Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Down to Docklands

    Photos from a bike ride down the Lea to Docklands:

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    Lea boats by the Hertford Union Canal.

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    Black and blue.

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    New build.

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    Dockland trees.

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    Millwall Inner Dock.

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    View from Rotherhithe.

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    With cruise ship.

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    Bascule bridge at Surrey Quays.

  • Karen’s story

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    Karen Danson, a Darlington nurse, anonymous until now, has gone public on her chilling story on how, after saying that she has experienced childhood abuse, NHS bosses still said she should get undressed in front of a man who identifies as a woman, and would even have forced her to have ‘Rose’ assist in her gynaecology operation.

    Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, Karen's story demonstrates how far the NHS has been prepared to go to uphold gender identity ideology and compromise the basic safety and dignity of female staff and patients.

    Watch this promo of Karen's story, especially for the 'but Rose is a woman' line at the end.

    Her story is breaking in the Mail on Sunday, please pray for and support Karen and all of the Darlington nurses.

    Find out more in the Mail and on our website:

    dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1

    christianconcern.com/ccpressrelease

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  • How “non-binary” reinforces sexism

    The embrace of gender has led, predictably enough, to an increased stress on sex stereotypes – as exemplified by the latest Met Gala, where men are men, and women, especially, very much dress and present themselves as pornified fashion objects. Those who feel they can't match these fantasy visions of masculinity and femininity, as a result, now call themselves non-binary. It's back to the old sexism, but in new progressive clothes. 

    Hadley Freeman in the Sunday Times today:

    On the flight home, I listened to Louis Theroux’s interview with Bella Ramsey, a 21-year-old actress. She identifies as non-binary, which means in every interview she gives she has to describe what that is, because no one really knows. Ramsey acknowledged to Theroux that sexism exists, saying that gender-neutral awards wouldn’t work, because women would never win again. But she couldn’t acknowledge that it’s exactly the same prejudice that makes her describe herself as non-binary. “I always felt more masculine,” she said. So because she doesn’t feel feminine, she’s not a woman. That is her conclusion. But another word for equating women with femininity is, quite simply, sexism….

    Once artists rebelled against old-fashioned ideas about masculinity and femininity, like Boy George, KD Lang and Madonna. Now those who don’t fit into today’s Kardashianised mould of celebrity beauty, such as Ramsey, Sam Smith, Emma Corrin and so on, describe themselves as “non-binary”, as if not having pumped-up breasts or biceps de-sexes them. The irony of the “non-binary” term is it reinforces today’s binary ideas about how women and men should look and behave….

    The left has been notoriously bad at dealing with gender theory, preferring to see it as the vanguard of progressivism rather than the sexist backlash it clearly is. Ramsey’s co-star in HBO’s zombie drama The Last of Us, Pedro Pascal, exemplifies that sexism. He protested against the UK Supreme Court’s recent clarification that “woman” in the Equality Act means an actual woman, not a trans one, by wearing a T-shirt with the trans rights slogan “Protect the dolls”. Because that’s what the perfect woman is now: a doll, fragile and fake. It will probably be the theme at next year’s Met Gala.

    It used to be straightforward back in the heady days of women's lib and gay lib: cast aside the sex stereotypes and live as you want to live. Men can knit and cook and do the dishes; women can put up a shelf and play football. Now…well, whoever does the dishes is a woman, and if you play with cars you must be a man.

    Thanks very much to all those sex-as-a-social-construct theorists. Somewhere down the line the postmodern account, with America leading the way, escaped the academy and infested the world…

  • The Democrat’s problem understanding the opposition they face on issues related to ‘gender identity’

    Further to the Democrat problem with gender (previous post) – an issue they seem determined to ignore, despite its relevance to their position today sitting on their hands while Trump destroys  the economy and America's reputation – here's Matt Osborn, via Kara Dansky's Terf Report:

    Democrats have a serious problem understanding the opposition they face on issues related to ‘gender identity.’ Their mental model of the phenomenon is broken because it ascribes all opposition to the Republican Party and evil designs drawn up in prayer-filled backrooms. This caricature is false and misleading. It does not help Democrats to understand the real world, or to win elections.

    Every opponent of the state taking children away from families in the name of their ‘gender identity’ is explained away as a bigot. Every opponent of male bodies in female sports is dismissed as a right wing reactionary. Women who object to naked male bodies in their restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, gym showers, and prisons: these women are all exactly the same as white supremacists, to Democrats.

    But in reality, the opposition to ‘gender identity’ originated on the left. Kara Dansky and I have the receipts. We were warning Democrats all this time. They know we exist, but we were not supposed to exist, so Democrats still pretend we don’t exist. Until they acknowledge us, and face up to the reckoning over ‘gender identity,’ Democrats will remain out of power, no matter how bad the Republicans get.

    Worth a read.

