I'm really proud of Standingstone today. A baby was born here this morning, in the yurt we erected for his parents a fortnight ago. I'm proud that we have been able to give them a place to be, relatively protected from the stresses of the world, at this important moment.
But I'm a bit ashamed for Scotland that the best place we can offer to a pair of strangers in our midst, only one of whom speaks English well, to bring a child into the world, is a tent in a field.
Two more babies will be born in the parish this summer, both of them here at Standingstone, one to parents living in a wheeled shepherd's hut, one to parents living in an old caravan. Both those couples have one member who grew up here, who went to primary and secondary school here. Both couples are in employment.
But in modern Scotland, rural people earning rural incomes can no longer afford rural #housing.
We need to break the capitalist market in #housing. We need a highly progressive tax on property in housing and in land. We need to prevent the use of dwelling houses as holiday homes or as short term lets. We need to allow people to live in structures they can afford, and to help them afford structures fit to live in.
None of our political parties -- with the dubious exception of @ScottishGreens -- are even trying to address the problems Scotland faces.
Voters in Scotland remember this: for Tories and Labour England is the priority and will always come first. Scotland will only ever - ever - get what it needs or wants if it happens to coincide with what England wants. Use your vote wisely. #IndependenceIsNormal#UKGeneralElection#ukge2024#scotpol#Scotland
Nice that she could walk away...
For Scottish Trans people, we take all that shit and don't get the choice to leave it behind.
Not surprised.
At a human level, we understand and don't blame her.
But fucking hell, the naivety of thinking that would help. Ceding ground to transphobes, who celebrated her downfall as a victory and justification for their methods, only generated more abuse.
Abuse directed at those who cannot walk away.
Not to mention the creep of all kinds of bigotry into Scottish parliamentary and news discourse.
@peterbrown@GlasWolf How many folk are Singer employing in Scotland now? How much tax do IBM employees pay in Scotland today?
They are outwardly divested, leaving rubble and waste. No one invests in a country they do not live in to put money into that country's economy; on the contrary, they seek to take money out. If they fail, and go bankrupt, we're worse off; if they succeed, and pillage us, we're worse off.
"After so long in office, with so very little to show for it, you need far more than to rely on the mantra of “competency.” That is the bare minimum anyone should expect from any government. It is not, by any measure, a vision or a strategy for political growth" -- Jonathon Shafi, in the @TheNational
But which government is he talking about?
(I'm encouraged to see Shafi being more of a voice in #ScotPol again; I've ae been impressed with him)
Well done Ross Greer.
There is a reason we are now a member of the Scottish Greens.
This is the way to call out someone like Forbes, not for her religious views, but for how she manifests them.
The nasty types will use her Christianity to excuse her regressive beliefs, and Greer being a devout Christian himself exposes that for what it is. :progress_pride:
"I fiercely opposed a Kate Forbes leadership bid last year, and remain very much of that persuasion. I think she is in many ways a capable leader, and can understand her appeal. But I will never support a candidate that vocally opposes social progress, and have seen the pockets of the right-wing that this kind of narrative appeals to" -- Kelly Given
Last toot aged well, so the SNP have installed an openly homophobic (and seems likely Forced birther) Deputy FM. The press that have been singing Forbes are going to use her to destroy the SNP's progressive credentials and they will not have a defence against it.
What is first thing you want to change after Scotland's Independence Day? I don't mean the change Labour go on about which seems to mean carrying on with the Tory project. No I mean real change relevant for the Scottish people which we can't do as a small part of Westminster. #ScottishIndependence
@IndyRichard I think the first changes I'd want would be:
Real redistribution of land to communities #LandReform;
Systematic advantaging of workers' co-ops over companies limited by share in public contracts and in taxation;
Reform of local government (and of local taxation) resulting in at minimum a five-fold increase in number of councils, with each deriving the majority of its revenue from its own taxation;
Decentralising of real power from Holyrood to local government.
"breaking Scotland from the shackles of #neoliberal thinking should be very high on its agenda, and yet it keeps getting leaders who seem more than happy to embrace that approach, and make Scotland suffer for it" – @RichardJMurphy
My friend Lesley Riddoch writing about "real policy differences between John Swinney and Kate Forbes" in @TheNational this morning.
Sorry, Lesley, but if JOHN SWINNEY is being presented as the standard bearer for the LEFT of the #SNP, then we're in much more trouble than I thought we were.
Some of the analysis on recent events in Scottish politics is just bizarre, and if there's one thing it shows clearly, it's that the political models that seems to make sense under a first past the post system just don't apply here. In fact, they don't apply well anywhere, which is partly why politics more widely is so messy at the moment. In my latest piece for Bylines Scotland I look at how Scotland's situation provides insights into what's going on. https://bylines.scot/politics/beyond-left-and-right-making-politics-make-sense/?feed_id=1069&_unique_id=66308ac1c21dc#ScotPol#UKpol
I take pictures at SNP events sometimes. Here's John Swinney during an election in Partick a few years ago. He has a benign headmasterly vibe... One of the good guys I think. And he's about the most experienced government minister anywhere in the "uk".
@tomclearwood He is. My sister, who knows him, rates him. He's generally a 'safe pair of hands'; the stint he did as education secretary was definitely not stellar, but it was a tough brief at the time for reasons beyond his control.
But him in charge would mean more cautious, centrist policy, and that's not what I believe we need now.
Listen, at 4:33 into this programme, to how many of the vox-pop voices, supposedly recorded in Dumfries today, have distinctly southern English accents. I know Dumfries well: there are English voices there, certainly, but they're a distinct minority. What are the BBC playing at here?