Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Man kills man

    Here we go again. Wife killed husband with samurai sword, court told.

    A woman killed her husband with a samurai sword "stabbing and slicing him" more than 50 times before replacing the sword in its sheath on a stand, a court heard.

    Brighton-killer

    Not a woman though, is he?

    Joanna Rowland-Stuart, 71, was arrested and originally charged with murdering her husband Andrew Rowland-Stuart, 70, after he was pronounced dead at their home in Lavender Street in Brighton on 27 May 2024.

    At Lewes Crown Court on Monday, the jury heard that Ms Rowland-Stuart, who has been deemed unfit to plead, told police she had acted in self defence.

    Jurors heard that Ms Rowland-Stuart, who is transgender, married Mr Rowland Stuart, known as Andy, in a civil partnership in 2006.

    Who is transgender, and therefore not a woman. Not a woman's crime.

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  • We’re not going to take it!

  • At the Royal Opera House

    The Telegraph reveals the identity of Palestine flag man:

    A “queer dance artist” who attended a £48,000-a-year school was behind a pro-Palestine protest at the Royal Opera House, The Telegraph can reveal.

    The audience for Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore was stunned on Saturday evening when a member of the cast unfurled a Palestinian flag during the curtain call.

    Footage from the incident showed a stage manager trying – and failing – to snatch the flag from the performer, who was still in costume as a demon.

    The Telegraph understands that the cast member behind the protest is Daniel Perry, a self-described “queer dance artist”, choreographer, and DJ.

    The dancer studied at the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire, which charges up to £16,000 per term for boarding….

    Perry’s pronouns are “they/them”, according to booking agencies representing the dancer.

    The performer recently wore a tank top with the slogan “Free Palestine” to a London performance of Cabaret, a musical set during the Weimar Republic that heavily foreshadows the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime….

    In a social post about the visit, Perry wrote: “In this particular version, we are reminded of how regimental political systems, such as extreme nationalism, and fascism, oppress and eradicate individualism, whilst also segregating people, leaving them voiceless, expressionless and helplessly in control by their oppressors.

    “I believe we are currently living in similar times.”

    Yes, in many ways perhaps we are. Unfortunately this buffoon has misread the situation. The current terrifying rise in antisemitism does echo the rise of the Nazis in the Thirties – but he's picked the wrong side.

  • Philosophical Malpractice

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    Philosophical Malpractice, by Daniel Kodsi and John Maier. A taster:

    Has the politics of the trans movement damaged academia? In conversation with academics, it is common to be told that the importance of trans issues has been blown out of proportion. That insouciant analysis is often badly undermined by the fact that the kind of academic who is inclined to provide it will then audibly struggle to give straight answers to basic questions, such as ”Are there any male women?”.

    We can attest to the fact that not allowing such academics to hedge and prevaricate in such conversations can be somewhat amusing, as well as an interesting exercise in academic anthropology. Some of the most macho, straight-shooting, take-no-prisoners analytic philosophers out there are easily left tongue-tied if asked to venture an opinion as to whether there are any male women. Biologists who have just spent half an hour explaining their research on sex-differences in plants respond with blank stares.

    Among those who can overcome the trauma of having the issue raised, one favored gambit is to act as if it is an unreasonable expectation for academics to know whether or not there are male women. Relatedly, the idea that the academy generally might be held to account in some way for the things that it says – or more likely, fails to say – about the various trans-related controversies that have taken up so much bandwidth in recent political debate is treated as unfair: a political distraction, or perhaps a trap designed to lure sophisticated thinkers onto an unseemly political battlefield. Isn’t it just irrelevant what academics think? is one way that these academics sometimes try to defer answering the question, in the spirit of reticence to which they have spontaneously converted. If that doesn’t work, they might point out how many more important issues there are besides “trans”, as if the sheer number of questions competing for their attention means they simply haven’t got around to deciding whether there are male women yet.

  • Queering academia

    Turning Labour round on the trans debate is not going to be easy. Jo Bartosch in the Telegraph on a particularly unpleasant case:

    Labour’s Tim Roca must surely be one [of] the Opposition’s favourite politicians. In newly surfaced footage, a University of Westminster event titled Queering Academia the Macclesfield MP told an audience that “transphobes” are “swivel-eyed” and “not very well people.”

    Let’s be clear: by “transphobes” Roca doesn’t mean violent thugs who want to crucify cross dressers. He means you. He means the average British voter who believes that biological sex exists. The parents alarmed that teachers are telling their daughters they are “born in the wrong body” if they like playing with trucks. The people campaigning to stop male sex offenders from being housed in female prisons. The detransitioners left scarred by medical experiments masquerading as care. He means the Supreme Court justices who recently reaffirmed that, under equality law, sex means biology, a decision he decried as “depressing.”

    To Roca, all of them – all of us – are unhinged.

    But what’s truly depressing is that Parliament is still stacked with unabashed gender goons like Roca, who confuse sneering for superiority and ideology for intellect.

