Sandy Cross

Former Aquaculturalist and resident of Edinburgh

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

When I reported on Zahawi I got a handful of abusive messages. When he apologised & it turned out I was right, they all stopped.

But Polanski? Wild levels of abuse, which just ramped up when Polanski apologised & it turned out I was right.

Does the Green Party have a problem?

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@DanNeidle @Heccles94

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@Europarl_EN

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Myth: "I only wear vegan fabrics. Better for the animals, better for the planet."

Let's check in on Doris's annual contribution.

Once a year, in late spring, Doris is sheared. The procedure takes approximately three minutes. Doris does not enjoy it. Doris does not, by any visible measure, suffer from it. Doris is, immediately afterwards, a noticeably more comfortable animal in the British summer.

The fleece weighs approximately 3 kilograms. It is sold to the British Wool Marketing Board for, depending on the year, between £0.40 and £2.50 per kilogram. The shearing costs more than the wool fetches. Brian is shearing Doris at a loss.

The wool is then:
- Naturally flame-retardant
- Naturally antibacterial
- Moisture-wicking
- Biodegradable
- Renewable, annually
- Carbon-storing while in use

The replacement, in performance fabrics:
- Polyester
- Polyamide
- Acrylic
- Polypropylene
- All petroleum-derived
- All shedding microplastics on every wash
- All requiring fossil fuel inputs to produce
- All non-biodegradable, with a typical landfill lifespan of 200-500 years

A single wash of a polyester fleece can release up to 700,000 microplastic fibres into the water system. These fibres are now in: every tested water source on earth, every tested human placenta, every tested rainfall sample, the deep ocean, the Arctic ice, and the lungs of marine mammals.

A single wash of a wool jumper releases: nothing. The wool, when eventually disposed of, returns to soil within a few years.

The fabric being marketed as the "ethical" alternative to wool is plastic.

The plastic is "ethical" because nobody has been asked to slaughter the polymer.

The polymer also has not been asked.

Doris, by being a sheep on a fell, is producing the most thoroughly sustainable performance fabric humans have ever made.

Brian is selling it at a loss.

The fashion industry, meanwhile, is selling petroleum at a profit and calling it ethical.

Reject plastic. Wear wool.

Doris is, this morning, growing next year's batch.

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@bellacaledonia Indy boosters’ refusal to accept the need for a tax base is also …. .

[Merryn Somerset Webb @MerrynSW]

What if the whole LLM thing is a false start? If the flaws are inherent systemic problems - if the compounding of hallucinations/errors can't be sorted out? If the capex build out is one of the biggest misallocations of capital ever? Then what? https://t.co/XVhr6mfCTN

[Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar]

Had this been the Conservatives a couple of years ago, the entire Labour front-bench would be screaming for the PM's resignation.

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@FattusPrickus Tremendous

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@DaveDooganSNP Is that a bit like what Nicola Sturgeon did?

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@jakeq9170 How is the weather in Tehran? Pretty foul here just now tbh.

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@GeorgeTrefgarne @MerrynSW The tragic loss of Strictly would be so ….bearable.

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

The big surprise announcement: Kemi Badenoch announces policy to *abolish stamp duty on your home*.

(This is actually a very good policy.)

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@JohnSwinney Best not tell John about the Act of Union.

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@SimonNewton5 @SimoninSuffolk ‘. She knows what God knows,
Not Calvary’s Cross nor crib at Bethlehem
Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham.’

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@GeorgeFoulkes Labour, a deputy pm and US ambassador down in a month , not in super strong position to criticise….

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@SpeechUnion Oh man . This is terrible.

[Susan Dalgety @DalgetySusan]

A strong message to @JohnSwinney just obey the law #WomenWontWait

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

The Sandie Peggie employment tribunal is currently exposing, as perhaps no court case to date has, the issue of class as it relates to the top-down imposition of gender identity ideology in the workplace.

'Diversity officer' Isla Bumba has now admitted in court that she didn't bother consulting the 1992 regulations guaranteeing single-sex spaces when she told a trans-identified male, Dr Beth Upton, to use the female changing room at the hospital where he was working. Bumba justified this decision with comments that I assume sounded really clever and convincing, inside her own head.

'I don’t know anything about Beth’s body. I didn’t at the time. I don’t now. I don’t need to know. But it wouldn’t be something that I would ever have the information of exactly what she is made of, biologically.'

Kate Searle, a consultant in emergency medicine, backed Bumba up, expressing outrage on the witness stand that anyone would be so insensitive as to ask about Upton's chromosomes.

‘I could only imagine how upsetting and invasive a question that would be for Beth, and also not relevant to a colleague to ask another colleague. Beth identifies as female, and it does not matter what her chromosomes are to her.’

In Bumba and Searle's world, a belief that gender identity trumps biological sex is proof you're intellectually and morally superior to women like Sandie Peggie, so I'd imagine it's come as a shock to discover, in a blaze of public and press scrutiny, just how idiotic and cruel they appear to people outside their dinner party circle.

When Upton, a 6' tall, 28-year-old ex-rugby playing male, claimed that a petite 50-year-old female nurse was making him feel 'unsafe', his word appears to have been taken as gospel. Searle, Bumba and management fell over themselves to coddle the middle-class doctor who shared their voguish post-modern views on gender. What did Sandie matter? She's just one of those ghastly uninformed bigots who still thinks sex is real and important - so embarrassingly gauche and simplistic! Whisper it - she probably drinks red wine with chicken, too.

According to @tribunaltweets, an emotional Searle blurted out on the stand 'I am kind.' This is not something genuinely kind people need to say. Genuinely kind people don't find themselves compelled to explain in court why they helped whip up a witch-hunt against a woman whose only crime was wanting to change her clothes without a man watching.

Well, the nurse who was supposed to shuffle off in disgrace wasn't having it. Sandie Peggie refused to be sacrificed on the altar of elitist ideologues who believe themselves to be higher and better than she is. She fought back, for herself and for every other woman who's currently being silenced, persecuted and punished by a smug management class that preens itself on its virtue while imposing rampantly misogynistic policies on its workforce.

Sandie Peggie is a heroine. The woman NHS Fife thought they could treat abominably without any consequences to themselves has succeeded in shining the brightest spotlight yet upon the brain rot and compassion deficit suffered by supposedly intelligent people when they embrace gender identity ideology. Women everywhere owe her a debt of thanks. Whatever the outcome of this tribunal, Sandie Peggie has already won.

[Sandy Cross @sandycrossuk]

@dj_forrester @BrianSpanner1 They had a nice camper van too.

[Murdo Fraser MSP @murdo_fraser]

Fascinating conversation yesterday with a construction professional. Wonder why we see so many student residences going up? Because they can get finance, whilst there is none for build-to-rent developments. This is a direct result of imbecilic SNP-Green rent control policy.