Tory MSP Tess White says that the Scottish Government's defence of trans people in court was "needless" ("Ministers spent nearly £374,000 in gender definition legal battle", The Herald, May 16). The fact is that the Government's position that a gender recognition certificate changes your legal sex was exactly the position of UK governments over the past 20 years, including the Tory ones.
It was right to defend that position when challenged in court (a challenge that the Government did not choose of course). As you report, the Government initially won, twice. The pursuer appealed to the UK Supreme Court, as is their right. That court's ruling has been critiqued by people with much better knowledge of law than I have.
What does seem clear is that if employers, public bodies and service providers interpret the court's ruling in the way that some have already – forcing trans people to use services and facilities for the opposite to their lived gender identity – then trans people's dignity and privacy will be fundamentally undermined. There will be further appeals, to the European Court of Human Rights. The Scottish Government has no standing to take an appeal to that court – only an affected individual can. The money to pay for the legal action is already being raised through donations from the LGBT community, and no doubt there will be courageous trans people willing to stand up and pursue justice over the years that it takes for cases to be resolved at the European Court.
As for Ms White's description of the Government's position as "dangerous" and "pandering to gender zealots", it has been suggested for some time that the Tories have again become the "nasty party". But Tess White's language on this issue goes beyond nasty – it is dehumanising of whole group of people who simply want to get on with their lives in peace.
Tim Hopkins, Edinburgh.
Bailing out the profligate SNP
The cost of the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries is now rising to £400 million. I suppose some might think that that makes the over-£600,000 cost of the "gender" court cases farce seem like a bargain. And the mere tens of thousands paid without due diligence by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland for expensive meals and a Harvard course for a senior manager must seem like loose change ("Ministers slammed over water watchdog’s use of public cash", The Herald, May 16).
It’s almost as if Scotland is so awash with surplus money that the SNP regime is looking for ways of spend, spend, spending. Yet we hear dire warnings about how spending commitments for the next few years will leave that regime with a horrendous deficit.
Thank goodness we always have good old Westminster to bail Scotland out when its profligate and incompetent rulers run up yet more debt.
Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.
Read more letters
- Supreme Court has given us more questions than answers
- CalMac cannot be the future of west coast ferry services
- I didn't think Starmer could stoop any lower. I was wrong
Ferries inquiry long overdue
I note an interesting string of letters on the ferry debacle (May 16). As ever, Roy Pederson provides real insight and comparative evidence on ferry operations around Scotland and the importance of community input. In contrast, several arch SNP critics also have their say. Peter Wright asks legitimate questions of government ministers while Richard Allison puts the boot into the administration.
Mr Allison can't understand why so many of the electorate still support the SNP. I can't know for sure, but might suggest that had a Labour/Lib Dem coalition still been in place, the ferry debacle is just as likely to have occurred. Surely any Scottish government would have wanted to give Ferguson Marine the opportunity to survive. And I doubt there are many, if any, ministers who have the knowledge required to adequately challenge their supposed advisors. That said, I wholly agree with R Johnston that an investigation into the affair is long overdue. Several things stink and it will better serve us all the sooner we find out, in order to learn from past mistakes.
Incidentally, I can't answer David S Brown's question about LNG but note that a tanker was waiting on the Troon quayside as I returned on my maiden trip on the Glen Sannox last week.
David Bruce, Troon.
PMQs proving to be preposterous
How pathetic and preposterous Prime Minister's Questions is proving to be just when we hoped that the Punch and Judy performances could be over with a more adult format.
Sadly Keir Starmer has subsided into the triedm tested and tattered formula this production has always followed.
Both Sir Keir and Kemi Badenoch square up to each other with the latter firing idle queries and the former batting them away without even trying to answer them.
It is no wonder that Reform at the current moment is laughing up its sleeve as the two main protagonists indulge in such dummy fighting, thus emphasising to the electorate how futile it continues to be to back either of them.
Why doesn't the PM follow the axiom so beloved of the French, namely, reculer per mieux sauter? Let him absorb what Ms Badenoch sees as stinging criticisms of some of the Government's missteps so far by acknowledging that there is a long way to go before the inherited mess can be cleared up and so take the sting out of what she thinks will damage his political standing.
By his refusal to answer her questions directly, he makes himself look shifty and weak and covers himself in what is not glorious but might well be called merde in the country of Macron.
It is time he presented himself as the grown-up in the room and brushed aside the weak blows aimed at his government with biting rebuttals of her misdirected attacks. He has a plan from which he should not deviate but he should acknowledge where his plan has drifted and needs to be put back on track.
Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs.
Problems for the Kirk
The 2025 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland takes place from May 17 to 22. Many problems require its consideration.
