Scotland’s Equalities

You can’t begin to understand how unfair a place Scotland is until you do a job involving fairness. Our education, NHS, justice, social work and welfare systems are breaking down. We see this daily, have done for years, but official admissions of shortcomings appear only in the last few days. Things must be desperate indeed for such announcements.

I will guarantee that those who condemn our drive for equality the most loudly are mainly the self same who were elected to eradicate that prejudice.

Nothing will ever persuade me that silence in the face of lies and intolerance can be right; yet I have found that speaking of such unfairness itself attracts hatred. I knew that in 2011 when there was a cover-up by SNP locally and nationally. Google me and Alloa Advertiser and Independent Review for clarity. I am so ashamed for not having said more then. 

Where has Scotland gone so wrong? After 15 years of government I helped elect, funded, supported and campaigned for, relentlessly?

We’ve got queues of ambulances, nurses demented by overwork, doctors emigrating, lawyers going bust, firemen, police officers, binmen, train drivers all talking of strike. 

And the Scottish Gov’t focus is elsewhere; women like me who want to defend women’s existing legal rights and protections, access to single sex spaces are deemed bad motive players.  It is overnight a bad thing to say that a rape victim requires a female supporter; it is wrong to say teenage girls deserve toilets for only girls and it is wicked to ban male bodies from female changing rooms, toilets and hospital wards. 

It’s become a naughty step move to say that legal aid is ruined and that access to justice is denied for many. Justice once again is something you can buy in Scotland if you have the money and if not then it’s not yours. Conviction, jail and denial of access to your own children become the outcomes.

I was a believer in Scottish independence since I wheeched my wee brother in a pushchair in1969.; I could see that had we local rulers we could require them to do our bidding. If they did not, we could sack them. Comprehending local democracy was easy. Its delivery less so. We no longer have the luxury of time.

Nothing will persuade me to apologise for the desperation I feel; you feel it too. I’m not really giving a flying flop about the feelings or motivations of our elected personnel. Their job is to stand up, spineful, not spineless; they’ve been able to save hundreds of thousands of pounds as you and I have been cold, hungry, scared and ignored. It is well past time that those who consider themselves our rulers delivered on multiple mandates or stood aside for those of us with clinical determination, steely spines and the ability, drive and stamina to walk the walk.