Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

People's sexual relationships should be private, insists Nicola Sturgeon. Yet Sturgeon championed legislation which would have compelled women to refer to their rapists in court as 'she' - and forced fellow Scots to recognise self-identifying men as female. I'm afraid the former SNP leader and First Minister leader doesn't seem to care that the vast majority of Scots reject this bullshit.

This is utterly joyous. Don't ya think. pic.twitter.com/FFnvVoIX8v — Barry Wall (@HeadWarriorTWM) August 9, 2025 Hands up - w ho doesn't like this inspired version of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da? Great fun - and you get your steps in at the same time.  

In a welcome if long overdue move Police Scotland stand previous advice on its head and now admit that 'trans women' are men - who must not enter single sex spaces including women's toilets and changing areas. Who agrees we should now send Police Scotland to arrest certain senior management and the board in NHS Fife?

Euan McColm has a great piece on the faux 'edginess' of the Edinburgh book festival. "Jenny Niven’s book festival is as difficult and edgy as an Ocado delivery. Its hand-wringing theme of “repair” studiously ignores the damage wrought on the literary world by the activist views and behaviour of many of those booked to participate." Far from being somewhere to discuss controversial topics the key players seem to be scratching each other's backs. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14973581/EUAN-McCOLM-Book-festival-doomed-thanks-cowardice-chief-women-wont-wheesht.html

  The grandly titled Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) is turning Scotland into a cultural laughing stock. The EIBF's new director, Jenny Niven, assumed office with fine words promising great things including spaces where: "...people can come together to really chew through the more difficult, more controversial topics in society."   But this year the festival has invited former SNP leader and First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to plug her new book while banishing the editors and contributors to 'The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht' which made it to the Sunday Times best sellers list. The underlying controversy is about Sturgeon's self-ID and gender identity legislation which is, of course, the biggest policy failure in the history of the Scottish Parliament. So hearing directly from its critics would seem a good idea! Yet instead of chewing through a difficult and controversial topic the EIBF recruits Sturgeon's former chief of staff (Liz Lloyd) w...

Now this made me laugh - the trans lobby's favourite lawyer, Robin Moira White, complains that Ted Upton's size relative to the diminutive Sandie Peggie is being exaggerated. But surely, as a bloke, Robin realises that it's men who are always exaggerating the size of things?