    The Labour Party has become a refuge for some of the most absurd and extreme statements ever uttered into a microphone. Dawn Butler once bafflingly informed a Pink News audience that “babies are born without a sex” and that “90 per cent of giraffes are gay.” Stella Creasy earnestly believes that being a feminist means affirming “women with penises.” And Labour’s health minister Ashley Dalton once tweeted that people should be able to identify as llamas if they wish….But what’s most infuriating about Roca’s smug sermon is his deluded belief that all that’s needed is “robust conversation” to “bring people around” to his view that gender identity ought to outweigh the reality of biological sex.

    For a decade, gender lobbyists like Stonewall shut down debate, smeared dissenters as bigots, and undermined the democratic process by influencing public policy behind closed doors. When we wanted dialogue, they called it hate. Women trying to arrange discussions about now shelved proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act faced bomb threats and intimidation from activists, and arrest and interrogation from Stonewall trained police forces.

    Thanks to their work, common sense has resurfaced, and it is sweeping through the nation. The public can see clearly who the real “swivel-eyed” loons are: those who lock male rapists in women’s prisons, who drug confused children, and earnestly believe you can be born in the wrong body.

    Roca is half-right: there are some very unwell people in this maddening debate, and many of them share the green benches he sits on.

    What Labour needs from Starmer is an unequivocal commitment to rooting out gender ideology in the same way he committed the party to rooting out antisemitism. We'll see….

  • Harmful stereotypes about masculinity

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    From the article:

    A primary school has held up a trans man as a positive example of masculinity in teaching materials for its pupils.

    Streatham Wells School, in south-west London, said Elliott Page, the Canadian actor who medically transitioned with cross-sex hormones along with gender surgery and now identifies as a man, showed that masculinity “can mean softness and strength”.

    However soft and caring Elliott Page may be, there is the problem that she's not a man – so perhaps not the best example. Anyway, is Elliott Page noted for her softness and kindness? Not that I'm aware of. Maybe it's the head teacher here who's guilty of a bit of the old gender stereotyping.

    In an article for the online newsletter Teachwire, Sarah Wordlaw, the head teacher, wrote about her school’s efforts to tackle issues such as toxic masculinity and violence against women.

    She wrote: “It is important to teach pupils about harmful stereotypes about masculinity. However, if the first time we teach and name masculinity is calling it toxic, that could do more damage than good to our boys.

    “It is extremely important to teach about positive masculinities. We need to encourage empathy, kindness, showing emotions, listening to alternative points of view and developing emotional literacy.

    “Undoing the deeply ingrained gender stereotypes in our society takes time. It’s certainly not a quick fix. We have seen a significant improvement in children’s awareness of key issues surrounding gender equality. They know how to use their voice to advocate for others.”…

    However, some educational professionals have suggested that holding up a trans man as a positive example of masculinity might undermine the intended message that biological men can be gentle and caring.

    Well quite. 

  • Sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity

    Hadley Freeman in today's Sunday Times, on NHS Fife and diversity officers:

    "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King Jr said that, a man I’d hope Isla Bumba, NHS Fife’s equality and human rights lead officer, had heard of, considering her job is improving diversity. Although given Bumba admitted last week that she wasn’t entirely sure if she was a woman, it’s probably best not to make assumptions….

    MLK Jr never met a diversity officer, because they only became a fixture of workplaces in the past five years. But I can’t better his description of “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” when summing up Bumba, who testified on Wednesday she didn’t know her own sex, because “no one knows what their chromosomes are” (reminder again: these people work in a hospital). Despite being asked for advice about trans policies “frequently, once a week”, Bumba said, she didn’t actually have an official policy, and so just asked other diversity officers what they did. It’s like the mafia, but with rainbow lanyards.

    I had two takeaways from this exchange: first, nothing has been worse for the gender movement than the cleansing light of the courts. Again and again, gender activists have lost because while the public are all for supporting vulnerable minorities, they tend to do a double take when they hear claims like “It’s transphobic to say a lesbian can’t have a penis”. The law isn’t infallible, but it does at least offer the detergent of sunlight.

    Second, no job has more of the whiff of 2020 than the diversity officer. They exist to confirm their employer’s moral purity by “improving diversity and inclusion”, and they do this by quantifying minorities and gamifying vulnerabilities, keeping track of which disabilities are up and which are down, as if the human condition were a stock market. Does dyslexia need its own awareness day, as the diversity officer at one friend’s workplace decided? How about making pronouns on work emails mandatory? Is a man who identifies as a woman more deserving of protection than an actual woman? These are the kinds of hard questions the diversity officer must puzzle over daily, meaning those who apply for the job tend to have few talents other than scolding their colleagues….

  • The Hamas news pantomime

    A thread from David Collier:


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    First, setting the scene. Since October 7 Israel has been fighting in Gaza to rescue hostages and to break Hamas's grip on power. A key part of this has been separating Hamas from aid distribution – which is why US contractors have been brought in to manage aid sites.

