You were probably worrying about how Police Scotland would be celebrating International Pronouns Day – but be anxious no longer.
As we revealed yesterday, it’s one of a host of key dates in a woke ‘inclusion’ calendar helpfully supplied to officers by force diversity managers.
It also enables staff to ask for more information about Pansexual Visibility Day, International Drag Day and Non-Binary People’s Day.
By now, you probably won’t be shocked to learn that there’s no special day for victims of crime on the calendar, though one does exist.
February 22 is recognised as the European Day for Victims of Crime – but it’s a busy period on the equality calendar, as February is LGBT History Month.
Commemorating crime victims who already get a raw deal from Police Scotland would doubtless fall foul of the diversity commissars who are handsomely paid to churn out this nonsense.
Last month the force was accused of promoting trans ideology by putting up posters in a station, going through each letter of the alphabet – for example, ‘G’ is for ‘gender identity’.
Meanwhile, a senior police officer is said to have claimed that use of white first-aid training dummies showed Police Scotland was ‘racist’ – though it was quickly pointed out that the dummies aren’t only white, so it was a baseless claim.
Then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tried – and failed – to drive through transgender self-ID reforms
Top brass stopped cops from taking part in Saturday’s Pride march in Glasgow after a judicial review south of the Border found the practice wasn’t impartial – something that should have been obvious without a court’s intervention.
But police chiefs are dragging their feet on implementing the Supreme Court gender ruling in April which swept away the key pillars of the trans ideology which has spread like knotweed through the public sector.
And they’re still in a quandary over whether rapists should be allowed to identify as women – forcing the service to seek clarification from an equality watchdog.
Last week it emerged no one will be disciplined over an internal police document that compared gender-critical beliefs with Nazism.
Policing is far from an isolated example. As we reported in yesterday’s Mail, the Tories estimate the cost of the burgeoning diversity ‘industry’ bankrolled by the taxpayer at nearly £20million since 2019.
Scotland’s crisis-hit NHS was the biggest spender, despite struggling to recover since Covid, and at a time of record waiting lists.
Health boards have splashed £8.9million on DEI [diversity, equality and inclusion] training, including £624,000 at NHS Fife.
It was taken to an ongoing tribunal by nurse Sandie Peggie after she had to share a changing room with a trans doctor.
Councils, universities, the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) and Scottish Government departments spent a further £11million between them on DEI.
The SPS’s spend on DEI of £751,934 included £9,180 on the controversial LGBTQ+ rights group Stonewall and more than £725,000 on diversity staff wages.
An unidentified slice of the spending was for ‘awareness/ celebration sessions’.
Sepa, the environmental quango, drafted in equality trainers while it was still reeling from a devastating cyber-attack.
Those trainers were from the Equality Network, which was critical of Holyrood authorities after they said access to the parliament’s toilet facilities should be determined by biological sex.
Another beneficiary of public funding is LGBT Youth Scotland. It was once led by a man who carried out a vile sex attack on a baby boy (and advised the SNP government on issues such as legalising same-sex adoption).
It also provided training to police call-handlers despite the fact that it had produced a ‘coming out’ guide for schoolchildren which was co-written by another convicted paedophile.
Remarkably, the charity, which has encouraged schoolchildren to sign LGBT rainbow flags, receives more than £1million a year of funding from a variety of sources, including the SNP Government, councils – and the NHS.
Plainly, there is a kind of mania at work which means well-remunerated officials who should have known better fell hook, line and sinker for hardcore beliefs which don’t have widespread public backing.
You probably don’t remember being consulted on it – because you weren’t; it was simply taken for granted that voters wouldn’t put up much of a fight, and if they did they could be demonised and belittled.
That was the fate of those who were brave enough to speak out when Nicola Sturgeon tried and mercifully failed to drive through transgender self-ID reforms.
The diversity craze is driven by a lie – there’s nothing remotely ‘diverse’ about enforcing trans ideology which most people don’t support.
About two-thirds of Scots were against the main tenets of the abortive transgender law masterminded by the SNP, which was blocked by the UK Government and is now effectively dead in the water.
Yet a legion of bureaucrats is being paid to keep pushing discredited diktats, foisting them on staff who know failing to toe the line might well be a terminal moment for their careers.
The rot started early. In 2008, it emerged that more than 100 public sector staff had been hired to promote diversity, costing Scots at least £3million a year at the time.
The health service alone accounted for almost half of this total, spending £1.4million a year.
In return for this huge outlay, diversity workers came up with barmy schemes such as trying to ban NHS staff from using the terms mum and dad, in case they offend LGBT people.
Back then, police were being told to ask if suspects were going through a transgender journey, to try and avoid discrimination.
Nearly 20 years on, the diversity push is still going on but it has stepped up a gear in recent times – and there’s no doubt the SNP has pressed down hard on the accelerator.
However, there are tentative signs that some politicians are beginning to realise that this crusade – just like net zero – is becoming a vote loser.
But a lot of non-jobs depend on its continuation –even as NHS waiting lists spiral and victims are told minor crimes can no longer be fully investigated because of police budget cuts.
Safeguarding political correctness is our only growth industry.
But it has turned us into a laughing stock and done nothing to help reverse the decline in public services, or to boost the moribund economy.
The SNP will want to steer clear of the subject as the Scottish election next May looms large.
After all, the chief architect of the diversity obsession can’t be expected to put an end to its malign influence.
However, there will be plenty of votes to be won for any party which pledges to take an axe to the growing army of woke apparatchiks which now dominates every corner of public life.
