I'm going to do a wee thread/rant on the NHS here so either bear with me or move on. I'm glad the SNP campaign is explicitly arguing that there needs to be a significant funding uplift for the NHS - & please don't forget social care because, without that, investment in the> > acute sector won't deliver the outcomes we need. Why is this needed? Over a decade of austerity has meant that capacity in the health & care system has not expanded to meet the rising demand that comes with an aging population. Budgets have risen but not by enough. That is the>

Thread on the upcoming vote at Conference on our strategy for WM election. I am disposed to vote for the proposal to offer a vote on independence. There are various amendments which I don't think substantively change it and which I will vote for. Some members disagree with the resolution in principle. They have every right to. Their argument is that we should instead focus on building support by governing well and seeking more powers. But I think Scotgov is governing well and there will be no more powers.

There follows a thread on this Daily Record stuff because I think it throws up some interesting questions. What's the story? Well, the Labour Party obtained details of 58,000 credit card transactions carried out by Scottish civil servants & fed them to the Daily Record. The main "gotcha" point the paper has run with today is that Scotgov spent a total of £10,000 on VIP airport services. The subtext of the hooh hah about this is of the "who do they think they are?" variety. Think "jumped up glorified councillors" etc.

Read some commentary on Humza Yousaf's speech yesterday. Many suggest there is confusion about what he proposes Scotgov would do in the event that the SNP wins the next WM election in Scotland on an indy platform. In fact, HY set out *exactly* what he thinks they should do. 👇 He believes they should seek negotiations with UK Gov on how to give effect to the proposition that Scotland should be an independent country. To support this they would take the following three actions.

Some Labour MSPs are tweeting about child poverty, saying more needs done. They're right because many of the levers sit at UK level & Labour needs to say what it will do. Right now Scotland has the lowest level of child poverty in the UK because of actions taken by Scotgov. 1/4 Scotgov has been willing to use progressive taxation to fund policies like the Scottish Child Payment, a unique benefit which directly targets child poverty. But, bizarrely, UK Labour ministers have criticised this. Labour say one thing in Scotland & another at UK level. 2/4

A thread about why I am voting for @HumzaYousaf. A bit long but I have a few things to say. I'm dividing this into two parts. 1) the road to independence and 2) the SNP's political position. They are of course closely connected. 1/9. 1) We're at a point of decision on our strategy for independence. I have supported a de facto referendum but recognise there are other views and this is a decision that must be reached collectively. I trust Humza to lead that conversation but not to try to impose his view. 2/9.

Reading over some of the political commentary on SNP leadership & I don't think it sufficiently takes into account the generational impact on politics more widely. I think we struggle to define terms here, it's not simply left wing/right wing. It's changed. Some is about neoliberalism of course (which in itself is a term I have never fully understood in its wider sense) a model that hasn't worked for anyone under 40. I mean it doesn't work for lots of people over 40 but it's younger people who have really been shafted by it.

The BBC NHS will, I think, provide a good example of how politicians spin things based on an assumption ordinary people don't understand how organisations work. The BBC is careful to make clear this was a meeting of executives who had been given the green light to consider all > > options in terms of service reform to address financial sustainability. This kind of thing is not at all unusual. It happens in councils every year in the run-up to budgets for example. Officers provide options for politicians to consider. And that's the key point.

I made the mistake of reading the replies to Humza Yousaf's tweet about the Scottish Government's budget situation. So just to reiterate the budget is fixed. By law Scotgov cannot raise taxes in year, nor can it borrow to fund day to day revenue spending. This means pay increases and other inflationary pressures - increased cost of goods & services etc - must be funded from the existing fixed budget. Normal countries have the full range of financial powers to manage challenging situations like this. But Scotland doesn't.

Thinking out loud thead about the indyref2 question. There's a big push to frame the question as Leave/Remain rather than Yes/No. Basic reason for this is that it conflates indy with brexit & polls framed in this language have delivered a lower result for independence. So, I do believe in principle that it should be a Yes/No question as in 2014 for two reasons - 1. It is recognisable, everyone understands the question and 2. It asks the right question - should Scotland become an independent country?