    Hamas needs to control aid – so making the aid effort fail is in its direct interest. NGOs infiltrated by Hamas and other terrorist groups have aligned themselves with this goal. Their objective isn't feeding Palestinians – it's ensuring the aid program is seen to fail.

    Which brings us to the daily pantomime.
    Scene 1: Early in the day, (every day) and before the aid distribution starts, Hamas fighters approach & deliberately provoke IDF positions.
    The IDF respond to this threat. Mostly by firing warning shots.

    Behind the scenes and off camera – in an area far from the aid centre.
    Hamas fighters and the IDF are engaged in a war. Several Hamas terrorists are killed and wounded. The bodies of these terrorists are taken to hospital.

    Scene 2: Cut to local hospital. Images of dead – mostly men of fighting age are seen. Random people speak to camera about how they were shot at by tanks for just wanting food. Doctors are used to confirm the terrorists were civilians killed near an aid site.

    Scene 3: Western media sources – now overrun by ex Al-Jazeera staffers & other Islamists who hate Jews – spring into action. Stories begin to circulate about the latest 'massacre'. The 'journos' know what they are going to write – but reach out to the IDF for a 'right to reply'.

    Scene 4: The IDF receive questions from media. They know there was no massacre and know the incident took place not at the aid station, but some distance away. The IDF respond acknowledging their forces were under threat and they fired warning shots.

    Scene 5: The activist journo has his story. Hamas (who they believe) say 'massacre'. There are bodies at hospital. The IDF (who they don't believe) say they just fired warning shots.
    'Massacre at aid site' headline is built in places like @bbcnews @skynews .

    Off camera. No editor questions why with 60 million cameras in Gaza, there is never clear footage of these events. Nobody asks the doctor in hospital how he knows what happened at the aid site if he wasn't even there. The goal is clear. Another chance to demonise Israel.

    Final scene: 'Massacre' headline runs at media outlets that have turned into pro-Hamas mouthpieces. Curtain falls.
    Journos stand to applause from audience of antisemites & Islamists.
    'Come back tomorrow' the Gazans shout, we are running the show again. The journos wink back.

    Off camera…
    Hamas terrorists congratulate themselves over another successful production.
    One asks – how can western media be so stupid? They put into headlines whatever nonsense we give them..
    Another replies. It is easy… we have lots of friends there now. END.

  • At Stroud Pride

    From the Telegraph:

    Police are treating graffiti stating that “men can’t be women” as a hate crime, The Telegraph understands.

    Gloucestershire Constabulary is investigating after slogans were daubed around Stroud ahead of the town’s annual Pride march.

    Police said the graffiti was “targeted towards transgender people” and the incident was being treated as a “hate crime”, but did not reveal what the slogans said.

    The Telegraph understands that the slogans included statements such as “men can’t be women”. Others included “you can’t change sex”, “being female is not a costume”, and “trans women are men”, according to sources.

    So hateful! 

    The Telegraph previously revealed that the Pride event planned to ban performers with gender-critical opinions whom organisers deemed “harmful”.

    Which presumably explains why people decided to put up these slogans, as a protest against the constant pandering to trans activists. Pride is clearly no longer about gays – who've won their rights and would just like to get on with their lives thank you very much – but all about the T. 

    The slogans were either cleaned off by Stroud council or covered with painted “pink love hearts”.

    Photographs show that the slogan “you can’t change sex” was altered to say “you can change sex” and left in place, along with new graffiti that stated “trans rights”.

    Tony Davey, the mayor of Stroud, said the original gender-critical slogans were an attempt to sow “hate and division” and to “instil fear”.

    Instilling fear? By pointing out the idiocy of gender nonsense?

  • Big bergs

    Photographer Dennis Lehtonen in Greenland, where the icebergs loom over the houses:

    When he arrived in Innaarsuit, he heard about an incident in 2018 when the village of around 160 Inuit residents had to be fully evacuated due to a giant iceberg settling near the shore. Estimated to have been around 100 meters high, its presence threatened people’s safety due to the dangers of pieces breaking off and causing waves large enough to hit some of the coastal houses. While inherently a tense situation, it was also astonishing to see, and Lehtonen couldn’t help being curious “what it would look like to have a skyscraper made of ice on your backyard.”

    A couple of weeks ago, Lehtonen and locals spotted an iceberg floating a few miles away, and even from the distance, he could tell it was large. Days later, it—actually a pair—slid into Innaarsuit, dwarfing the fishing village’s modest wooden houses.

    The municipality was warned to be careful when on the coast and not to travel in large groups. Fragments occasionally broke off as the iceberg moved, creating a reverberating sound akin to thunder. Many locals also documented the phenomenon, despite being more accustomed to icebergs. “They would also tell me that this is the highest they have ever seen an iceberg rise above the houses,” Lehtonen says. “So it was definitely a special event.”

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    [All images © Dennis Lehtonen]

    Considering only one tenth of an iceberg is above water, the land must shelve spectacularly here to allow these bergs to come in so close.