43 Comments

There is, this. Then there is this... Gillian Mackay MSP @GillianMacMSP is advertising an intern position along with Lorna Slater. Gillian says on her Twitter that "Candidates must self-define as disabled". I am disabled. I do not self- define as disabled. In fact, I don't know what she means by this. Either you are disabled or you're not. How do these stupid people get elected?

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From the party that gave us "Self identifying non-male|non-female co-chairs".

Only a committee could come up with such clumsy language.

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"What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary" -- Richard Harkness, NY Herald Tribune, 6/15/1060

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1060? Wow, right before the Norman Conquest! They were so advanced back in those days! ;-)

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And in the fifteenth month of that year too!

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1960! And I wrote the numbers as they are written in the U.S., people.

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I feel like disabling anyone who "self-defines" as disabled who is not!

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You and me both

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then you'd be disability-phobic, a bigot and a hater....

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That's right and they can tell me that when I'm hitting them with my cane!

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Slater et al weren’t elected. Under the rules in Scotland minorities are allocated a certain number of places in the Parliament. So even though someone like Slater garnered very few votes she finds herself as an MSP then our increasingly crazy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon gives her a place in the government along with her nasty Green friend Patrick Harvie.

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Nope. Both were elected to regional seats. Both constituency and regional seats are elected by the people of Scotland. Regional seats have Scottish Labour, Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Green Party and Scottish Lib Dems, and maybe the odd independent. All elected. No minorities unless you think Labour, Tories, Greens and Lib Dems are minority parties in Scotland.

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I must have misunderstood as I recently read that Slater was fifth in the list of candidates in terms of votes but was part of the selection of Greens allocated places. Must go and read up

On it.

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She got about 6000 votes and is now a minister which is pretty appalling. I think the gerrymandering you are thinking of was the type used to oust Feminist Joan McAlpine by a candidate announcing a disability allowing her to push Joan down the list. Think she said she was diabetic or had a sore finger or something but it was good enough for Nicola....

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Good lould luck with your PM Sturgeon, she must have forgotten to look at her navel!

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February 16, 2022
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I too have a disability that is "hidden", as well as having a significant hearing loss. The whole thing about self defining is disingenuous as there are people out there who will decide they want to apply and will decide they have a disability when they don't. Part of the problem is that the Scot Govt decided that this is a way of getting more disabled people into work and gave Inclusion Scotland money to do so. They ask that you tell everyone and their grannie what your disability is - "proud and out" is the expression they used to use! Unfortunately when working with people who do not understand, you get the Gillian Mackay's who make stupid statements but don't understand the consequences for genuine disabled people. If they used the social model of disability rather than the medical model, more folks might just get it!

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I walk with a cane so my disability is visible, but often people say to me, "You seem so healthy!" And, of course, I don't want to go into all the unseen injuries I have. I never make assumptions that someone is well if they tell me they are not. But I do not find disability to be something to be proud of!

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If it wasn’t so serious you would have to laugh at these noodle heads. They are cancelling and expelling people at such a rate of knots eventually they will be shouting into the void from a very isolated place indeed.

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They are going to be talking to no one but each other, no disagreement, no relevance.

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And the capitalists are absolutely delighted at the "greens" toting water for corporate fouling of the planet!

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Couldn’t get anyone from Green Party to respond to my requests for clarification; however, they contacted me immediately when I cancelled my direct debit.

I don’t see any point in responding. (Same happened with the Women’s Equality Party.)

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Re. Ani Stafford-Townsend, ‘non-binary’ co-chair of the women’s committee. Non-binary is such a cop-out. Cop-out: “to avoid or neglect problems, responsibilities, or commitments”. Like throwing up your hands in the difficult and courageous effort required to erase sex-role conformity. They, of course, think they are doing the opposite. The very term acknowledges the binary, but then illogically declares it doesn’t exist. Seems like a number of handmaidens choose this route. Such a betrayal of their own integrity first of all, and a wilful ignorance of the results of their cowardice — ripples of damage affecting so many others — children especially, and in this particular instance, the "green" political work necessary for the much needed care of "Birthing Parent" Earth.

