Today in the Herald is the latest from that most unconvincing of pro-independence supporting writers, Kevin McKenna:
It’s time for Robison to join her former boss on the backbenches. In Scottish politics, has there ever been a more ignorant and dangerous comment than that made by Shona Robison last year during the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill? In responding to concerns that some aspects of the legislation might put women at risk, Ms Robison said: “There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour.”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23871744.time-robison-join-former-boss-backbenches/
Last year there were 1 689 cases of domestic abuse, 2 103 rapes and attempted rapes, 3 702 sexual assaults, involving a female victim. The media could only find two rapes by a man, 4 and 7 years ago, who identified as a man at the time but later identified as a woman and one case of a trans man who sexually assaulted a girl.
Last year there were 185 reported attacks on trans people.
Robison is correct. Women have reason to fear, above all, men who identify, sometimes too strongly, as men.
Returning to the Gender Recognition Bill, in early 2020, YouGov asked 1 618 Scots Which of the following current issues do you personally care about the most? Please tick up to four.
Only 2 chose The rights of transgender people.
By the end of 2020, it wasn’t even one of the choices and hasn’t been since.
Nobody is bothered Kevin.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/statistics/2023/06/recorded-crime-scotland-2022-23/documents/recorded-crime-scotland-2022-23/recorded-crime-scotland-2022-23/govscot%3Adocument/recorded-crime-scotland-2022-23.pdf
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Would it not just have been easier for him to write an article saying VOTE LABOUR …..I mean we all know where his ‘heart’ lies politically…..LOL
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Although they have kept quiet about it since Jack stymied the Act and since Starmer and his acolytes condescendingly dismissed the passage of the Act by Holyrood, and ‘promising’ something better, the Scottish Labour MSPs voted unanimously for the Act. There had been four years of debate and at the final reading there were more than 200 amendments, all designed to render the Act ineffective, put forward by the Tories. The bill was pretty thoroughly explored and tested during that period and is very similar to Acts in operation in a number of countries, such as Ireland.
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Isn’t the point here that Robison, Sturgeon et al are pushing the transgender issue at the expense of rights of all women eg on reserved spaces? Your statistics on violent crime are therefore a red herring, as is the statistic on public interest on transgender issues.
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the Scottish Parliament voted overwhelmingly for the trans rights bill, it was then struck down by Scotland’s Governor General Jack with a stroke of his pen.
That’s the point, the lack of political accountability and democracy in Scotland.
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No,
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No.
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The subject is not an either or we do not have to choose between protecting women and protecting transgender people , both can be treated fairly and both protected by the law if we make good and appropriate laws , there are too many people who do not want this to happen and what always strikes me as a bit odd is that it is mostly men who shout loudest about perceived risks to women with proposed transgender rights ,as is said here quite correctly and with real evidence is that it is men as whole who cause the most risk to women not just in Scotland or U.K. but across the world , history shows this too.
There is no perfect answer to such problems just as we seen some religious church leaders exposed as a sexual abuse risk to children in orphan homes something many many people thought could never have been possible and fought against until the evidence was so overwhelming that they had to face the facts , the same risk lies in the transgender world where some men who have declared themselves to be women have then sexually assaulted women .
We will not see the end of church leaders sexually assaulting children across the world and we will not see the end of men declaring themselves to be women and then sexually assaulting women.
We can introduce laws and other safeguards but can never say never with 100% certainty.
Trying to be fair to everyone is what the law has to do and it’s not as easy as it sounds to do that.
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McKenna has clearly been instructed to resuscitate the GRR propaganda gambit since the ‘ferry story’ has run aground, and the ‘big labour comeback’ story is being openly ridiculed – https://archive.ph/D4ZqW
He trots out the by now familiar tripe of Isla Bryson, who being kept in solitary would likely never have been known to the inmates but for media frothing by such as Kevin plastering it across the front page.
Next he conjures up Andrew Miller as example, a convicted paedophile.
Yet he blatantly ignores the common thread of his examples, both abusive males, neither of whom had a GRC, and never would be granted one under the old or proposed new rules.
