I found several posts on Facebook that made me stop and think today - and not for good reasons.
The first raised an issue that I would have thought is pretty current in Scotland: can the infrastructure of Scotland's island communities stand up to the waves of tourists now visiting? (In an aside: of course it can). It wasn't the issue that got one person agitated: it was the fact that this has been talked about 'all summer' (it's August, ffs!) and has only now been blogged/tweeted/Facebooked about by an SNP MP. It's not like the MP is out of date. People were talking about this in Islay when I was there last week. And if you live in a Highland or Island local authority, you know the problems facing rural communities where infrastructure is concerned. And there's no doubt the Scottish Government will have to do more to support them if the expansion of tourism is to go ahead. There's been a spate of FB posts like this recently: eagle-eyed Facebookers track comments and quotes and announce triumphantly: this article was published 2 years/six months/3 weeks ago. Doesn't mean the article is out of date, although spotters obviously think so. And the discussion closes down.
I replied to a post in a group (about movies) raising what I thought was a valid issue for Hollywood: the refusal of the Oscars to accept that acting is an art and a skill, some of which you can learn but some of it innate, and talents are equally spread among the sexes. There is no reason for the women's and men's Oscars to be separated according to sex. Only the acting awards do this. It would be patronising to have a category for 'Best Female Director', wouldn't it? Did I get a discussion about the issue? Well, you know the answer. Reaction instantly turned to over-reaction: I was accused of being a 'pseudo-feminist.' (Nothing pseudo here, I promise you). I should read the article before commenting. (Thank you, I had). The discussion didn't close down this time because the person who had originally written the article intervened (they're all volunteer contributors - who I notice are also subject to insult from the punters). Unlike the other contributors (big fans of the Hollywood machine that I consider death to creativity and a block on the advancement of women, black and Hispanic directors and writers) he addressed the issue. It went very quiet after that with just comments about how the group need not - and probably should not - reflect the interests of Hollywood. The over-reactors vanished, having I think nothing to say.
The final comment I'd like to make about Facebook is to marvel at the number of experts we have out there. We can't get people - especially women - to stand for election in local councils or at Holyrood or Westminster. But if the political parties are looking for people with a political insight, they can look on Facebook. So Emmanuel Macron, elected in May, is already summed up as 'a clown.' Trump is a dangerous lunatic. Angela Merkel is dismissed as 'Mutti' and lacks any kind of political sense (How has she managed to survive this long in the pressure cooker of EU politics?).
Frankly I find some of my fellow Facebookers embarrassing. Their language is atrocious. They have no political vocabulary. They focus on personalities, not on issues or policy. Above all, they add nothing to the discussion and usually bring any conversation to a complete halt.
Feel free to prove me wrong: I'd love to see a Facebook group that actually has a good discussion going on.
Sunday, 27 August 2017
Friday, 25 August 2017
Lulu
I enjoyed Lulu's exploration of her roots on Who Do You Think You Are? We come from the same city and are about the same age, and I'm happy to see Lulu has kept her looks. I also appreciate the fact that she is humble about her beginnings and grateful for the help she got to get her music career started when she was 15.
Her discoveries about her family epitomised for me what Glasgow (Liverpool too) was about in the late 19th and 20th centuries: for many, it can be summed up in one word: sectarianism. I laughed when the historian showed Lulu the map of Glasgow at the time and pointed out districts according to whether the residents were Catholic or Protestant. He insisted there was no 'ghettoisation' and then went on to make it clear that's exactly what it was. To me, it looks as if the working class had next to nothing and religion kept them fighting among themselves to be top of the dunghead, instead of fighting for a decent wage and good housing for everyone.
Lulu's great grandmother was a pillar of the Orange Lodge. Her grandmother, however, fell for a right bad yin. The least of his faults was that he was a Catholic. He was also a street fighter, couldn't hold down a job and probably ran with a gang. He was in and out of jail for years. The marriage was a disaster. For the parents and the 7 kids they produced. Lulu's grandmother died aged 31. One child, Lulu's mother, was 'boarded out' with another family and her brother referred to her as 'the lucky one.' She died never knowing her family history.
It was good to see all this laid out in front of us but I hope for most people living in Scotland nowadays, this is an old, old story, and about as relevant as Gulliver's Travels.