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I think the Green Party is unfit for anyone to be a member of it and vote for such bigotry as this

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Annette, it is only a tiny minority pushing this stuff. They get it through because most of the members don't vote. There are around 50,000 members and only a few hundred TRAs - but the TRAs vote. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog, and terribly misleading. The party is not lost - there is a vigorous resistance, and we need support to win this fight.

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An old quote I used to like about the Greens is that the party represented socialism for the suburbs, could always see some truth to that when looking at the demographics of the party. The TRAs seem to largely be be linked to student politics and XR trustafarians, as exemplified by Tamsin Omond.

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Which has meant getting a party which is deserved.

With internal participation lower than e.g. the Conservatives, that's a huge democratic deficit.

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If you are a member of the Green Party, please don't leave - stay and vote. If you are not a member, please join and vote. We are fighting to get the party back on track and we need support!

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Unfortunately joining means spending my hard earned cash. I really cannot justify spending money on a party that cares so little about women and girls.

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You're right. Why should anyone pay them for the privilege of being disregarded? Based on an insubstantial idea that putting this party 'back on track' is even possible.

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You won't need to leave. If you vote the wrong way they'll expel you.

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About the word 'radical' - in the context of using it in relation to feminism, remember that it has more than one meaning, and here it is used in its meaning of 'the root' or 'basic principle'.

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I tried to follow the link to WDI and found myself blocked by Norton Lifelock alleging that WDI website is unsafe. I was able to read the WDI website but in read-only mode. therefore, I'm unable to sign the declaration online. I suspect it's because a lot of bad actors are attempting to hack the site and Norton's algorithms have signed it off as unsafe. I don't know how to fix this. I'm hoping someone reading this knows what to do.

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I’m surprised but delighted to let you know that I had a message from Norton Lifelock this morning telling me they’ve “…re-evaluated the contents...” and changed the rating of the Womens Declaration website. So my naive query did the trick.

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Well done you! :-)

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Can you individually flag sites to Norton Lifelock as safe or allow exceptions (in a 'whitelist')? Or turn it off temporarily?

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Funny fact - software companies aren't calling them 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' anymore, but 'allowlist' and 'blocklist'; apparently, somebody numpty thought 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' were racist... :-/

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You don't know how I hovered over what I wrote...hence the quote marks :-(

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From what I've read, those terms don't have a racist origin, so I'm annoyed at people being up in arms about them. I even think their replacing "master/slave" in computing with "controller/agent" etc. is ridiculous, or people taking offense to the word "niggardly" because of what it sounds like. I may be in the minority with my attitude, though.

Why did you hesitate to use the terms we're discussing? For fear of offense, or for detesting of those terms?

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Of course they don't :-) and I agree with you. There's a lot of offense mining nonsense online so I'm quite careful in case it prompts someone to react in a way that's unwarranted. It's become very difficult to tell now. Someone on this substack went off on one the other day and it was hilariously bizarre how thin skinned they were, yet attacking me. Somehow it got into them accusing me of insulting them for being a man too, and then he brought race into it and was lobbing insults. Odd. As you say, a numpty.

So that's why I hesitated. Neither reason you offered, although I wouldn't want to offend anyone unless they were attacking me and I needed them to back off, more ennui at online everything! Even asking simple questions can sometimes get one flamed and by anyone reading this. I wasn't expecting you to or inferring you would.

The Greens are so utterly tying themselves in irrelevant twists which is very much part of all this fabricating stuff to be righteous about. Nothing to do with the environment or sustainability but they don't seem to care so much about that.

The word niggardly is interesting ;-)

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These people accuse the feminists of wanting to sterilise trans people - like we're the ones dishing out puberty blockers and hormones like Smarties and removing healthy sex organs from children!

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ok dudes come get me

https://c.tenor.com/wZZMZ32rraAAAAAM/yes-sit.gif

(I know it's not a joking matter, insanely misogynistic, dystopian, etc. I have to laugh though)

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Please do carry on making yourselves unelectable. We can find other parties who will concentrate on looking after the environment.

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Same happened to Australian Greens

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