The only observations which are “ignorant and dangerous” are from Kevin McKenna, it is he who should be tendering his resignation and joining his friends on the park benches.
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Well said Bob…..that is all he and those like him have….the eternal regurgitating of #SNPBAD ‘stories’……but strangely he and they, the media here, have no copious amounts of similar ‘stories’ to relate or regurgitate via that other political party as in New New Labour….which funnily enough we on here and elsewhere DO have and thus we are more than aware of the abundance of #LABOURBAD ‘stories’ that we can relate and regurgitate upon them as a political party (and too when they were in power at WM and also when in power at Holyrood)……but then they ARE Kevin’s preferred political party and too it seems currently most of the media in Scotland as well….why we even can often highlight our many many many #LabourBad stories on here and elsewhere as well…..but then that’s only because he, Kevin, and those others in the media choose NOT to….for reasons too obvious to note…again…..LOL
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This is very much worse than that I’m afraid – The GRA reforms (GRR) became a propaganda set up the minute Johnson hurriedly shelved it in Westminster, leaving a clear field of fire against SG progressing it.
“It’s all them Greens fault” has been a favoured gambit, despite GRR long preceding their rise to shared power in SG, whilst Westminster’s similar legislation is left quietly ignored in a cellar under Whitehall whilst they stitch up the Scots.
Yet what I find most scurrilous of all in these purely political gambits and asinine comment from McKenna, is shielding the Contractors whose job it is to manipulate public opinion and create a window of opportunity for the Client to exploit, whilst those who employ them from a tax-haven remain incognito.
Brexit and the infamous Cambridge Analytica and Nix revelation should have taught us what we are told is the “truth” is available to the highest bidder, as is Kevin McKenna…
PS – There is not a single country in the world with GRA and it’s reforms on it’s legislative books which has gone through the convulsions Scotland has in it’s media ?
Ireland reformed it and had it on the statute books in 2015, because they’re more interested in democracy.
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Words have meaning. Phrases and sentences are crafted by combining words in order communicate. This is an essential craft of a journalist. Mr McKenna lacks an appreciation of that craft, has flawed comprehension skills and/or simply sets out to deceive here, and to insult the intelligence of his readers.
He quotes Ms Robison: “There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour.”
Note the sentence construction – “ever HAD to pretend to be anything else”. Over centuries men have abused women without the abusers HAVING to pretend to be anything else in order to perpetrate their abuse!
Mr McKenna’s outrage over what he claims is an ‘ignorant and dangerous comment’ turns out to be a statement of blindingly obvious truth!
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“There is not a single country in the world with GRA and it’s reforms on it’s legislative books which has gone through the convulsions Scotland has in it’s media” ?
Exactly Bob well said…..it has become a stick with which to ONLY beat the SNP with and also , when it suits some, to include fault too with the Green party….and where whenever this bill is mentioned tis then ONLY attributed as being just the SNP aka the Scottish government who passed this bill…and where some members from ALL of the other parties who also voted to pass it in the Scottish parliament are then somehow mysteriously excluded as those who also voted to pass it…..and who many individuals and too the media are reluctant to promote as also being the supposed other ‘guilty’ parties …..
Pity we did not live in a NORMAL independent country instead of living in one where we are trapped in a dysfunctional and undemocratic state where objections and oppositions against all that our government proposes and does are constantly based more on their insecurity as a state as opposed to their presenting justified and reasoned arguments to substantiate their opposition….. as in their opposition to a political matter being that of an honest and fair one…….and not as what happens now where everything is politicised for the sake of it and too….for reasons too obvious to note……
As to alternate Indy party objections to this bill and too the SNP…well that too is so obvious tis also not worth noting……..
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Abused women have to stay in abusive places because they do not have equal rights. Women who cohabit do not have equal rights.
Kevin likes Labour.
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Abused colonies have to stay abused by colonial powers because they do not have equal rights. Scotland does not have equal rights.
Kevin is a Labour shill.
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