Scotland

What is your sex? It is a simple question and one that we can all surely answer. When it comes to filling out a census, ascertaining a person’s sex is particularly important. Working out the number of men and women living in an area allows for the appropriate provision of public services. But in its approach to conducting Scotland’s census next year, the Scottish government risks undermining this. Astonishingly, according to guidance published this week, the 2022 Scottish census will allow some respondents to essentially answer what they think best. It says: ‘If you are transgender the answer you give can be different from what is on your birth certificate. You do not need

This afternoon Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, co-leaders of the Scottish Greens, will become ministers in Nicola Sturgeon’s government. The appointments come after Green members ratified a cooperation agreement over the weekend. The unity pact is a strategic masterstroke by Sturgeon, handing her an overall majority at Holyrood, insulating her from internal SNP criticism and coopting a rival nationalist party. There is one midge in the porridge, however, and it’s this: the Scottish Greens are unhinged. Not merely eccentric or a little outside the mainstream, but full-blown, solar-powered, honest-to-Gaia cranks. For an illustration, consider a motion debated at their autumn 2015 conference in Glasgow. I was a political reporter back

Downing Street’s Union Unit has tried many ideas to keep Scotland in the UK – but even they can’t have thought of this. Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove was spotted in the early hours of the morning dancing in a popular nightclub in Aberdeen, the city of his birth. Gove, a veteran of the Whitehall jungle, turned up shortly after 1 a.m. at O’Neills pub – a place ‘where you can enjoy the craic’ in its own words – before heading on upstairs to nightclub Bohemia. One gob-smacked punter was quoted in the Daily Record as saying:  ‘Michael Gove walked into O’Neills at around 1.15am, the pub was just about closing. I’m

On Tuesday, another 4,323 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in Scotland. A reminder, if it were needed, that the pandemic continues even though 80 per cent of the adult population are now fully vaccinated. The schools are back and the start of the new university year next month suggests more new cases are all but certain. The worst of this iteration of the pandemic may be in the past but it isn’t over. Indeed, it is so far from being over that the First Minister felt it necessary to warn that a fresh round of restrictions may be necessary should case numbers continue to rise. Even if that proves unnecessary

Glasgow: the second city of the Empire, onetime shipbuilding capital of the world, home of Adam Smith, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and John Logie Baird. But for a great metropolis which gave us television, ultrasound and Alex Ferguson’s football genius, the city’s leadership has all too often failed to live up to its illustrious past.  The council’s current leader Susan Aitken is a perfect case in point. Swept to power in 2017 on the SNP tidal wave that engulfed Labour’s last bastions, Aitken’s four-year reign has been characterised by arrogance, incompetence and mismanagement. Such follies were perfectly encapsulated last month by the city’s waste crisis in the wake of bin collection cuts and bulk uplift charges, which left giant dead

The deal struck between Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Greens takes Scotland’s devolved government into new territory. For one, it is the first time a Green party has been part of a ruling administration anywhere in the UK. For another, it is a different kind of governing alliance from that which we’re used to in Britain (though less so in Northern Ireland). It is not quite a full-blown coalition like the Cameron-Clegg government — the pact, published this afternoon, outlines areas where the two parties will continue to express separate positions — but nor is it a mere confidence and supply arrangement like the one Theresa May secured with Arlene

Scotland’s grim reputation for abnormally high drug fatalities has become embedded in the public consciousness over the past year. The fact that fake benzodiazepines (‘street valium’) can be procured for 50p a pill on the streets of Dundee and Glasgow is now common knowledge, as is Scotland’s unenviable place at the top of Europe’s drug deaths league table. However, belated attention to this crisis should not allow signs of another to slip below the radar. New figures from National Records of Scotland (NRS) show a 17 per cent surge in alcohol-specific deaths between 2019 and 2020, a rise from 1,020 to 1,190 in the space of 12 months, what NRS

Richard Leonard, former leader of the Scottish Labour party, has posted a photograph of himself standing beside Ken Loach on his public Facebook page. The Central Scotland MSP, who was succeeded by Anas Sarwar as leader of Labour’s Holyrood wing in February, commented:  ‘Ken Loach is guilty of applying his rare talent to exposing the real life impact of poverty, inequality and injustice.’ Loach, director of Poor Cow and Cathy Come Home, claims to have been expelled from the party. The Guardian quotes Loach as saying:  ‘Labour HQ finally decided I’m not fit to be a member of their party, as I will not disown those already expelled.’  The problem

On Thursday, teachers planning residential trips were told that it may be just fine for teenagers of the opposite sex to share a room.  In 25 years of teaching, I have seen many daft ideas trickle down from government, but the Scottish government’s latest guidance, ‘Supporting Transgender Pupils In Schools’, takes the biscuit. Of course it promotes affirmation of transgender identities. This is Scotland, after all, where Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP seems to be in thrall to transgender ideology. The party previously enacted legislation that talked about people ‘becoming female’. But while that law took liberties with the rights of women, this latest guidance impacts the safeguarding of children. Astonishingly, the reference

One of the worst features of devolution is the tendency of devocrats to insist on doing their own thing in all circumstances and at whatever cost. The idea that decentralisation would lead to experimentation and the sharing of best practice now seems hopelessly naive. Instead, politicians in Edinburgh and Cardiff try to use nationalism to earth criticism, treating an attack on their records as an insult to the Scottish or Welsh people. Perhaps the most abject example was when a Welsh minister accused Michael Gove of harbouring ‘colonial attitudes’ when the then-education secretary penned an article comparing English and Welsh school outcomes. Even the evidence base that might have supported

The antics of Scottish Covid advisor Devi Sridhar have been one of the few bright spots throughout the pandemic. During the last fifteen months, Sridhar has become something of a pin-up girl to the SNP’s online army of so-called ‘cybernats.’ This has been due to her repeated jibes at the Westminster government, her demands for more power which Holyrood already had and her effusive praise for First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘wise words’ and ‘strong leadership’. Not to mention of course her suggestion that an independent Scotland would have done better against Covid. More seriously, Sridhar has also been accused of spreading misinformation about the Oxford vaccine. Back in March, as government ministers on

Tensions between Westminster and the devolved parliaments have been a constant feature of the Covid pandemic. Up in Edinburgh, the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has made full use of the crisis – hinting constantly at closing the English border and peppering her daily press conferences with pointed jibes at London.  Such actions are of course merely in keeping with the SNP’s penchant for power grabs and undermining the Union. In April the party’s Holyrood manifesto included a section grandly titled ‘global affairs’ boasting about their plans to engage with the ‘Scottish diaspora’ and the establishment of a ‘Scottish Council for Global Affairs.’ Foreign policy is, of course, a reserved power for Westminster. But