25 quotes found
"The advantages we gain from EU membership clearly and categorically outweigh any disadvantages that come with it. I campaigned for Scotland to stay part of a wider Union. And I believe Britain should stay part of a wider Union too."
"It is not enough to say to people who have come here and made their home here and their life here that we want your labour. We’ve got to be able to say that we want your brains, we want your culture, we want your passion, we want you in our country, making our country better and giving these people security."
"There are times when you feel, oh shit, I wish I hadn’t done that, and you beat yourself up about it; and there are times when you feel desperately, desperately alone because it doesn’t feel like anyone’s helping you with the task. You have ‘punch the air’ moments, and you have ‘crying silently at night so as not to wake up the person next to you’ moments. But I guess leadership is about doing that in your own time. It’s about strength and tenacity and moral courage."
"Plenty of genuine sexism & misogyny in politics. Don't need prominent women debasing the term to cover their own poor performance. Jeez."
"I’m not sure the party would be happy with a drippingly wet, pro-immigrant lesbian Scot."
"You have to want it. And I don’t want to be prime minister. [. . .] I value my relationship and my mental health too much for it. I will not be a candidate."
"My plea to people in the room is: let’s use the kick up the backside the voters have given both the main parties, to really focus minds."
"We have a prime minister with one foot out the door and a leadership election which has split the party between cheerleaders for the frontrunner and anyone-but-the-frontrunner."
"I think there are a number of people within the Conservative Party who need to take a long, hard look at themselves. Yes, I understand of course we have got to respect the referendum result, of course we've got to deliver Brexit, but not at the expense of breaking up the United Kingdom. I would remind people of their obligations within the party - yes, we're a Conservative Party, but we're also a Unionist party, and I'd remind them that our own union of nations is every bit as important as leaving someone else's."
"Any Conservative leadership candidate must put the Union first. Jeremy [Hunt] has done so and will get my vote."
"I fear that having tried to be a good leader over the years, I have proved a poor daughter, sister, partner and friend. The party and my work has always come first, often at the expense of commitments to loved ones."
"[Davidson is now] the lowest-ranked politician in the entire [cabinet] table - most likely [due to the] fallout from her highly publicised split with the prime minister and hostility to no deal."
"Gone is the working mum and Boris-sceptic who got a degree of sympathy after standing down as Scottish Tory leader in August. That image has been replaced by a brazen corporate lobbyist mooching her way to the 2021 election while tapping taxpayers £63,579 a year as a part-time MSP for Edinburgh Central."
"Paedophiles and predators are people. Not bogey men under the bed. Not Mac wearing flashers in the street, faceless and nameless. They are our family, friends and colleagues. They are not scary monsters. They are people who abuse. It’s uncomfortable to humanise them because we then have to face the horrors in plain sight. Headlines read ‘daughter’ not ‘paedophile’ to provoke something in us. Not for good purpose. But use it. Yes a daughter did do that. Daughters can be capable of doing that. Horrifying isn’t it? Face it and warn our kids."
"I recently met with @BarnardosScot and @NSPCC_Scotland to ensure we protect our children, by being clear at who predators could be. They support my messaging."
"The Scottish Greens stand in solidarity with Rape Crisis Scotland, Edinburgh Rape Crisis, survivors of gender-based violence, Mridul Wadhwa, and trans people across Scotland. Rape Crisis Scotland and rape crisis centres across the country provide vital, life-saving support, therapy and advocacy for survivors of gender-based violence."
"[After her interviewer had asserted no human had ever changed biological sex] I'm not actually sure we can say that because we don't have the chromosomal make-up of every single human being. We don't know that. Do you know what your chromosomes are? I've never had mine tested, I don't know what mine are."
"[Asked if Isla Bryson should be able to identify as trans] I think any trans person should be able to get the gender recognition certificate that they seek, that recognises, in law, something that the rest of us just take for granted."
"[It was suggested Bryson was posing as trans to avoid serving their sentence in a male prison] Well we do'’t know that was the only motivation that Isla Bryson chose to do that [...] Isla Bryson is a trans woman ... it’s very very clear that we cannot let single cases determine the entire legislation that we're talking about here."
"We learnt that the government decided in 2011 that the census's sex question should be answered according to self-identification, even if the respondent had no gender recognition certificate. This advice was hidden on the website and was never subject to democratic scrutiny. That's shocking when you think that for almost 200 years sex was uncomplicated, binary and biological. For most people it still is."
"Policy capture is at the root of this fankle, as with many issues around gender identity. Officials only take advice from LGBT stakeholders. They never consider that women might have something to say about legislation which erases them as a biological sex class. In this case they didn't consult statisticians either."
"The thing that finally turned me to my current position was the government’s decision to expand the definition of transgender identity to include cross-dressers who are not trans identified ... It will seem bizarre to many people that men who enjoy cross-dressing are protected from hate crime, but women are not."
"The [Scottish] government said its proposal will not diminish the rights of women. However, its own draft equality impact assessment evidenced this by citing Bristol University research which . . . suggests that a woman catching sight of a male body in a changing room should be no more distressing than seeing another woman with a mastectomy. Does the government regret citing this research, and do they agree that the comparison is insulting to breast cancer survivors?"
"It is feminists influenced by this second wave who question transgender ideology. They speak the uncomfortable truth that men have a statistically higher propensity towards violence including sexual violence — no matter how they identify — and our laws and public institutions must recognise that brutal truth."
"There were assertions made during that meeting that anyone who identifies as a woman could be a rape counsellor or join a group session. And when survivors asked how a woman may feel if she unknowingly disclosed details of her rape to a male counsellor on the telephone… No adequate answer was provided. It shocked me then as it still does now, that given 100 per cent of rapes in Scotland are committed by men this appeared to not be an issue for the head of Rape Crisis Scotland."