If public sector staff want to be full-time activists, why should we pay their wages?
A FEW short weeks before I retired from Police Scotland I was sent a photograph from the police training facility at Jackton in East Kilbride which detailed the changing areas for individuals undertaking a fitness exam. The hastily printed signage on A4 paper stuck to a flip chart directed male-identifying, and female-identifying individuals into different class rooms to get ready. Those who said they were gender neutral were pointed toward the upstairs accessible toilet which was fine and dandy unless of course you were someone who might have needed to access it as an actual toilet.
Now, being a chap who knew what was what when it came to an employer’s obligations on most things due to my role in the Police Federation - like for the sake of argument, changing and toilet facilities, I tweeted “What - no changing rooms? @ policescotland” and then followed that with a link which detailed the legal requirement to provide separate washing, toilet, and changing facilities for men and women.
I knew that in doing so a minority would immediately cry transphobia and stamp their feet in a tantrum – not least as they see transphobia everywhere. But the point I was making was an important one; and as the case of Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife this week proves, a continually relevant one too.
There is, or ought to be nothing remotely controversial about highlighting to any employer – but especially to the polis who should know a thing or two about it – of the need to comply with the law. Alas, the police response was typically insipid and what followed showed just how far removed from reality the service had become.
Within hours of my post a coordinated series of transphobia/homophobia complaints were submitted against me from the internal trans activist brigade and their enablers, who were so
consumed with self-righteousness, that actual righteousness was never a consideration. The predicable exaggeration and jackanory interpretation was writ large throughout and involved several officers of varying ranks up to and including a deputy chief constable. What a magnificent use of their time.
Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t in the slightest bit concerned other than at the sheer level of time and effort being consumed within the police service to pander to such nonsense. The real pièce de résistance came when I submitted a subject access request for the various communications surrounding this a few days later – and which ultimately revealed the feeble army in all its pitiful glory.
A few years earlier when the Scottish Parliament was in the early days of considering the Hate Crime and Public Order bill I submitted written evidence which stated “People are already frightened to enter the trans debate (regardless of whether they agree with wider political ideologies or not) for fear of being accused of transphobia” and “the use of language to distinguish between sex and gender is often conflated, in what can appear as an attempt to infer outrage or discrimination simply because of irreconcilable fundamental beliefs”.
The passage of time since has shown those fears not only to be real but they have since been compounded by the total surrender and pandering by institutions to tiny cabals within their ranks pushing their ideologies.
And so weak are the leaders of our institutions that rather than bat the madness away, they actually create internal industries that feed of these weaknesses, poison organisational thinking, and corrupt policy making.
But that’s not where the story ends.
Too many of those involved in peddling the trans myths leave institutions like the police wearing their equality credentials like rainbow badges of honour as they seek employment in the outside world. A self-titled champion of equality, diversity and inclusion in the police brings an air of authority that is rarely backed up by reality, and the indoctrination spreads yet further – as these ‘experts’ are venerated in their new roles in charities, public boards, and the private sector.
Oversight bodies like the Scottish
Police Authority (SPA), and Fife Health Board take their steer on the aptness of their policy positions from the very leaders who themselves have swallowed the snake oil by the bucket load; allowing everyone to stand in circles patting themselves on the back at how progressive they have become.
And its all a lie. You see, this groupthink is pervasive and destructive. It denies reality, creates a culture of fear and silence, and acts as a huge distraction from significant structural weaknesses across bodies like the police and health service.
Beyond that, it leads to a corrupting of internal data as spurious incidents are manufactured to generate the bogus “hate” stats necessary to sustain the propaganda. It also allows their oversight bodies to be blind to reputational risk and sees them spending millions on vanity initiatives and legal cases that proper scrutiny would never have allowed to see the light of day.
In many ways we have to be grateful to Fife Health Board and their treatment of Sandie Peggie for it surely has to lead to fundamental questions over the role and effectiveness of public sector leadership and QUANGOS across the board.
Too many of those who are entrusted to lead highly complex organisations continually betray the trust their roles automatically come with, as they themselves are willingly led by the nose by those who have warped discourse and plain language.
At a time when our public services are hardly awash with cash the fact almost all our institutions have small armies of puritans seeking out the Sandie Peggies of this world to be re-educated on their “prejudice” shows how deep the rot has set in.
Quite frankly, it’s long past time this stopped. If public sector workers want to be full-time campaigners for a particular cause they should get off the pay-roll and pursue their ideology in their own time and under their own steam. That way we might just be able to get back to police officers who police, teachers who teach, and doctors who doctor (and not just the ordinary use of words).