Sandra Chapman: Scots will need to be brave in an uncertain future

It’s hard to find something to chew when your nerves are jangling and not helped when your other half suggests you go and clean the windows as a way to relax. I’d been so wound up I hadn’t even noticed they needed a clean despite knowing we are on the flight path of a family of birds which thinks nothing of decorating any hapless vehicle or thing in their path which includes our windows.

So what was getting me truly annoyed - the idea that females are really males and males are really female. That’s what the woke generation is pushing down the nation’s throat at the moment, that and other issues which I won’t go into just now. One would need a degree in biology to understand the Sex Sections one has to fill in now in various forms.

We are on the way for example to single sex wards in hospitals, public toilets which won’t have female or male symbols on the doors and transgender sports activities where female competitors are losing out to male competitors who regard themselves as female and are allowed to compete as such. Recently the BBC left women enraged when they described a female medical condition which affects one in 10 people of any age in the UK, who are assigned ‘female at birth’. I find it hard to believe in this day and age women have to fight to be acknowledged as female.

Not to be outdone by changes I see too that Scotland’s government is planning to overhaul its gender laws to allow 16 and 17 year olds to `legally change their sex’.

I cannot believe that the country’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon would consider an overhaul of gender laws to be useful. She may be following the path of a few other countries which allow children to change gender - Norway is one – but Ms Sturgeon is facing stiff opposition in the country. Author JK Rowling who lives in Edinburgh believes the proposal would `harm the most vulnerable women in society’. Others suggest she is turning Scotland into a `banana republic’.

Himself and I have spent the last 40 or so summers in Scotland. Our annual sailing holiday is much looked forward to but it is clear to us that this scenically delightful country is not progressing as it could. The SNP led by Ms Sturgeon appears to have run out of ideas for the future.

Its health service is suffering with A&E waiting times believed to be `the worst on record’. Yet soon it will be one of the easiest places in the United Kingdom to change gender at 16 without parental or medical advice.

This will come with its own problems which Ms Sturgeon appears not to see.

In all the decades we have been visiting the country we can see very little progress for those trying to eke a living particularly on the coastal areas. In particular Covid was an added disaster for many.

We’ve always been welcomed by the Scots people probably because we are not English. Scotland’s strength and appeal is its history. Warrior Kings once ruled and fought invaders from all corners. The English owe their Royal status to those earlier battles.

Ms Sturgeon always gives the impression she resents that.

Our Royal family still has a strong love for Scotland though that may change by the time William is on the Throne.

The Queen makes determined visits – no doubt she loves the place - possibly aware that she may be the last but one to want to keep a claim to Scotland.

Nonetheless Ms Sturgeon attended this week’s memorial service to the late Duke of Edinburgh in Westminster Abbey.

Had she not, many older Scots may not have forgiven her. Her Scottish Nationalist Party I believe lives on its nerves with each election. And so they should as a younger confused generation tries to come to terms with woke-ness.