The decay and rot in Scottish public and political life runs deep.
Two examples illustrate the point.
Firstly, the outrageous behaviour of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, which has been found by an employment tribunal to have constructively dismissed Roz Adams, a female employee who held gender-critical beliefs.
Secondly, the hypocrisy of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in stating that politics – including the SNP – is “too full of young people who have just come through the political ranks”.
In the Edinburgh case, the government-funded charity blatantly failed to observe and implement traditional standards of probity and natural justice.
‘Mind-boggling double standards’
The failure of good governance by the trustees (two of whom have now resigned) and the bigoted behaviour of the centre’s autocratic chief executive Mridul Wadhwa – who must surely also now resign or be sacked – showed staggering levels of contempt and hubris.
In Sturgeon’s case, the double standards she now stands accused of are mind boggling.
As first minister, she appointed a cabal of youthful, incompetent and incoherent ninnies with levels of life experience which wouldn’t trouble the back of a fag packet.
Her sudden conversion on her road to Damascus has drawn a withering condemnation from SNP MP Joanna Cherry KC, who’s forgotten more about law than Sturgeon ever learned in her ephemeral career as a lawyer.
“If this is the case,” said Cherry, “…then she only has herself to blame. Under her, leadership selection processes often excluded people with a hinterland beyond politics and discouraged those of us at Westminster with such experience from making the move to Holyrood.”
Both these cases highlight the inability of people who have accrued power from tolerating anything outside of their own narrow bubbles, so illiberal are they of any views they don’t share.
‘Abuse of power’
In the Roz Adams case, her dismissal came after she expressed gender-critical views, with the tribunal ruling she was subjected to a “Kafkaesque” internal disciplinary process by managers at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) after she questioned rules about trans-female counsellors working with female survivors.
They said Adams had been subjected to a “heresy hunt” because “she did not fully subscribe to the gender ideology which they did and which they wished to promote in the organisation. This was an act of harassment on the basis of her belief.”
That gross abuse of power, and the negligent failure of the trustees of the ERCC to intervene, highlight individuals who were authoritarian in their refusal to accept any views at odds with theirs.
Similarly Sturgeon’s belated acknowledgement, if there’s any actual sincerity behind it, that too many young folk lacking intellectual depth and rigour are currently in positions of power, clearly reveals a woman who herself was deeply nervous about appointing anyone other than acolytes who would bend to her will.
The two situations highlight perfectly so much of what is wrong in so many of our institutions.
Self-protectionism of personal empires has become the first priority for too many folk in positions of authority.
Often they’re deeply insecure individuals, lacking real talent, but they’ve clambered up the greasy pole of advancement by not rocking the boat and bowing and scraping to the current fashionable theories and ingratiating themselves with those at the top.
Too many of these folk now occupy prominent positions in health, education, the police, the civil service and other areas of public life.
Far too many are supine and spineless, lacking in backbone, integrity, moral fibre, and independence of mind.
They exhibit a dangerous reluctance to examine evidence objectively and dispassionately, and show pre-conceived conscious bias in their dealings with those who are their subordinates.
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