Her discoveries about her family epitomised for me what Glasgow (Liverpool too) was about in the late 19th and 20th centuries: for many, it can be summed up in one word: sectarianism. I laughed when the historian showed Lulu the map of Glasgow at the time and pointed out districts according to whether the residents were Catholic or Protestant. He insisted there was no 'ghettoisation' and then went on to make it clear that's exactly what it was. To me, it looks as if the working class had next to nothing and religion kept them fighting among themselves to be top of the dunghead, instead of fighting for a decent wage and good housing for everyone.
Lulu's great grandmother was a pillar of the Orange Lodge. Her grandmother, however, fell for a right bad yin. The least of his faults was that he was a Catholic. He was also a street fighter, couldn't hold down a job and probably ran with a gang. He was in and out of jail for years. The marriage was a disaster. For the parents and the 7 kids they produced. Lulu's grandmother died aged 31. One child, Lulu's mother, was 'boarded out' with another family and her brother referred to her as 'the lucky one.' She died never knowing her family history.
It was good to see all this laid out in front of us but I hope for most people living in Scotland nowadays, this is an old, old story, and about as relevant as Gulliver's Travels.
Thursday, 3 August 2017
What are banks for?
On my way to the hairdresser's, I dropped in to a local corner shop. I bought a sandwich, a bottle of water and a loaf. Total cost: £3.83.
I handed over a tenner. There was a pause and the man behind the counter asked: "I don't suppose you've got anything smaller?"
I rootled around in my purse and eventually came up with the right money.
He was pathetically grateful: "Change is like gold dust these days," he said. "It's the ATM outside. It only gives twenties. People come in all the time. Buy one wee thing at the counter so they can get change. Why can't the ATM give out tenners and fivers?"
That is an excellent question.
Up until five years ago, my very prosperous area of East Renfrewshire had 4 bank branches and maybe 4 or even 5 building society branches. Now we have 2 bank branches and 2 building society branches. To an extent, I can see why: people use online banking.
I suspect, though, that here we prefer not to go near a branch of any bank or building society for reasons no one in the bank will admit.
It's all becoming more and more the situation as it used to be in France a generation ago: there you had to set aside half a day for any bank visit: "That's me off to the bank, chérie. I'll see you at lunchtime." You had to have a code to get in in the first place. Then you queued to speak to a teller. The teller filled in a form, handed it to you and waved you off to the cashier's desk. You queued again and eventually you got your money and could emerge blinking into the sunlight, wondering what the hell time it was and if there wasn't a better way to do all this.
Confession: I usually only go into my local branch because the ATM outside doesn't give me the notes I need to pay my cleaners. There's a queue. Always. This is partly due to the closure of all the branches round about. Doesn't matter what time I go in, I'll have to stand for up to 15 minutes. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Standing is not really an option for me. Today, after I'd queued and finally got the notes I wanted, the teller asked if I would like 'a review of your savings. We can make an appointment now.' So no money for more staff out front, but staff available to get me to give rbs my money to invest. I turned her down.
There used to be 4 counters in my branch. Now there are two plus a wall of machines, none of them providing the service people want. Yesterday, the machine that dealt with business deposits was out of order. That helped a lot - not. The people at the remaining two counters deal with everything. Bank loans, mortgages...It seems there's no one at the back to take away customers needing further detailed help, give them a cup of coffee and talk through whatever it is they want to ask.
I've complained. Of course I've complained. I even spoke to the manager on the phone about the number of elderly and disabled customers he had standing around for long periods waiting to speak to someone. Next time I went in there was still a queue but 3 chairs had appeared.
Maybe we should try the Thai approach to queuing:
Very civilised.
I keep coming back to this - and I know it's a cliche: rbs belongs to us. We bought the bank 9 years ago after they had made a monumental arse of their business. I don't trust them to do the right thing. Why should I? And on the current showing, I don't trust them to treat their customers right either.
When I got home today, there was an email from rbs asking me to complete a 'customer satisfaction survey' following on my (unavoidable) visit to the branch. I repeated all the things I've written here. Will it make a difference? I doubt it.
I handed over a tenner. There was a pause and the man behind the counter asked: "I don't suppose you've got anything smaller?"
I rootled around in my purse and eventually came up with the right money.
He was pathetically grateful: "Change is like gold dust these days," he said. "It's the ATM outside. It only gives twenties. People come in all the time. Buy one wee thing at the counter so they can get change. Why can't the ATM give out tenners and fivers?"
That is an excellent question.
Up until five years ago, my very prosperous area of East Renfrewshire had 4 bank branches and maybe 4 or even 5 building society branches. Now we have 2 bank branches and 2 building society branches. To an extent, I can see why: people use online banking.
