"...In the meantime, someone needs to take aside the parties involved in arguing the toss over the Act of Settlement and set them straight, particularly here in Scotland. Otherwise we will have to endure months, maybe years, of pointless, time-wasting, ludicrous debate and attempted legislative reform, no doubt tainted with hints of ugly sectarianism, that will tie up people who should be concentrating on land reform, housing, education and health...."

If Michael Forsyth and the Scottish Tories were so bothered about the Act of Settlement why did they do nothing about it during their 17 years in power? If the SNP were so bothered about it why did it only start to become a priority after the Monklands East by-election when the SNP nearly won on the back of a temporary working class nominal Presbyterian protest vote because of Labour's perceived Coatbridge-centric pro-RC sectarian district council and that bitterly fought campaign had left an impression in parts of the west of Scotland that the SNP were very much a "Proddie" party? Kicking up a fuss over the Act of Settlement is just a way to cause trouble for Labour basically in a petty point scoring sort of way. The other parties know that no governing party is going to want to change loads of archaic legislation that involves getting agreement with 13 other realms within the Commonwealth which also have QEII as head of state so the impression can be easily left that they are doing nothing about it so ergo they are anti-RC. For Cardinal Winning OTOH it is a useful way to deflect attention away from the schooling issue and the moves by the EIS to possibly take that issue to the ECHR on a discrimination basis as well.

If the real issue in all of this monarchy stuff is really discrimination why is no fuss being kicked up about the fact that succession is always to the eldest male heir not to the eldest child of the reigning sovereign as happened in Sweden a few years back? The Windsor monarchy is an archaic anachronism with inherent discrimination running right through it because of the hereditary principle. In practical terms it does the job not bad because it exercises no truly meaningful powers these days as parliament(s) has/have been firmly in charge since 1688 and the Act of Settlement came about primarily only because the "Divine Right of Kings "Stuarts did such an abysmal job in the 17th century so many people like myself are willing to put up with all the many and varied discriminatory aspects of the institution as an irrelevance to the mundane reality of daily life in an ain't broke don't fix it sort of way. If we really want to get into the business of reforming the institution and making it all modern and PC then it should simply be wound up altogether IMO. The problem is though that the UK has no real right to do this unilaterally when 13 other Commonwealth realms of the crown are also involved as well. So why open up this issue at all in a Scottish context until after independence in Europe is achieved? The real priority for opposition politicians in Scotland should be stuff like this IMO:-

and undoing the damage that 20 years of Thatcherism emanating from Westminster has inflicted upon Scotland's social fabric and getting the message across to people who live in places like Castlemilk how self-government can be used as a vehicle to alleviate the situation.

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