OK once more into the breach of GRA reform because there are dozens of tweets on my timeline from people who still believe a gender recognition certificate acts a) as some kind of license to be trans and b) gives trans ppl some new or additional rights to use single sex spaces. Starting with a) nobody needs permission to be trans any more than they need permission to be gay or left handed. Trans ppl can change their name, their passport, their driving license and all their other documents already without a gender recognition certificate.

Reading the chat about North London jibes by Sunak & someone suggesting Starmer reply by asking how many houses he has. No need to ask - Hallo magazine has all the details. Four. There's a 4 floor family townhouse in Kensington, along with a spare flat in Central London. Their weekend home is a manor house in North Yorkshire with 12 acres of land. It also has a lake in case the PM wants to do a Mr Darcy. In addition they have a house in Santa Monica.

I'm not sure what the government can do about those who believe with every fibre of their being that a gender recognition certificate acts as a kind of open sesame to single sex spaces. It's not simply that this piece of misinformation has become deeply embedded. It's actually the foundation of much of the opposition. People have put a lot of themselves into this campaign on the basis that they are protecting single sex spaces from predators.

Hi I am seeing a lot of folk querying where Anas Sarwar got his figure of 1m rats in Glasgow from. I think I know where - from a press release/news story originating with a company called Pest dot Co dot UK which actually gave the figure 1.3 million. They put out a press release on the impact of lockdown on rat numbers (which increased due to more people working from home and reduced services). Here is the story about Glasgow. glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-n…

People have sometimes questioned over the years whether gender balance in the SNP has made any difference. Is it just tokenism? Here is your answer. Nearly 60 per cent of Scottish women currently intend to vote SNP. This is a complete reversal of historic trends. More women politicians means more focus on women. It's that simple. In past session of parliament more legislation focussed on improving women's lives, from stronger protection against domestic abuse, to free period products, to better support for survivors of sexual violence.

Much debate on the state of the Yes movement. My view has always been there is no possibility of a re-run of 2014 where everyone lined up behind the same prospectus. Views on independence have evolved since then & one position can't capture more than 50pc of population. This is a pretty good analysis of the group the SNP may not be able to fully capture - voters who are eurosceptic, socially conservative (& less concerned with an internationally recognised process to achieve independence than mainstream Yessers). whatscotlandthinks.org/2021/03/is-sal…

The replies under this ...

https://twitter.com/AlexArthur1/status/1219950098286891008

Yes, some Roma people who come here beg. That's an outcome of massive systemic racism across Europe excluding Roma people from mainstream economic opportunities.

A lot of debate about whether sex should have been added as an aggravating factor in hate crime bill. The evidence, where this has been tried, is not encouraging. New Jersey has included sex as an aggravating factor for twenty years.

Scotpol urgently needs a working definition of transphobia before this horrible "debate" consumes everyone. There is so much dog whistling & coded language, it is exactly like anti-Semitism in that regard and also in that there is a huge amount of it about. Not saying it would be easy but there are some things everyone should be able to agree are transphobic. Off the top of my head:

- Saying or implying trans identities are not real & that trans people are mentally ill.

Watched a webinar with Biden's digital campaign team recently about the use of disinformation. One of their research findings was that some people promoting it knew that it was disinformation but believed there was a legitimate point being made, so they thought it was fine. I think that point of view is increasingly getting a foothold in Scotpol. Irrespective of where your sympathies are on gender recognition, you should not look the other way when people are spreading disinformation. It damages everyone by warping debate.

Some things I have been told as fact on Forensic Medical Services Bill stramash by multiple ppl.

1. Replacing 'gender' with 'sex' changes the law to stop rape survivors being examined by trans doctors.

2. Without this, any man could self-ID as a woman to get access to victims. 3. Unless the word gender is changed to sex, any rape survivor who objected to being examined by a man pretending to be a woman could be charged with a hate crime.

4. Changing the word gender to sex is necessary to recruit more women doctors to be forensic medical examiners.