Although I'm not an SNP supporter, I recognise talent when I see it and Mhairi Black is very talented. She has a first class honours from Glasgow University - which she got while she was standing for Westminster - and she has made her mark since she got there, particularly on behalf of WASPI women deprived of their state pensions. She is clearly a person of ability and undoubtedly the kind of person the rest of us would want to have serving us in public life.
Tonight I was browsing through Facebook and came across a link to an article in the Evening Times in which Sam Heughan - an actor in Outlander - defended Mhairi Black on International Women's Day and expressed his shock at the way she has been treated on twitter.
You can see it here:
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/16075088.Sam_Heughan_stands_up_for_MP_Mhairi_Black/
Please read this and then look at the comments that follow. There are 5, although one has been deleted (you may wonder why), but between them they have managed to send me into a state of real depression.
One objects to the language she used in reporting to the committee how people address her on twitter, as if she was using the bad language herself rather than reporting language that has been used against her.
One objects because she has made comments about Rangers football club. Another points out she has made similar comments about Celtic. As if either remark was relevant to the issue.
One points out she's a Catholic. I have to ask: so?
One describes her as coming from the wrong end of 'the ned spectrum.' Does that mean she's poor or poorly educated or from a working class background (none of that is true). Coming from a working class background myself, I find these assumptions most offensive.
So there we have it, folk: why Scotland is struggling to get its independence:
- sectarianism
- religious bigotry
- snobbery
- small mindedness.
Not one of these people deals with the fact that Mhairi Black has been treated with the most awful misogyny or that women have the right to take part in public life without being insulted on a daily basis. Not one even mentions Sam Heughan's comments.
It's time to get our heads out of the gutter. I'm just not sure how we do it.
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