I suspect, though, that here we prefer not to go near a branch of any bank or building society for reasons no one in the bank will admit.
It's all becoming more and more the situation as it used to be in France a generation ago: there you had to set aside half a day for any bank visit: "That's me off to the bank, chérie. I'll see you at lunchtime." You had to have a code to get in in the first place. Then you queued to speak to a teller. The teller filled in a form, handed it to you and waved you off to the cashier's desk. You queued again and eventually you got your money and could emerge blinking into the sunlight, wondering what the hell time it was and if there wasn't a better way to do all this.
Confession: I usually only go into my local branch because the ATM outside doesn't give me the notes I need to pay my cleaners. There's a queue. Always. This is partly due to the closure of all the branches round about. Doesn't matter what time I go in, I'll have to stand for up to 15 minutes. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Standing is not really an option for me. Today, after I'd queued and finally got the notes I wanted, the teller asked if I would like 'a review of your savings. We can make an appointment now.' So no money for more staff out front, but staff available to get me to give rbs my money to invest. I turned her down.
There used to be 4 counters in my branch. Now there are two plus a wall of machines, none of them providing the service people want. Yesterday, the machine that dealt with business deposits was out of order. That helped a lot - not. The people at the remaining two counters deal with everything. Bank loans, mortgages...It seems there's no one at the back to take away customers needing further detailed help, give them a cup of coffee and talk through whatever it is they want to ask.
I've complained. Of course I've complained. I even spoke to the manager on the phone about the number of elderly and disabled customers he had standing around for long periods waiting to speak to someone. Next time I went in there was still a queue but 3 chairs had appeared.
Maybe we should try the Thai approach to queuing:
I keep coming back to this - and I know it's a cliche: rbs belongs to us. We bought the bank 9 years ago after they had made a monumental arse of their business. I don't trust them to do the right thing. Why should I? And on the current showing, I don't trust them to treat their customers right either.
When I got home today, there was an email from rbs asking me to complete a 'customer satisfaction survey' following on my (unavoidable) visit to the branch. I repeated all the things I've written here. Will it make a difference? I doubt it.
Wednesday, 2 August 2017
Before the EU
On Monday someone on Facebook had a total meltdown on someone else's page. I can't find it now, of course. There's no search facility on Facebook, which is just one of my many complaints about the platform: it's not the best social media site, more like the least worst. This man was in favour of the UK leaving the EU. He blamed the EU for everything that has gone wrong for the last 50 years: the collapse of British industry, the skills deficit, rampant bureaucracy, immigration, etc.
Sometimes I feel like the hero of one of those terrible afternoon movies on the Syfy channel: I'm the last person alive with a memory of what life was like before the EU when everyone else's memory has been destroyed by zombies or an asteroid.
This man gave the impression that the UK pre-EU was an urban and rural paradise ruined by Johnny Foreigner. I suspect the guy is young. If he was older, he would remember the UK before it joined the Common Market, as I do.
So the situation before the UK applied to join the Common Market/European Community/European Union was, as I remember it:
Industry was not competitive: the UK was a basket case economically and had been going downhill since the end of the second World War. UK workers were less productive than workers in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and, heaven help us, even Italy. Management of industry was atrocious. It's hard to explain the complacency, the sense of entitlement, the sheer laziness of business-owners and managers. Too many owners were intent on taking money out of their businesses. They didn't re-invest. They had no interest in the future. Their workers' productivity was low at least in part because they were using old-fashioned machinery and outdated working methods. Managers were too often under- or un-trained.
Industry was often downright dangerous: everyone could tell stories in the 60s of people who went to work and never came home. We had a neighbour who worked on the docks in Glasgow and fell between the dockside and the ship he was helping to unload and that was that, but it was so common it wasn't even reported in the press much.
Workers went on strike. A lot. Strikes are now made out to be the work of the devil. In fact, workers often went on strike because inflation was out of control throughout the 60s and 70s and wages couldn't keep up with constant rises in the price of food, utilities, travel, etc. Some workers struck to protest at unsafe working conditions and low pay. Quite a few (in the building trade, for example) lost their jobs and were blacklisted as a result. Ask Ricky Tomlinson.
Inflation wasn't the responsibility of either workers or management. That had to do with incompetent politicians who refused to deal with the matter in any serious way. I remember my parents watching Sir Alec Douglas Home, the then prime minister, using matchsticks to explain the British economy on TV. I can't write in a public forum what my parents' reaction was but their gales of laughter said it all. There was constant talk of 'the balance of payments': the UK didn't earn enough to cover its debts (especially its war debts to the USA) and imported far more than it exported. The UK government was constantly forced to go cap in hand to the World Bank for support.
