FAIRY STORIES

A guest post from one of my favourities, Eva Comrie.

FAIRY STORIES

A fortnight now I’ve been housebound in a wheelchair with a mangled stump. A sentence I find tends to lead to stunned awkward silence. Matt thinks we saved a fortune as I didn’t get to the shops but naturally this laptop has almost exploded and the bank card’s melting with online orders, several of which are so late they’ll be returned in favour of replacements from the sales. Not only are heads up funny places, the tree is still up the loft, latest ever descent planned for tomorrow.

When you can’t do your ironing (which I’ve not actually done since 2014) and you can’t garden, standing at the cooker isn’t possible, you have to feel your partner’s pain as he cleans out the coal fire, religiously empties the ashes and fills up the coal pail, as you console yourself with a wee medicinal gin, your thoughts tend to wander to other days, especially if you’re on the eccentric nut job side to begin with. Here’s a few of my recent concerns to which I’ve given quite some considerable thought.

My Granda Comrie was a founder member of the Alva Co-op and a veteran of WW1. He bartered coal for rolls and milk for a steak pie. See how it worked then. He and his pals and neighbours looked out for each other; Granda had an allotment next door to where I now live ; tatties, neeps, kale, you name it, he grew it; and so did everybody else who’d a square foot of garden. Granda and his pals swopped carrots for a cauliflower and beans for Brussels http://sprouts.You know that for you too had Grandas like mine. They kent damn fine what hunger and want were, they recognised only too well the Nab, Buroo and workhouse. What they thought they achieved though was the creation of an NHS, no longer having to pay for the doctor’s visit, a welfare state with a safety net for all in times of need; they believed their efforts and sacrifices consigned hunger and want to history. They enjoyed seeing their children stay on at school beyond the age of 11 at which they had left.

And what do we see 100 and more years after the end of WW1? Courageous good hearts in Alva, population 5200 or so, creating a food bank. Because this little town needs a food bank. That’s not what was meant to be. In 1925 when my Granda and his workmates were smuggling fly bags of rolls and parcels of mince and sausages to widows they believed they were helping to create a better fairer more prosperous world where nobody would be hungry or do without. I don’t want them to see that their efforts failed because we got it so wrong.

Scotland is a wealthy country; there is but one reason why we have food banks. Priorities imposed upon us which we did not and would never choose.

The other matter exercising my mind a lot these days is this – since when did anyone in their right mind ever believe it to be right that children should be affirmed and actively encouraged to pursue a lifetime of disfiguring surgery and medications in a wrong minded futile effort to change sex? Girls seeking double mastectomies? Boys dressing up and gaining access to girls’ spaces? Girls not going to school because they can’t use the toilet for shame? Young men with beards ranting at Grannies like me who won’t indulge their desire to be called she/her ? Seriously? You might think this doesn’t affect you but you’d be wrong, like I was, before I looked into it.

Self identification is favoured by the SNP, Greens and some in Labour. It means that a man who gets a gas bill in what is considered a female name can apply to be deemed legally female. Think about that – if he achieves that position, and if single natal sex spaces are not maintained, that intact male walks right into every women’s aid refuge, prison, changing room, toilet; he also gets to say if he is a doctor that he/she is entitled to examine those female victims of sex offences who want treated by a woman, cos he can say that is what he/she is. I know how vulnerable I feel in hospital sprawled on a bed with a leg missing; if there are males in that ward with me, as is becoming official Scottish Government policy, I would never sleep and would be permanently armed with my spare leg gagging to crown a predator. I believe that male bodies who want access to women’s spaces are acting in bad faith; decent men respect and understand female needs for privacy and don’t seek to undermine that. The fact that a government I helped to elect promotes such a perverse policy shames me. That’s me sticking up for women’s rights, not trashing trans rights, though doubtless the dumplings who describe me as a phobe are on their way.

There is also the twin problem of the schools census where the Scottish Government asks children 14 and over about their sexual habits; I can’t repeat it here – best you ask your Council to send you a copy, I promise you that the air will be blue; and the transgender guidance for schools where teachers get to keep secrets from parents, like groomers do; again read it for yourselves and ask your child’s school their take on this. Most of all, don’t stay silent – ask the questions, demand answers, and get those in writing.

Scotland 2021 has not been a proud place to be; a 4 Nations open border approach only enabled Covid; our country has been paralysed by fear and lack of ambition; I hope 2022 puts paid to that nationally and locally. We’re not too wee or too poor but if we keep acting the goat and fail to grasp the thistle, I will wonder if we are in fact far too stupid.

BEAT THE CENSORS:

Sadly some sites had given up on being pro Indy sites and have decided to become merely pro SNP sites where any criticism of the Party Leader or opposition to the latest policy extremes, results in censorship being applied. This, in the rather over optimistic belief that this will suppress public discussion on such topics. My regular readers have expertly worked out that by regularly sharing articles on this site defeats that censorship and makes it all rather pointless. I really do appreciate such support and free speech in Scotland is remaining unaffected by their juvenile censorship. Indeed it is has become a symptom of weakness and guilt. Quite encouraging really.

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