Susi Maclean 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 💜🤍💚 XX

@ScotsWhiteBear They did accept this advert. Took @IndyScotParty money, ran the ad, then decided it was objectionable, but their other paper would take the money only if the word woman was removed.

This statement responds to the decision by @ScotNational to refuse future advertising from the Independence for Scotland Party following so called “reader feedback" and to the conditional offer from The Herald to carry an advert only if it removes any reference to women. This raises serious concerns about censorship, political gatekeeping and the suppression of legitimate debate in Scotland’s media. No, this isn’t just “strong feedback,” this is a line being crossed. What we’ve been sent isn’t a commercial decision, it’s a political one, a decision to shut the door on a lawful political party because it dares to say things that make the comfortable uncomfortable for the Editors. A paper that wraps itself in the language of independence and democracy has just shown exactly where it stands when a real alternative appears, not beside the people, but blocking them. Let’s call it what it is, censorship, raw, blunt, unashamed and then comes the so called “alternative,” an offer with a condition that should outrage every single person reading it, we can have NO reference to women. Take a second and let that sink in. A political party in Scotland is being told it can access a front page but only if it stays silent about women, silent about rights, silent about safeguarding, silent about reality and silent on one of its founding principles. So here’s the question that needs to be answered by these so called newspapers. When are they going to tell their women readers that their sex is not relevant to their pages? Because that is exactly what this decision says, It says women don’t matter, at least not if acknowledging them disrupts a preferred narrative of the queer agenda, it says some truths are inconvenient to the trans allies and therefore must be buried, it says free speech is conditional and only exists for those who toe the TRA line. Well here’s the problem with that, the Independence for Scotland Party does not exist to toe anyone’s line, it does not exist to ask permission, it does not exist to dilute its principles and it sure as hell does not exist to be told what it can and cannot say by editors, advertisers or anyone else who thinks they get to control the boundaries of public debate. ISP will not be silenced, not by newspapers, not by gatekeepers, not by anyone. If you think shutting us out of a front page stops this message you’ve fundamentally misunderstood what’s happening across this country. This isn’t about ink on paper anymore, This is about people, it is about lived experience, it is about voices that have been ignored for far too long finally refusing to be quiet and here’s the truth that should worry them most, every door you close, we’ll kick open another, every platform you deny, we’ll build our own, every attempt to silence us only proves why we must speak louder, because a movement grounded in reality cannot be erased by editorial decisions, so keep your front pages, stick your conditions where the sun don't shine, the ISP will not be controlled by arms of the British state. The people are watching, the people are listening and no matter how hard you try you will not silence us. @joannaccherry @WWWheesht @WingsScotland @jk_rowling @ForWomenScot @WRNScotland

Scottish Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay discusses becoming John Swinney’s deputy FM - and the role Ross Greer could take if a new Bute House Agreement is struck after May’s election. Full Unspun interview 👇 Get a year of @heraldscotland from £20: shorturl.at/lKFBH