CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
"The thing is what we do about it "
I thought the ommission of anything meaningfull in the 2016 SNP manifesto spoke volumes.
I look forward to ommission of anything meaningfull in the 2021 SNP manifesto too (I hope I'm wrong).
Truth is those affected don't vote, nor care about indy so why should they bother.
On legalisation, yep weed, speed, acid and eccies are probably fine, no worse than beer. I'd not legalise anything stronger.
@Stickman
I don't know either. I doubt many politicians are in favour of the 'war on drugs' other than those directly funded by the drug trade. Gore Vidal said every president since Nixon got drug donations. The war on drugs is just a price support operation and an enforcement operation for a monopoly of psycho gangsters.
But the devolution thing infuriates me. It's the classic trap. London defines drugs as a policing matter. Scotland can respond by allocating money to the police. But all that would do is push the price of drugs up and increase theft to pay for them.
They have to step out of the devolution trap. And there's no point doing that just to rearrange the deckchairs.
"They have to step out of the devolution trap."
However the other devolved administrations seem not to have the same scale of problem, so presumably not about the WM trap?
What are we doing here, or not that is causing us to do so badly?
We seem to have done better on poverty for example than other UK regions, that you would have thought would/should have helped, but it apparantly hasn't?
Scotland also has very high proportion of alcohol related deaths compared to England and Wales. Issue is partly cultural, but also maybe related to the amount of daylight we get in winter. Northern Europe tends to binge drink, while Southern Europe does not. Phenomena such as SAD may be a factor.
As ever, not one single cause but many issues combining?
However the other devolved administrations seem not to have the same scale of problem, so presumably not about the WM trap?
The subject-matter of—
(a)the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971,
(b)sections 12 to 14 of the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990 (substances useful for manufacture of controlled drugs), and
(c)Part V of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 (drug trafficking) and, so far as relating to drug trafficking, the Proceeds of Crime (Scotland) Act 1995.
As such it could be seen as quite improper for the subject to even feature in a Holyrood election.
I favour comparing Scotland with Portugal and Uruguay and Iceland and asking serious questions about the difference in outcomes between these four countries.
We have stopped being violent so much and started taking more drugs?
@gembo, mebbes aye, mebbes naw. Razor gangs and square gos a relic of history, certainly. No more William McIlvanney novels. Could be because all the bad yins are in prison? Scotland has the highest per capita rate of imprisonment in Western Europe.
All the jailbirds taking dodgy smuggled drugs and dying?
Think we need to get Scooby Doo or Hong Kong Phooey on the case, then we'll get answers.
It's even worse outside the prisons. Sturgeon must be held to account.
“
The Scotsman will publish these poll results exclusively at http://www.scotsman.com from 7am.
The survey will give a unique insight into the views and intentions of Scottish voters leading into one of the most important elections in the nation’s history.
“
Green party forecast to get 11 seats at Holyrood.
A small amount but one of the larger green cohorts on the islands here (or anywhere?).
Non devolved England only manages to get one green MP in Westminster. That's a world leading lack of green representation surely?
If we are serious about climate change then we need green voices. You can never agree with all policies in a political party but in next Scottish election a green vote will count.
Comparing (not same systems tho')
Dublin - 2 Green TDs
Cardiff - 0 Green MoS
Belfast - 1 Green MLA
Other European countries have red/green alliances etc so numbers of 'green' representatives are tricky to assess.
Some may argue you don't need to vote green to get change. Other parties and businesses know it's seen as a good thing. SNP under fire from airline business for not getting planes in air again.
Re above
“This article is more than 9 months old”
Still saying not illegal - and not been arrested.
Chap running the safe consumption van was charged and accepted a police caution in October.
Cautioned for trying to keep people alive.
The Baroness was majoring on Scotland's 1200 drug related deaths at FM's questions.
Conservatives have always taken the lead in drugs initiatives of course. Their policies have in no way contributed to 'Scotland's shame' (!)
That's 100% 'our' failure?
In Scotland drugs are treated as a health problem rather than enforcement. Baroness wants more re-hab beds for drug users. Must have been a front page demand on Daily Mail that we missed.
