SNP trans reforms risk attracting sex offenders to Scotland,

In Sturgeon’s quest to boost her government’s woke credentials, Scotland is discriminating against its own people - not just women, but young people too.



Scottish undergraduates are now a minority at the country’s four oldest universities and policies, thanks to a strategy introduced ostensibly to address poverty, effectively barring middle-class students from the best courses.



Data from the University of Edinburgh revealed that no Scottish student who was not classified as 'disadvantaged' won a place on its law course this year.



Of the 1,200 Scots who applied to study law at the university, 659 were flagged as ‘widening access’, compared to 555 unassigned applicants. Some 170 students from deprived backgrounds were subsequently offered a place, while no student without a widening access category was admitted.



Law was not the only course affected at the University of Edinburgh. According to a report two weeks ago by The Scotsman, places on nine courses - including business, Japanese, philosophy and psychology - were allocated only to children who came from care experienced backgrounds (meaning they are or have some point been in care), refugee or asylum seeking backgrounds, live in the top 40 per cent most deprived postcodes in Scotland or come from a state school where fewer pupils are likely to gain five Highers.



Places for Scottish youngsters are capped because they don’t pay tuition fees, so the remaining places were filled by fee-paying students from overseas or from the rest of the UK. And as fees for non-Scots are high, the non-local students inevitably come from moneyed backgrounds.



Statistics from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) show that 35.5 per cent of Edinburgh students have come from private schools, in comparison to around 7 per cent of students attending private schools nationally. This means the University of Edinburgh ranks among the lowest in the country for admissions to students from state schools – and even lower than the University of Cambridge.



That leaves little space for middle-class, middle income young adults to gain a place at a prestigious Scottish university however hard they work.



Lindsay Paterson, Professor Emeritus of Education Policy at Edinburgh University, said the squeeze on Scottish students was not only inevitable, given the free tuition policy, but predicted, and was now being compounded by the measures to admit more people from disadvantaged backgrounds.



‘This isn’t an educational policy, it’s a social policy,’ he said. ‘The educational meaning of school qualifications is completely set aside and they are simply used as an indicator of advantage or disadvantage. It’s almost an anti-educational policy, in the interests of social engineering.



‘It will produce a brain drain of able, high attaining students from advantaged backgrounds. Long-term, any country that exports its most able young people is going to lose out in terms of social and economic development, and political leadership.



‘It also has a corrupting effect on the quality of education. If you believe that children in poverty do badly at school because of the school, then you end up fiddling around with the curriculum. Gradually, everybody is educated to a lower standard than a generation or two ago.’



Tensions have reportedly been running high at Edinburgh University since attempts to rename its David Hume Tower in 2020, due to a ‘racist’ footnote in one of the Scots philosopher's many works. One lecturer, Dr Neil Thin, was suspended because of student allegations about his teaching on issues of race. Dr Thin was exonerated after a two month investigation.



Edinburgh University, where staff have spoken of being abused over their views on issues such as gender


And former rector Ann Henderson has said she was subjected to a campaign of abuse by students after calling for a debate on gender recognition reforms, and that Professor Peter Mathieson, the principal, refused to intervene.



At the time, a spokeswoman for the university said: "We are fully committed to freedom of expression and published a statement on this important issue last year. It is inevitable that in such an environment, different ideas within our community will conflict with others. However, we expect debate to be conducted at all times in a respectful manner."



Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine, widely regarded as Scotland’s leading historian, said there had been a long public silence from most colleagues on these issues.



‘I understand why people are unwilling to speak out against the Edinburgh establishment, academic and political, on such controversial matters. I know from the private comments of several colleagues that some fear public vilification if they do so.’



He said he could see some parallels between these issues on campuses and the current gender debate.



‘There’s a lot of anger out there among particular groups but they don’t necessarily reflect the fundamental concerns of the vast majority of people.



‘One of the ironies is that this is all going on when many families in Scotland are going through crisis. Subjects that don’t really concern the majority are in the press virtually every day and the massive issues of health, wellbeing, costs of living, and the difficulty some parents are having caring for their children, especially in disadvantaged sections of Scottish society, hardly get mentioned.’



It’s unlikely that the latest woke ploy from Edinburgh City Council will offer much sustenance to struggling families. The city has become the first European capital to commit to a shift to plant-based diets, backing a treaty which includes taking meat and dairy off school menus, as well as in hospitals and nursing homes, in a bid to burnish its green reputation.



The pledge has been slammed as ‘anti-farming’ by the Scottish Countryside Alliance, but the council said it would help achieve climate targets.



The Nationalist government, which has done a deal with the Scottish Greens to ensure it has a pro-independence majority in the parliament, prioritises its eco image over investing in safer roads, and over North Sea oil and gas jobs.



The strategy under Sturgeon is to paint Scots as more enlightened than other Brits in order to drive a wedge between their two, largely similar, cultures.



Having failed in her secessionist crusade and on all other domestic fronts, the SNP leader will be looking to her legacy now. ‘Social reformer’ may be her preferred epithet but her ideological zeal is out of kilter with her countrymen and women.



Increasingly, her Scotland looks captured not so much by the hated English but by woke activists, preaching a new religion of progressive madness.

Im a european unionist.