The Dog That Didn't Bark
Alex Massie made me laugh with his pawky take on last week's FMQs in the Scottish Parliament.
"Yet nothing. Not a soul was stirred to outrage. No mice were persuaded to roar. Grievance, so often the parliament’s preferred cash crop, was left to wither on the vine. The most urgent, outrageous issue of the moment was ignored."
Yet on Saturday SNP politicians were out in force banging on about the 'rights' of men to self-ID as women while oblivious, allegedly, to what was going on around them.
Holyrood all quiet on the death of democracy front
By Alex Massie - The Times
You could scarcely hear yourself think at Holyrood yesterday, what with the noise of all the dogs that were not barking. Amid the usual litany of woes paraded at first minister’s questions, the most salient feature of this week’s exchanges was the topic that was not mentioned at all.
Even the first minister’s tame backbenchers declined to ask a question about the death of democracy in Scotland. Holyrood is under assault, menaced by a British government itching to impose direct rule. The secretary of state’s use of a section 35 order blocking the Scottish government’s gender recognition reforms is an outrage up with which no free people can put. If this does not make a freshly powerful case for independence, what could?
Yet nothing. Not a soul was stirred to outrage. No mice were persuaded to roar. Grievance, so often the parliament’s preferred cash crop, was left to wither on the vine. The most urgent, outrageous issue of the moment was ignored. Instead, urgent and serious questions about more important matters were asked.
Thus SNP backbenchers rose to ask what more the Scottish government could do to support people with autism, what it might do to encourage people to become foster parents, whether the first minister deplored the impact upon poorer families of the cost of living crisis and the implications for workers of the British government’s retained EU law bill for workers’ protections and, courtesy of Bill Kidd (Glasgow Anniesland, SNP), if the first minister welcomed the 30th edition of Glasgow’s Celtic Connections music festival and “Will she be going along herself to enjoy it, jig time?”
But of democracy imperilled and Scotland insulted? Not even the merest peep. A cynic — shame be upon them — might begin to think this a trumped-up, cooked-up farrago of windy indignation signifying very little at all. So the dog that did not bark was more interesting than those that did.
Yet nothing. Not a soul was stirred to outrage. No mice were persuaded to roar. Grievance, so often the parliament’s preferred cash crop, was left to wither on the vine. The most urgent, outrageous issue of the moment was ignored. Instead, urgent and serious questions about more important matters were asked.
Thus SNP backbenchers rose to ask what more the Scottish government could do to support people with autism, what it might do to encourage people to become foster parents, whether the first minister deplored the impact upon poorer families of the cost of living crisis and the implications for workers of the British government’s retained EU law bill for workers’ protections and, courtesy of Bill Kidd (Glasgow Anniesland, SNP), if the first minister welcomed the 30th edition of Glasgow’s Celtic Connections music festival and “Will she be going along herself to enjoy it, jig time?”
But of democracy imperilled and Scotland insulted? Not even the merest peep. A cynic — shame be upon them — might begin to think this a trumped-up, cooked-up farrago of windy indignation signifying very little at all. So the dog that did not bark was more interesting than those that did.
