Yesterday saw the publication of a book which chronicles the long running campaign to protect women's sex-based rights in Scotland.  In “The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht” more than thirty women tell their personal stories.  I am proud to be one of them.  My fellow authors include famous established writers such as JK Rowling, respected journalists like former MSP Joan McAlpine and Mandy Rhodes, Labour, Tory, SNP and Alba politicians, and survivors of male abuse who have written anonymously about their experience of being rejected as witnesses by the Holyrood committee that scrutinised the plans for gender recognition reforms.

If Kate had stood for the leadership of the SNP, she would have had my backing.  She has not and therefore I will fall behind the leadership of John Swinney. I should have liked to see a contest and a battle of ideas about the future direction of our party, the Scottish Government, and the cause of independence, but I understand the fear that the acrimony generated by that would not be desirable with a challenging General Election so close.

Like most of my SNP colleagues, I believe that our political representatives should be accountable to the electorate and so I do not approve of the way in which the House of Lords is selected rather than elected. However, I have been surprised and impressed by the dogged insistence of their lordships on their amendments to the Rwanda bill this week.  The fight is not over yet and while cynics say the PM is happy to let the ping pong between Commons and Lords go on for a little longer while he gets his ducks in a row for the first deportation flight to Rwanda, I say credit where credit is due.

On Tuesday it was reported that right wing protesters in Israel had blocked aid trucks destined for Gaza, throwing food packages onto the road and ripping open bags of grain. Whilst the UN Aid Agency confirmed that Northern Gaza is now experiencing full-blown famine, video footage showed fit young men in their late teens and early twenties stomping on food parcels and throwing their contents down a ravine. The attack happened at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. US national security adviser Jack Sullivan said: “It is a total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys coming from Jordan, going to Gaza to deliver humanitarian assistance.”