See also, this open letter from clinicians to Wes Streeting: We think that PATHWAYS Trial is unsafe, doesn’t meet the requirements of UK clinical trial regulations, and should not proceed for the following reasons:

Janice Turner on that BMJ Medical Ethics paper: How do you end a hideous form of child abuse? Do you a) strengthen laws, protect victims and prosecute offenders, or b) use abstruse language to muddy the ethical waters, sophistry to turn those fighting abuse into the bad guys so — voilà! — the problem magically…

Exciting union news – Left-wing candidate beats Starmer ally to lead UK’s biggest union. Left-wing candidate Andrea Egan has been elected as the new leader of Unison, the UK’s biggest trade union, in a blow to Sir Keir Starmer. Ms Egan, who was expelled from the Labour Party three years ago, beat the union’s current…

It’s a grim irony that the health secretary who’s authorising the puberty blocker trial is gay, given that, as many have argued, the momentum behind “gender affirming care” is profoundly homophobic – “transing away the gay”. Kate Barker at Spiked: Figures from the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) are stark and troubling. Eighty-nine per cent…

Mount Paektu – “the sacred mountain of the revolution” – holds a special place in North Korean iconography. Supposedly the birthplace of Kim Jong-il – he was actually born in Russia – the ascent by Kim Jong-un on a white horse in 2019 was a deeply symbolic event…. …echoing the legend of Chollima, the mythical winged…

Shadow equalities minister Claire Coutinho, in the Times, on Labour’s proposed Islamophobia ban: Has the government learnt nothing? It is set to announce its new definition of Islamophobia under a rebrand of “anti-Muslim hostility”. The definition apparently seeks to stop the “prejudicial stereotyping and racialisation” of Muslims or the “creation of practices and biases” that…

He’s a Corbynista, and a gender activist, pushing the BMA into its rejection of the Cass Review For two decades Dolphin has been a key figure agitating for strikes by the BMA and fighting for higher pay and pensions. He was a Labour Party activist and member under Jeremy Corbyn and is part of a small…

Finsbury Park this morning.