I’m minded to sympathise with my esteemed colleague Neil Mackay when he sought last week to defend Maggie Chapman’s diatribe against the Supreme Court. Ms Chapman was apoplectic with rage when five Law Lords unanimously asserted that, for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, transwomen aren’t women.

The deputy convenor of Holyrood’s Equalities Committee condemned the court, comprising the brightest and most experienced judges in the land, for its “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”. Mr Mackay said, quite reasonably, that if we value free speech – no matter how much we disagreed with an individual’s sincerely-held views – we must defend their right to express them in a democracy. To an extent, I agree: if you can’t criticise judges, drawn almost exclusively from the most privileged bastions of elitism in the UK, then who can you chastise?

It’s just that, well … the right to free speech also carries a responsibility not to abuse it. That responsibility gains even greater weight when you’ve been tasked by voters to scrutinise legislation and make laws on behalf of the people who put you in Holyrood on a salary of £75k a year plus all the folderols that come with the position.

Read more by Kevin McKenna

Ms Chapman is, of course a list MSP. She has never come close to persuading enough people to vote for her in actual elections. Perhaps she felt that as very few of us actually voted for her, we can all go where the sun doesn't shine with our “reasonable expectations”.

You might even be moved to enter a plea of mitigation on her behalf if the party she represents were fierce........

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