Notice board Shut-down of debate made test by Rowling necessary

● Lesley Riddoch is touring with her new film Denmark: The State Of Happiness. There are screenings at 7pm tonight at Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy; and at 7.30pm on Friday, April 26 at Corrie and Sannox Village Hall, Arran. Lesley will be doing Q&A sessions after the screenings. For full tour dates and to book see lesleyriddoch.com/events.

● Brian Bilston and Henry Normal will appear together for the first time to perform "an evening of poems to be enjoyed not endured" at 7.30pm tonight at Tolbooth, Stirling; and 7.30pm on Wednesday, April 10 at Mackintosh Church, Glasgow. For ticket details see www.waterstones.com.

● The Annual Arbroath Rally will be held on Sunday at 1pm. The march will begin at Kings Gate by the harbour and end behind Arbroath Abbey with short speeches. All welcome. Singers, musicians and pipers welcome for pub after.

● To See Ourselves, Jane McAllister’s documentary about the 2014 independence referendum, will be shown at 2pm on Sunday at Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, followed by a Q&A with the director. For tickets see toseeourselves.film/ see-the-film

● An Evening With Alex Gray is being held at 7pm on Tuesday, April 9 at Waterstones Kirkcaldy. The author will be discussing her best-selling series of crime novels and giving the scoop on Out Of Darkness, the latest book in the series. To book a free ticket, see www.waterstones.com.

● Believe in Scotland is holding its first ever March and Rally for an Independent Scotland in Glasgow on Saturday, April 20, in partnership with Pensioners for Independence. Confirmed speakers include First Minister Humza Yousaf, Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp and musician Iona Fyfe. For more details see www.believeinscotland.org for more details.

TIM Hopkins, formerly of the Equality Network, appears to have a remarkably short memory. In his letter of April 4 he chastises JK Rowling for tweets which seemed “designed to offend” and “provoke anger and upset”, yet, were he to cast his mind back to March 2021, he might understand why Ms Rowling felt the need to test the limits of the new hate crime legislation and his own role in making this a necessity.

At stage three of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill, Johann Lamont lodged amendments designed to protect freedom of expression. Amendment 11B expressly dealt with ensuring it would be safe to express innocuous views like “sex is a physical, binary characteristic that cannot be changed” and “a person’s sex may be relevant to their experience”.

The response from the Equality Network was brutal. In a briefing urging MSPs to reject this, they claimed that providing this protection would “fundamentally undermine trans people’s longestablished Convention right to be legally recognised in their transitioned gender” and lead to “open season” on trans people.

This contributed to the ongoing confusion and anxiety about what can safely be said here, deliberately engineered by groups like the Equality Network, which have encouraged people to report stickers with dictionary definitions as hate crimes.

Had the Scottish Government made it explicit either in the act or in guidance (promised discussions on which with ourselves and others were pulled, to avoid upsetting activists like Mr Hopkins), no-one, including Ms Rowling, would have felt the need to establish now whether naming the reality of sex was likely to trigger a police investigation.

That she was compelled to take this step was largely due to the past actions of organisations like the Equality Network and their shameful attempts to shut the door on debate. Susan Smith

Director, For Women Scotland

IN response to the Scottish Government’s Hate Crime Act, it was just so depressingly predictable that that awful wuman JK Rowling posted a thread on X listing sex offenders who had described themselves as transgender alongside well-known transwomen activists, describing them as “men, every last one of them.”

It was such a gratuitous and, let’s face it, puerile act, as was her