THERE’S nothing quite like seeing Scottish National Party members jumping up and down with discomfort, as if someone had stuck stoats in their sporrans.
That’s what happened when the Government rightly blocked the ridiculous Scottish Gender Recognition Act.
They went doolally.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak got this right — it is a dangerous and silly piece of legislation, the only point of which was to show how right-on the Scots are.
It sets a minimum limit of 16 years for when someone can decide to change the sex on their birth certificate, by signing a legal declaration.
This is too young. People aged 16 are too young to grasp the consequences of such life-changing decisions. But the Government was right not just because it annoyed Nicola Sturgeon’s Gnats — that’s just a nice bonus.
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It was right because almost the entire country agrees.
And this issue causes horrible divisions in the Labour Party and trouble for its leader, Sir Keir Starmer.
When I say everybody agrees, I don’t mean that we are all trans-hating bigots. That’s what some more of the doolally Lefties would say — and they’re wrong.
The vast majority of us want trans-gender men and women to live lives of dignity and equality, without fear of intolerance. We may not agree that a bloke who has transitioned into being a woman actually is a woman.
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And we may not approve of trans-women competing against females in sports, and so on. But those are minor details, in the end.
The real objection is with what seems like a drive to inculcate our kids into thinking that transitioning is a piece of cake and nowt to worry about.
That’s not how it is. The real sticking point, then, concerns age. If you’re over 18 years old, do what you want. Your life. Sixteen, though, is too young.
I looked at a little opinion poll in the — pretty liberal — Times newspaper. It asked if people agreed with the blocking of the Scottish bill.
Some 93 per cent of readers agreed — and that, as I say, was in a liberal newspaper.
My guess is that the figure for the country as a whole would be nearer to 98 per cent.
Even the Scots don’t agree with the bill. A huge majority opposed the lowering of the age limit — 66 per cent in a YouGov survey for The Times.
Shrieking lobbyists
And the good thing for the Conservatives is that they are the only party in Parliament — apart from the Democratic Unionist Party — who might be prepared to stand up for what the overwhelming majority believe in.
This is true on many of the “culture war” issues. Labour, the Lib Dems, the Scottish Nats and Plaid Cymru are all on one side of the argument.
The Conservatives — and the vast majority of voters — are on the other.
For sure, there’s a handful of Tories who are just as woke as their Labour counterparts.
But this is one area — just about the ONLY area now — where the Government has the support of the voters.
Rishi Sunak should learn from this. Start rolling back the identity politics agenda in our institutions.
Go to war against the diversity commissars and the shrieking lobbyists.
And suddenly Sunak might find that his party has a bit more support than he had imagined.
Sir Keir is such a puppet . . . sorry, poppet
MY wife thinks he looks like a remaindered Thunderbird puppet – but then she’s a dyed-in-the-wool Tory.
My own view is that Sir Keir Starmer is coming across as both likeable and sensible.
Those are two very useful qualities for an aspiring Prime Minister.
I also suspect that Starmer has twigged that woke stuff plays very badly with the voters.
I bet he wishes he could banish that photo of him going down on one knee.
IMPORTANT news. I’ve just read that echidnas – sort of Australian hedgehogs – blow snot bubbles in order to keep themselves cool in very hot weather.
I had a girlfriend who did exactly the same thing.
It hadn’t occurred to me, though, that she might be overheating.
I just thought she thought it was an alluring party trick. She had a few spines, too, now I think about it.
PLANE CRAZY, JOHN
THE weird, lantern-jawed American liberal John Kerry has been lecturing the World Economic Forum about the need to battle climate change.
I don’t disagree with him about that, as it happens.
But perhaps Kerry could modify his lifestyle to help save the planet?
In not much more than a year, the bloke travelled 180,000 miles on planes, leaving him with a carbon footprint 300 times bigger than that of the average Yank.
In environmental terms, Kerry is not dissimilar to the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Come on, mate. Get your Zoom up and running.
JOKE for you from my mate, who is an anaesthetist.
Heard about the homeopathist who tried to kill himself? He took an underdose.
(I think doctors find this kind of thing really funny. Me, maybe not quite so much.)
ON THE DOG ’N’ DRONE
I’VE spent quite a large part of the past few days on hold to insurance companies.
And it gave me an idea for the worst album ever made, ever, by anyone.
It’s called We Will Now Connect You To The Next Available Operator – and consists of all that music they pour down your lughole while you’re waiting.
I’ve heard simpering trip-hop, boring folksy guitar, horribly chirpy dance music and electro nursery rhymes played by some saddo in a bedsit.
It is the music you will hear right at the end of your life. When you’re sitting in the reception lounge waiting for admittance to Hell.
I think the album could be a big seller.
THEY’LL STOP AT MUFFIN
THE boss of the Food Standards Agency reckons “office cake culture” is as bad as passive smoking.
Professor Susan Jebb thinks the practice should be discouraged.
As a consequence quite a lot of people think she’s a misery-guts.
Thing is, though, when I worked in an office nobody ever brought in cake. Just flu and STDs.
I think this cake business is something we’ve imported recently from the US.
And something that we can probably do without.
SAY NAY TO PAY GRIPES
JUST as inflation is nosing down, the teaching unions decide it’s their turn to go on strike.
Have to say, it seems a bit greedy to me.
They got a decent pay rise after Covid, which saw many parents having to home-school their kids.
Still, for the first time in ages public sector pay is lagging behind private sector wages.
That, in general, is a good thing.
But more and more public servants will be using that as an excuse to go on strike.
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The Government has got to remain firm.
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Laura Goddard