    Dansky identifies the pernicious role of Queer Theory, Gayle Rubin, and Judith Butler in the normalization among elites of the luxury belief that female bodies are somehow socially constructed. In the ivory tower of the academy, “women are not oppressed by men on the basis of sex, but on the basis of the existence of the binary category of sex,” Dansky writes. “This is fundamentally anti-feminist.”

    Dansky “knew women voting Trump in 2020 because of this issue,” Dansky writes in The Abolition of Sex. And “unless Democrats change course immediately and publicly hold themselves accountable for what they have done to women and girls as a sex class, I have no plans to vote for them in 2024. And I am not alone,” she wrote in 2023.

    She speaks for many opponents of ‘gender identity’ who began on the left, who mostly still hold out hope for party reform, but remain disappointed with the party. Dansky grew up believing “that the Democrats were the party that cared about the working class, feminism, free speech, gay rights, and civil rights generally.”

    Today the Democrats pretend to not know what a woman even is. Democrats cannot be the party of women and also pretend that they don’t know what a woman is. Working class voters have no time for such contradictions.

  • The progressive view of “populism”

    Janice Turner in the Times:

    On a hike in Ecuador, I chatted with a couple of New York Democrats. Humane, politically engaged professionals, they’d been blindsided by Trump’s re-election and I asked how they explained it. “The problem,” said one of them earnestly, “is half of America is just incredibly stupid.”

    He encapsulated the progressive view of “populism”. Those who vote for it must be deluded bigots, radicalised by Elon’s X, seduced by racist demagogues, too thick to know what’s good for them. After Reform’s triumph in last week’s council elections, many will be aghast that stupidity is running at 29 per cent in the polls and extends beyond known stupid areas such as Hull or Doncaster (my home town) into nice places like Worcestershire, hitherto seen as quite bright.

    Asked by the pollsters More in Common to tick a reason why voters had turned to Reform, 38 per cent said they couldn’t understand it at all. Almost half of Labour voters and 62 per cent of Lib Dems were mystified.

    The only explanation they can come up with is: these people are thick as shit.

    Reform is surging because the lanyard class refuses to listen to voters when the reality they describe conflicts with its liberal shibboleths. Voters are told crime is down, but they know shoplifting or vandalism goes unreported because police never act. They see the effects of unprecedented mass migration in rapid change to their high streets and NHS surgeries. With up to 1,000 small boat arrivals a week being dispersed, many more communities have a local hotel turned over to bored, undocumented, non-English-speaking young men.

    When voters learn that hotel accommodation will cost three times what was predicted, while pensioners’ winter fuel allowance is cut, or that Labour plans to scoop up swathes of rented housing for migrants on five-year contracts when their kids can’t find a home, of course they’re angry. The idea the government will deport those without good English is laughable when convicted foreign criminals are allowed to stay. They did not vote for this, they can’t even speak of it. (They risk being accused of “dog whistling” by Lucy Powell.)

    Like a national HR department, the government cares only about “compliance”. So people are turning to a party, as makeshift as a flat-pack bookshelf, simply because it doesn’t shut them down. It is not Reform voters who are stupid.

    There's a social media trend – I see it on Facebook – for showing posts from Trump supporters: from before the election, with "Hey, I'm for Trump and sticking it to those liberals", followed by the more recent "Hey, what's going on? My business has been ruined." The lesson? These are really really stupid people who deserve what they're getting. Ha, ha, ha! So, no lessons need to be learnt by us: we're the smart ones who were right all along.

    Yes, sure, Trump was never the answer. But sticking it to the liberals? Well….these were the liberals who were saying people could just change sex on demand, who were in thrall to trans ideology, who were overseeing the trashing of American higher education and just about every facet of American life with DEI and Black Lives Matter and diversity hiring and all the rest. But just as Labour aren't listening, so the Democrats and liberal America aren't listening. "Hey, we were right all along". But the people know better.

  • Bringing shame upon our country

    After that report from StandWithUs on antisemitism in UK universities, here's Baroness Deech in the Times:

    The insidious spread of anti-Jewish racism at our supposedly world-renowned universities has spiralled out of control since Hamas’s October 7 atrocities. That it has become normalised and a source of social capital for some students brings shame upon our country.

    The student testimonies in StandWithUs UK’s devastating new report offer a bleak insight into the experiences of Jewish students at the hands of their peers and even university staff, simply because of their faith of birth. The message they hear loud and clear — campuses should be a Jew-free space.

    Activists think they’re being clever by rebranding their efforts as “anti-Zionism” and not — honest, sir — antisemitism. We must be unequivocal: so-called anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Proponents of this regressive ideology must ask themselves why they deem it legitimate to advocate that the Jewish people – uniquely in the world – have no right to self-determination. It’s an open and shut case of racism.

