did you last have to have a discussion like this/ about somebody’s use of the female changing room? Possibly even on a witness stand you may later give away that you clearly can tell Upton’s sex, by language you use without thinking. So/
Jul 19 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Just to remind everyone, Janey Sutherley was in court in Scotland this year accused of a hate crime (ie aggravated offending) due to her refusal to pretend a man she was imprisoned with was a woman. The SPS were willing to report her. The police were willing to charge and/ COPFS to prosecute. Like Sandy, she was given no chance to tell her side before the full weight of the process descended. Though found not proven, she lost a chance of earlier release while waiting for trial./
Jul 17 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
A 🧵 on the Central Legal Office of NHS Scotland (CLO). The CLO matters in the Peggie case because NHS Fife doesn't have its own in-house lawyers. When it needs legal advice, like other NHS boards in Scotland, it uses the CLO./
nss.nhs.scot/departments/ce…Image The best information I've been able to find about the CLO was published as part of a 2022 recruitment for the post of Director & Legal Adviser. CLO has 132 staff, a budget of £6m, and the Director reports to the Chief Exec of National Services Scotland ./ apply.jobs.scot.nhs.uk/Job/JobDetail?…Image
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Jul 14 • 27 tweets • 8 min read
Long ago, I managed people. If I'd thought of making a 20-something carry the can for a serious organisational failure, I'd have been too ashamed to look in the mirror. So I hope NHS Fife top brass aren't planning that.

Anyway, a 🧵 on that top brass./ Image The one to start with is the Chief Executive of NHS Scotland, who's also the Director-General in the Scottish Govt for Health and Social Care. The NHS Scotland Central Legal Office, which provides legal services to all NHS Boards, reports ultimately to her. / Image
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Jun 27 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
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 Image Someone who lives in the ward has kindly been collecting all the election leaflets she got through the door for this election.

2/n Image
Jun 21 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
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./
Jun 17 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
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. /
Jun 7 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
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./ Image Does the class have any questions about this interpretation? Image
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Jun 6 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
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.



A 🧵about a little appreciated aspect of trying to follow business at Holyrood./frontlinewomen.substack.com/p/issue-1-the-… 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./
May 24 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Worth remembering that whenever a prisoner in Scotland takes legal action, it's against Scottish Ministers directly, not the prison service.

The SPS has no separate legal identity of its own - it's what's called an executive agency./ 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/…
Apr 28 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
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./
Apr 27 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
We should keep remembering that the SG and bodies it funds spent years telling us a GRC was just a piece of paper, while going to court to argue the opposite. And are now arguing the world has been turned upside down, because the UKSC decided a GRC is... just a piece of paper. / The backlash is of course really about people (including the SG, rather strangely, as it was party to the case) only just noticing a decision in *2022*, in the first FWS judicial review, which made clear that sex in the EA was biological (leaving only a question about GRCs)./
Apr 23 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
It occurs to me that the reason that interviewers in the past week have kept suggesting women campaigning here haven’t thought about this (🤨: see next tweet…). It’s because *they* never have (and reflexive bloke-first thinking, I know). / I suspect I’m typical of a lot women, in that when I first started engaging with this topic I spent quite a lot of time in conversations trying to answer the question, about what the solution was for the men who said they couldn’t use the Gents./
Apr 22 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Rhetorical shifts 🧵

Most of the protest and media questioning isn’t about the issue the UKSC decided (GRCs), but about its confirmation of what the Scottish courts had already determined - sex in the EA 2010 is not self-ID; and/ its explicit following through of the logic of that, that a single sex thing cannot by definition also be mixed sex.

The objection is very clearly to spaces and services deemed for women not allowing the presence of anyone male./
Apr 10 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The women who run FWS, all volunteers doing this, took the astonishingly bold and brave step of taking the Scottish government to court. Their tenacity then opened the door for other organisations @SexMattersOrg @AllianceLGB @project_lesbian @ScotLesbians to make their case too/ before the highest court in the UK. Is it absurd that things have reached this point? Yes, it is. It is absurd because the Scottish government is absurd, and also has been extraordinarily dishonest, in making arguments in court that it refused to make in parliament./
Apr 3 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I watched the evidence earlier about people not feeling safe to attend a film screening. And remembered *at the third, successful* screening, the riled up crowd outside, the hefty actual police presence, the guy who was grabbing at women's legs as they had to step over him,/ the crash barriers *inside* the building, the groups who hung around after to yell at women leaving, and this little gang, some distance from the actual exit, who were yelling insults at all groups of women walking off campus, just to be on the safe side/
Mar 29 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
Most recent stories about Stonewall are about what it's been doing. This one - unusually - is about whether it is doing anything in Scotland (that it wouldn't be doing anyway), in exchange for a six-figure annual grant from the Scottish Government. 1/n
thetimes.com/article/08d4dd… Stonewall Scotland gets £106k a year from the Scottish Government. In 2021, this was described, for up to September 2024, as being for a Scottish specific piece of work, called "Free to Be: Advancing LGBTQ+ Equality in Scotland". supported by 3.75 FTE staff, "across 7 roles". 2/n Image
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Mar 24 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I am continuing with my project of testing the development of AI by asking it to write cheese scone recipes in the style of Judith Butler. This remains a reliable source of satirical entertainment. But it always works best if you remind it to remove the quantities, the ingredients, and the instructions. x.com/i/grok/share/B…