@IWRATS - and there's your problem. The people who make and enforce the rules don't truly see the folk in the van as "people". Oh, they claim to - but they don't really. If they did then why does the system require the arrest of people who consider it a step up to be injecting potentially lethal street drugs in the back of an old Transit down a back alley in Glasgow.
“
As this week’s appalling drug death statistics show, though, it’s not difficult to find areas in which the SNP, 13 years on, shows signs of exhaustion and poor policy delivery at best, and at worst of prevarication and incompetence.
BiFab, Ferguson Marine, Prestwick Airport; all three are stories of failure, and one is an outright tragedy for Scotland’s lost hopes of benefiting fully from the transition to renewable energy sources in which the country is so rich.
This week, the Scottish government published another policy paper on climate change targets, as part of its planned green recovery post-Covid; but it has repeatedly missed its own carbon reduction targets in recent years, and on its watch, a combination of climate change and destructive forms of land use has contributed to what Scottish Environment Link calls a growing “nature emergency”, with 11 per cent of Scotland’s species now threatened with extinction.
“
So, farewell meaningful devolution.
Welcome to the brave new world where Holyrood can make all the laws it fancies but they only have any point if London agrees.
To an extent that's always been the case of course.
The theatre will continue I suppose. Too many people making too much money from it to just walk away. But the quality of MSPs and journalists will plummet further as serious people find they have better things to do than engage in this new, bleak farce.
So get ready for the Scotland Is Rubbish What You Gonna Do? show on endless loop.
Andy Wightman has left the Scottish Greens, apparently:
He claims he was threatened with deselection if he didn’t vote with the party on an issue related to trans rights.
He’ll serve as an independent MSP until the next election.
Nice one Scottish Greens - drive out one of the best Scottish parliamentarians of the devolution era.
Andy Wightman has quit the Greens:
https://andywightman.scot/resignation-from-the-scottish-green-party
This is the icing on the excrement-berg that is 2020. Andy is one of the best human beings I know.
Our parliament will be materially poorer if he is absent.
I am [Rule 3] furious. Fizzing.
I'm deeply shocked and saddened by this news.
I've had a lot of respect for Andy Wightman, I've donated lots of money to his legal and campaign funds and I've delivered election leaflets for him (even through his own door, in fact.) I would have at one point described him as a personal hero.
However, the right of transgender people to peaceful existence is completely non-negotiable, and I am deeply disappointed that he's chosen to put personal prejudice over the many other noble causes that he stands for. The statement he has made - that he fundamentally believes that the rights of transgender people are up for debate - is no more acceptable to me than if he had caused for a similar debate on the rights of gay people. It is clear therefore that the Scottish Green Party is not the place for him.
This is a very disappointing day but I'm glad that the SGP has been brave enough to stand up for its inclusive principles - unlike other mainstream parties - and feel sure that this position will be vindicated in the future, just as with other similarly difficult struggles for equality in the past. Throwing society's weakest under a bus for the sake of notable individuals or political expediency is no way to run a movement.
This twitter thread sums up better than I can how, difficult as this situation is, there could simply have been no other outcome.
@jonty
Do you have a link to that statement? I could only find this one.
I just saw that on Twitter. I'm really sorry. He really is one of the good guys.
The amendment to which he refers had no legal effect - "sex" and "gender" have identical and interchangeable meanings in law. Its proposal was a legislative wink to an increasingly vocal minority fringe in society - funded by fundamentalist US anti-LGBT and anti-abortion groups - who hold the medically incorrect and hateful view that transgender people either do not or should not exist.
A true ally of trans people - which the SGP democratically agreed that all its members should be - would not have tried to vote for it.
Well let's not put words in the mouth of someone quite so able to express his own thoughts?
I'm pretty sure he would extend that courtesy to both of us.
No matter what gentle-sounding words he has chosen to use, they signal an insistence that he wishes to participate in a moral panic around transgender rights. The SGP has democratically agreed that participation in that panic is harmful in and of itself and unacceptable behaviour within the party - as it would be in most modern, inclusive work environments. He has therefore resigned rather than being expelled.
Andy Wightman is one of the most respected MSPs, in these parts at least. Those who wouldn't vote for his party (on constitutional grounds) do have good words to say about his work on property rentals.
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