Some industries were kept going by government intervention - shipbuilding, coal, steel, car manufacturing - when they should have been run down or closed down altogether. Others like the cotton mills just dwindled away, defeated by countries like Turkey and India where costs could be beaten down .
The UK's place in the world was undermined not just by its lack of status as a wealth-maker: the colonies of the British Empire were given independence, sometimes long before they were financially able to manage on their own. 'Granting' independence sometimes meant the law of unintended consequences came into play: when Uganda got independence, there was so much bad feeling towards Indian and Pakistani immigrants who had helped build the country that they were forced to leave. They had dual Ugandan-British nationality, and a wave of immigration into the UK from Africa then followed the earlier wave of immigration from the West Indies. Not everyone in the UK was happy about that.
And then came Thatcher in 1979. She was to be prime minister until 1990. The damage her government did to communities all over the UK can't be stressed enough. Whole industries disappeared: in Scotland, we used to make steel, cars, tractors. That all vanished. Whole regions of the UK were left devastated, abandoned to 'wither away,' as her henchman Heseltine said of Liverpool, when people there tried to fight against the decline of their city and their region. The wealth of the country was sold off: British Gas was the first to go. Then BT. Then the trains. Even council housing stock went (and we're paying for it now). Nationalisation became a dirty word. Funny to see it back on the agenda.
The UK went over to a service-based industry. The skills that had previously been cherished in joiners, plumbers and plasterers among others were despised. It became impossible to get an apprenticeship (we're paying for that too at the moment). Youth unemployment rates were huge.
EU membership came along just in time. It saved the UK.
It's one of life's ironies for someone like me that farmers and fishermen voted to leave the EU. The EU has shown more dedication to local produce than any of its individual governments. There would, frankly, be no Scotch beef or lamb and no Scottish fish if the EU hadn't protected these. EU bureaucracy didn't (as was claimed by the likes of the Daily Mail, the Express and the Sun) demand we only eat straight bananas. But it did protect artisanal produce long before we knew what artisanal meant.
So what happened? Two things.
The UK press decided the EU was bad news and only printed bad news stories about it.
But the EU also expanded far too fast. This was part of what can only be described as a 'power grab' by politicians within the EU who could see the way they could build an empire. Ironically, this was the very thing the EU had been set up to avoid.
So what to do? You can stay inside the EU and work to reform it. Or you can leave and watch your country go arse over tip trying to find ways to compensate for losing access to the biggest free trade market in the world, where 75% of what the UK produces goes.
Guess what the UK has decided to do.
Sometimes I feel like the hero of one of those terrible afternoon movies on the Syfy channel: I'm the last person alive with a memory of what life was like before the EU when everyone else's memory has been destroyed by zombies or an asteroid.
This man gave the impression that the UK pre-EU was an urban and rural paradise ruined by Johnny Foreigner. I suspect the guy is young. If he was older, he would remember the UK before it joined the Common Market, as I do.
So the situation before the UK applied to join the Common Market/European Community/European Union was, as I remember it:
Industry was not competitive: the UK was a basket case economically and had been going downhill since the end of the second World War. UK workers were less productive than workers in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and, heaven help us, even Italy. Management of industry was atrocious. It's hard to explain the complacency, the sense of entitlement, the sheer laziness of business-owners and managers. Too many owners were intent on taking money out of their businesses. They didn't re-invest. They had no interest in the future. Their workers' productivity was low at least in part because they were using old-fashioned machinery and outdated working methods. Managers were too often under- or un-trained.
Industry was often downright dangerous: everyone could tell stories in the 60s of people who went to work and never came home. We had a neighbour who worked on the docks in Glasgow and fell between the dockside and the ship he was helping to unload and that was that, but it was so common it wasn't even reported in the press much.
Workers went on strike. A lot. Strikes are now made out to be the work of the devil. In fact, workers often went on strike because inflation was out of control throughout the 60s and 70s and wages couldn't keep up with constant rises in the price of food, utilities, travel, etc. Some workers struck to protest at unsafe working conditions and low pay. Quite a few (in the building trade, for example) lost their jobs and were blacklisted as a result. Ask Ricky Tomlinson.