First, membership. The steady move away from Christianity in this country may be traced to a number of factors: education, apathy, irrelevance, immigration.
Second, finance. The Church of Scotland appears to be in serious financial trouble. Doubtless Matthew 17:20 can help here.
Third, surely it is inconceivable that the General Assembly won't address once and for all the continuing spectre of clerical sex abuse that has haunted the Church since it first became apparent more than three decades ago. On April 30, 2019 it was reported that the Church of Scotland had paid £1 million in damages to three sibling victims of a paedophile, Ian Samson, who was the superintendent of the Lord and Lady Polwarth children’s home in Edinburgh. Now we learn that the Church of Scotland has once again admitted it failed to conduct proper risk assessments on three registered sex offenders who attended Sunday services. The disclosure is contained in a report submitted to the current General Assembly. We await their deliberations. It is among the weak and defenceless that predators like to lurk.
Fourth, in a multi-faith, mainly secular, pluralistic culture Christ’s Principle of Exclusive Salvation (John 14:6) specifically excludes all other faiths: ‘‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’’ Christianity is an exclusivist faith that forecloses – was designed to foreclose – devotion to all other deities and faiths. Therein lie the roots of centuries of religious conflict. All backed up by Christ's shocking demand: ''But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them bring them here – and kill them in front of me'' (Luke 19:27).
Christ's family values? His mission, he says, is to make family members hate one another, so that they shall love him more than their kin (Matthew 10: 34-37). A disciple must hate his parents, wife, children and siblings (Luke 14:26). Children who curse their parents must be killed (Matthew 15:4). The law now forbids Christians from killing so-called witches (it took 464 years after the passage of the Witchcraft Act in 1563), heretics (not abolished until the passage of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, 2021), and blasphemers (abolished 1843).
Doug Clark, Currie.
The rudest man of the year
There was some great news this week which some of your readers may have missed. Apparently all the stories about famine in Gaza are fake news; the truth is that the population there has a surfeit of food, so much that everyone eats till almost bursting each and every day.
How do I know this? Well, I listened to Sebastian Gorka, Donald Trump’s senior director for counter-terrorism, who was being interviewed by Sarah Montague on the World at One on Tuesday. He said that a “simply gargantuan amount of food” has entered Gaza, which would “feed multiples of the residents there”. When challenged, he said the biased BBC “kneels at the altar of left-wing ideology”.
So there you have it, direct from a senior member of Donald Trump’s team. And, in other news, I saw a swarm of pigs flying by while I was listening to Mr Gorka’s ill-mannered rant.
I recommend the interview for the insight it gives into the mindset of President Trump’s top team. It starts 13 minutes into World at One on May 13. If you listen to it, I hope you’ll join me in calling for a medal for Sarah Montague and for Mr Gorka to be given a special award as the Rudest Man of the Year.
Doug Maughan, Dunblane.
The recent obituary of Dr Matthew Dunnigan ("Fearless consultant physician known for campaigning work exposing PFI hospital plans", The Herald, May 10) documented his long-standing research providing scholarly evidence of the inappropriateness of PFI methodology for procuring new hospitals, research ignored by politicians for decades, now abandoned, and which has come home to roost with a chronic shortage of urgent NHS hospital bed availability and the knock-on effect of admission delays in A&E.
Five decades ago I approached local education authorities to emphasise, and advocate for, the inclusion of teaching CPR and first aid in the school curriculum. This was ignored but is now being introduced by some authorities for all the reasons I espoused.
In the course of 30 years of research and in my doctorate studies I highlighted the importance of recognising travel-related illnesses and was involved in the development of teaching courses in Travel Medicine at Glasgow University in 1996, the founding of the Faculty of Travel Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow in 2006 and have seen the incorporation of this subject in medical school curriculums around the world.
The purpose of this letter is not to seek accolades, hence I have asked that my name is withheld, but to highlight that healthcare and other professionals who have dedicated their lives to improving the practice of their specialty do so for the benefit of others but their recommendations are frequently ignored by politicians lacking their knowledge and expertise.
Name and address supplied.
Tell us how it's done, Sir
It is reported that the King's personal fortune has risen by £30 million and now stands at £640 million ("King as rich as Sunak and wife as Charles’s personal wealth jumps £30m to £640m", heraldscotland, May 16). Very nice. Given that he has been smart enough to accumulate all this money, and has several houses scattered around the UK in which to live, would it not be an idea for His Majesty to share his money-making tips with his impoverished subjects, many of whom don't have £30 worth of savings, let alone £30 million, and who consider themselves lucky if they have one home they can call their own?
Ruth Marr, Stirling.
