Stephen Daisley

Well, that’ll show ‘em. Liz Truss has released a joint statement with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring themselves ‘united in our condemnation of the Taliban’s decision not to reopen secondary schools to Afghan girls’. Also united are the EU high representative and the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Italy, Japan and Norway. The authorities in Afghanistan issued an order earlier this week suspending the planned return to school of female pupils, citing the need for a decision on uniforms for girls that are compliant with ‘Sharia law and Afghan tradition’. Team Euro-America: World Police say the Taliban’s U-turn ‘contradicted its public assurances to the Afghan people and to the international community’.

Eight years ago, and with the independence referendum one month away, the Clyde’s last commercial shipyard went into administration. The collapse of Ferguson's not only threatened the jobs of 70 shipbuilders: it was an inconvenient symbol of industrial decline right as the SNP was trying to parlay rhetoric about an independent Scotland being ‘one of the world’s wealthiest nations’ into a Yes vote on polling day. The Scottish government intervened and quickly arranged for a billionaire adviser to then First Minister Alex Salmond to buy Ferguson’s.

Vladimir Putin hasn’t won the Ukraine war yet and already they're talking about putting him in the dock. Gordon Brown’s call for the establishment of Nuremberg-style trials, ‘indicting President Putin and his inner circle for the crime of aggression against Ukraine’, is well-meaning and emerges from a sincere Christian socialist worldview. I once termed Brown a ‘moral romantic’ and his Nuremberg proposal is pure moral romanticism. In a world governed by right and wrong, he is obviously right but in the world as it is, fallen and wicked, his plan to bring Putin before an international tribunal is little more than wishful thinking.

Sir Keir Starmer's interpretation of the Equality Act has caused something of a stir. The Labour leader cited the Brown-era legislation to support his assertion that 'trans women are women' and that this 'happens to be the law in the United Kingdom'. This reading of the Act has drawn criticism from gender-critical feminists, including the trans writer Debbie Hayton, who states: If Keir Starmer thinks that I am a woman, I am delighted to tell him the truth. Transwomen (like me) are male, while women (like my wife) are female. Biology does not lie, male is not female, and therefore transwomen are not women. For all my many other sins, I am not a lawyer.

Is the word of a Scottish government minister worth anything? The question arises in the wake of the SNP’s Hate Crime Act which, among much else, creates the offence of ‘stirring up hatred’ against ‘transgender identity’. Feminist groups warned early on that the Bill’s language could see people who don't believe that men can become women (or vice versa) prosecuted for what had hitherto been treated in law as legitimate expression. Prominent among these groups was MurrayBlackburnMackenzie (MBM), a policy analysis outfit whose principals boast extensive scholarship and years of experience inside the civil service.

Perhaps it’s the absence of any oppression of their own country that compels Scottish nationalists to latch onto the oppression of others. On Monday, Michelle Thomson, an SNP MSP, retweeted news of Ukraine’s emergency application for EU membership, adding: ‘Delighted for Ukraine. It’s [sic] just goes to show what political will can achieve. Remember this Scotland!’ The SNP’s current position is for Scotland to secede from the UK then apply for membership of the EU, a process nationalists have previously suggested Brussels would fast-track. Thomson came in for a barrage of criticism and later deleted the tweet, admitting it was ‘insensitive’. She is taking all the flack but she’s hardly alone in dabbling in such rhetoric.

P.J. O’Rourke was the finest conservative satirist of his generation and therefore the finest of any political persuasion. Satire, an impertinent and mean-spirited attack on authority, is generally and perhaps even inherently a left-wing genre but O’Rourke came into his own in the wake of the 1960s, when the counterculture tried to overthrow authority but ended up replacing it instead. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan may have swept the ballot boxes but where real power lay — in the newsrooms and the entertainment industry, on the campuses and in the publishing houses — the radicals won in a landslide.

Captain Tom Moore captured the nation’s hearts during the pandemic. The World War II officer completed 100 lengths of his garden at the age of 99 to raise money for NHS-related charities, attracting more than £30 million in donations and being knighted by the Queen. When he died last February, aged 100, the fond tributes and outpouring of sadness were universal. Well, almost.  Glaswegian Joseph Kelly marked Captain Tom’s passing by tweeting a photograph of the veteran and the words: ‘The only good brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn’. Criminal patter should not land you a criminal record Undoubtedly these words were offensive: to British soldiers, the memory of Captain Tom, and the English language.

Tories who tried to convince Number 10 and Number 11 to delay the hike in National Insurance have had their hopes comprehensively dashed this morning. The Sunday Times carries a joint op-ed by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor which confirms the NI rise is going ahead as planned. Raising tax on workers is estimated to bring in an additional £12bn and will see those on £20,000 paying an extra £89, those on £30,000 stung for £214 and earners on £50,000 forced to hand over a further £464. Higher earners will see sharper increases: £839 on £80,000 and £1,089 on £100,000.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of Bobby Kennedy, is a conspiracy theorist and an anti-vaxxer. He's also an environmentalist lawyer, progressive talk-show host, and near-embodiment of horseshoe theory, having become something of a pin-up for Covid-era cranks. According to Scientific American, this scion of Camelot has, since 2005, "promoted anti-vaccine propaganda completely unconnected to reality." According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, his Children's Health Defense organization claims "unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children" and condemns the parents of vaccinated children for "enrolling their kids in experimental Covid vaccine trials." On Sunday, Kennedy Jr.

It takes some doing to make a census interesting. So congratulations to the National Records of Scotland (NRS). NRS, which administers the decennial survey, is facing a judicial review over its guidance on the document. On the question of sex, it states that 'if you are transgender the answer you give can be different from what is on your birth certificate'. That is, something other than your legal sex. Feminist group Fair Play For Women will challenge this guidance at the Court of Session on 2 February. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar guidance for last year’s census in England and Wales was challenged at the High Court and found to be unlawful.