Inflation wasn't the responsibility of either workers or management. That had to do with incompetent politicians who refused to deal with the matter in any serious way. I remember my parents watching Sir Alec Douglas Home, the then prime minister, using matchsticks to explain the British economy on TV. I can't write in a public forum what my parents' reaction was but their gales of laughter said it all. There was constant talk of 'the balance of payments': the UK didn't earn enough to cover its debts (especially its war debts to the USA) and imported far more than it exported. The UK government was constantly forced to go cap in hand to the World Bank for support.
Some industries were kept going by government intervention - shipbuilding, coal, steel, car manufacturing - when they should have been run down or closed down altogether. Others like the cotton mills just dwindled away, defeated by countries like Turkey and India where costs could be beaten down .
The UK's place in the world was undermined not just by its lack of status as a wealth-maker: the colonies of the British Empire were given independence, sometimes long before they were financially able to manage on their own. 'Granting' independence sometimes meant the law of unintended consequences came into play: when Uganda got independence, there was so much bad feeling towards Indian and Pakistani immigrants who had helped build the country that they were forced to leave. They had dual Ugandan-British nationality, and a wave of immigration into the UK from Africa then followed the earlier wave of immigration from the West Indies. Not everyone in the UK was happy about that.
And then came Thatcher in 1979. She was to be prime minister until 1990. The damage her government did to communities all over the UK can't be stressed enough. Whole industries disappeared: in Scotland, we used to make steel, cars, tractors. That all vanished. Whole regions of the UK were left devastated, abandoned to 'wither away,' as her henchman Heseltine said of Liverpool, when people there tried to fight against the decline of their city and their region. The wealth of the country was sold off: British Gas was the first to go. Then BT. Then the trains. Even council housing stock went (and we're paying for it now). Nationalisation became a dirty word. Funny to see it back on the agenda.
The UK went over to a service-based industry. The skills that had previously been cherished in joiners, plumbers and plasterers among others were despised. It became impossible to get an apprenticeship (we're paying for that too at the moment). Youth unemployment rates were huge.
EU membership came along just in time. It saved the UK.
It's one of life's ironies for someone like me that farmers and fishermen voted to leave the EU. The EU has shown more dedication to local produce than any of its individual governments. There would, frankly, be no Scotch beef or lamb and no Scottish fish if the EU hadn't protected these. EU bureaucracy didn't (as was claimed by the likes of the Daily Mail, the Express and the Sun) demand we only eat straight bananas. But it did protect artisanal produce long before we knew what artisanal meant.
So what happened? Two things.
The UK press decided the EU was bad news and only printed bad news stories about it.
But the EU also expanded far too fast. This was part of what can only be described as a 'power grab' by politicians within the EU who could see the way they could build an empire. Ironically, this was the very thing the EU had been set up to avoid.
So what to do? You can stay inside the EU and work to reform it. Or you can leave and watch your country go arse over tip trying to find ways to compensate for losing access to the biggest free trade market in the world, where 75% of what the UK produces goes.
Guess what the UK has decided to do.
Tuesday, 1 August 2017
A Hate Campaign
I'll start, as usual, by saying I'm not an SNP supporter and I'm not a fan of Wings Over Scotland. But I like fairness.
Ever since the SNP started pushing for a referendum on Scottish independence, certain elements of the UK press have gone after individual MPs, all representing the SNP.
If memory serves me well, Michelle Thomson was the first. She was never accused of anything, never arrested, never charged. She gave a voluntary statement to the police. The procurator fiscal's office is taking no further action because there's no evidence there was a crime or that she was involved in one.
The press presented it differently, with lurid front page stories claiming she had built a £1.7million property empire by 'greed, vanity and crooked deals.' I don't need to remind you that £1.7m buys you a rather nice house in a nice area of London. Whatever else she has, it's not an empire. You can read the rest of the press allegations against her here:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/choco-ration-soars-again/
I'm not a fan of the Rev Stu, who is abrasive and arrogant, but he gives a pretty good account of the 'case' against Michelle Thomson and how she has been pursued by quite ruthless elements of the UK press.
Michelle Thomson lost the SNP whip and was dropped as a candidate in her Edinburgh West constituency in 2017. The seat was lost to the LibDems in the general election.
Michelle Thomson was followed in the list of SNP people allegedly being 'investigated' - mostly by the press: Natalie McGarry, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Chris Law. Natalie McGarry has been charged. The other two have not.
Part of the Daily Telegraph's 'evidence' against Chris Law is that their reporter saw 'an Aston Martin racing car with the number plate 007' parked outside his home. No, I don't know who owns the car. This is called guilt by insinuation.
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh lost her seat to the Tories in 2017. Natalie McGarry's career ended when she failed to be nominated for her seat. Her Glasgow East seat was held with a much reduced majority by the SNP. Chris Law is still an MP, having held his Dundee seat in 2017,again with a reduced majority.
All of this is a result. For the press. Michelle Thomson, Natalie McGarry and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh are, in my opinion, victims of an attempt to get rid of Nicola Sturgeon: the press have been quick to claim her leadership of the SNP is flawed because the party isn't scrutinising its candidates closely enough. I've spoken to people who have applied for membership of the SNP and been turned down and a couple who wished to become candidates and didn't make it. Unless, of course, I happen to have met the only four who didn't make the cut with the SNP in the whole of Scotland...But there is a quality assurance process at work in the SNP.
Another result of the press's campaign is that 3 women have been kicked out of politics. And other women who might have considered politics as a career and a vocation have been put off for the
foreseeable future. We can't afford to be without these people. And I have to wonder why the press went after them. Soft targets? If the press thought Nicola Sturgeon would also be a soft target, they need to think again.
I'm also hoping the Rev Stu has had a good look at his own history and can stand up to close scrutiny. He's currently in a dispute with Kezia Dugdale who tried to use him to batter Nicola Sturgeon. And he's been attracting some not very nice press scrutiny with more to come when/if he takes Kezia Dugdale to court. And there's a major difference between MPs and Wings Over Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon has absolutely no control over Wings, which will go on saying and doing whatever the Rev
Stu wants.
Ever since the SNP started pushing for a referendum on Scottish independence, certain elements of the UK press have gone after individual MPs, all representing the SNP.
If memory serves me well, Michelle Thomson was the first. She was never accused of anything, never arrested, never charged. She gave a voluntary statement to the police. The procurator fiscal's office is taking no further action because there's no evidence there was a crime or that she was involved in one.
The press presented it differently, with lurid front page stories claiming she had built a £1.7million property empire by 'greed, vanity and crooked deals.' I don't need to remind you that £1.7m buys you a rather nice house in a nice area of London. Whatever else she has, it's not an empire. You can read the rest of the press allegations against her here:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/choco-ration-soars-again/
I'm not a fan of the Rev Stu, who is abrasive and arrogant, but he gives a pretty good account of the 'case' against Michelle Thomson and how she has been pursued by quite ruthless elements of the UK press.
Michelle Thomson lost the SNP whip and was dropped as a candidate in her Edinburgh West constituency in 2017. The seat was lost to the LibDems in the general election.
Michelle Thomson was followed in the list of SNP people allegedly being 'investigated' - mostly by the press: Natalie McGarry, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Chris Law. Natalie McGarry has been charged. The other two have not.
Part of the Daily Telegraph's 'evidence' against Chris Law is that their reporter saw 'an Aston Martin racing car with the number plate 007' parked outside his home. No, I don't know who owns the car. This is called guilt by insinuation.
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh lost her seat to the Tories in 2017. Natalie McGarry's career ended when she failed to be nominated for her seat. Her Glasgow East seat was held with a much reduced majority by the SNP. Chris Law is still an MP, having held his Dundee seat in 2017,again with a reduced majority.
All of this is a result. For the press. Michelle Thomson, Natalie McGarry and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh are, in my opinion, victims of an attempt to get rid of Nicola Sturgeon: the press have been quick to claim her leadership of the SNP is flawed because the party isn't scrutinising its candidates closely enough. I've spoken to people who have applied for membership of the SNP and been turned down and a couple who wished to become candidates and didn't make it. Unless, of course, I happen to have met the only four who didn't make the cut with the SNP in the whole of Scotland...But there is a quality assurance process at work in the SNP.
Another result of the press's campaign is that 3 women have been kicked out of politics. And other women who might have considered politics as a career and a vocation have been put off for the
foreseeable future. We can't afford to be without these people. And I have to wonder why the press went after them. Soft targets? If the press thought Nicola Sturgeon would also be a soft target, they need to think again.
I'm also hoping the Rev Stu has had a good look at his own history and can stand up to close scrutiny. He's currently in a dispute with Kezia Dugdale who tried to use him to batter Nicola Sturgeon. And he's been attracting some not very nice press scrutiny with more to come when/if he takes Kezia Dugdale to court. And there's a major difference between MPs and Wings Over Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon has absolutely no control over Wings, which will go on saying and doing whatever the Rev
Stu wants.
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