    The videos of student activists failing to name the river and sea that they shout about endlessly in the genocidal “river to the sea” chant de rigueur may be a source of amusement, but it shows that much of this malady is also born of ignorance. The fact that the majority of Israel’s Jewish population is ethnically Mizrahi — which means that they are historically from the Middle East and North Africa — is conveniently forgotten. Following centuries of occupation of the land by competing colonial powers, Israel is, if anything, the world’s most successful story of decolonisation.

    Despite the many appalling events in the world, it is only Israel that gets students and academics out of bed. China commits genocide against the Uighurs while Chinese students freely continue their studies in the UK. Of course, it is right and proper that these Chinese students, who are not responsible for their country’s actions, are able to enjoy the freedom the UK offers.

    And that is the point. The UK’s beleaguered Jewish students are simply asking to be afforded the same freedom and protections available to all other students. They are left wondering why a zero-tolerance approach is not taken by their universities for all forms of racism, apart from antisemitism?

    The recommendations made within StandWithUs UK’s report offer an important blueprint for the government to end this dangerous “new normal”. An independent inquiry is a worthy suggestion, but the truth is that consequences must be enforced.

    Universities must acknowledge the link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, as codified in the internationally accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism, that many of them have adopted and paid lip service to ever since. Crucially, the government must urgently enforce a zero-tolerance stance by establishing a system of escalating financial sanctions for non-compliant institutions.

    Failure to do so not only threatens Jewish students but the integrity of universities as safe spaces for all.

  • Overturned ruling on girl banned for asking a man if he was a man

    The skittles are starting to fall after the Supreme Court ruling.

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    The FA’s case against her was thrown out after a damning ruling exposed a flawed and unfair process — one that left 17-year-old Cerys in tears.

    We’re proud to say: we made her victory possible.

    The Free Speech Union funded Cerys’s legal team, including a top-tier barrister, and supported her family through months of Kafkaesque disciplinary proceedings.

    It’s thanks to that support that she was able to fight back — and win.

    Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that “woman” means biological female under the Equality Act, the FA has now U-turned, scrapping its transgender inclusion policy: from June, males will be barred from the female game. That’s the right decision — but it comes too late for girls like Cerys, who were punished under speech codes that should never have existed.

    Female players in single-sex football leagues should never have been forced to compete against men, given how much stronger, faster and more physically aggressive male players are, on average. For a teenage girl to receive a six-game ban simply for asking whether an opposing player was a man was a grotesque injustice — and we’re proud to have helped her get the decision overturned.

    Telegraph report here.

    ‘I don’t think the opinions of a very, very small minority should be put over the opinions of thousands and thousands of women throughout the country. I think we should be prioritised’

  • Creative industries

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  • A sinister mob

    That'll be the Greens, according to Shahrar Ali in the Telegraph:

    After the resignation of Carla Denyer, the Green Party is facing a leadership contest for which the membership has had their opportunity for genuine debate about its policy platform and electoral priorities artificially restricted. No activist or spokesperson who dares to stand up for the rights and protections of women, girls and children – especially, in the context of a decade of trans rights overreach – will escape the wrath of the totalitarian mob within.

    I should know. In 2024, I won a landmark gender critical protected belief discrimination case against the Party, the first of its kind in politics, after I was unlawfully removed as front bench spokesperson for justice.

    That indeed is their problem. They've forgotten about saving the whale and got lost down the gender rabbit-hole. 

    On BBC’s Any Questions, parliamentarian Siân Berry – who prides herself with having a science background – described sex in humans as “not entirely binary”. On BBC Radio 4’s Today, Co-Leader Adrian Ramsay refused to answer Nick Robinson’s direct question, “Are Transwomen Women?” four times. The view that trans women are women has been the policy of the Greens since 2016. It offers up a Stonewall campaign slogan as a literal truth, and conflates sex and gender identity. For his refusal to pronounce this holy dogma, officers of the Young Greens rewarded him with calls for his resignation.

    The trio of car-crash interviews was completed by Carla Denyer who, following an appearance on BBC Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg, went viral for all the wrong reasons. She claimed that “non-trans lesbian women” would be prohibited by the ruling from allowing “trans lesbians”, i.e. men, into their spaces.

    There is no such thing as a male lesbian, and a space set up for same-sex attracted women is not for men. These rights for women are protected under the Equality Act.

    So who could be the new leader, after Carla Denyer's resignation? Well..

    Denyer’s Deputy, Zack Polanski, who reportedly once set himself up as a hypnotherapist for breast enlargement, has recently launched his campaign to be Leader. I would challenge him on how a party can remain credible for telling the truth on climate science but continue to tell lies about what constitutes a biological woman. The Party is so negligent about equality law, they’ve retained gender self-identification as a criterion for eligibility to satisfy quotas for the leadership contest.

    The Greens are clearly now, as Julie Bindel argued the other day, the bonkers party.

  • Uncomfortable truths

    Stella O'Malley draws a parallel between the grooming gangs scandal and the explosion of "gender dysphoria":

    It’s striking how two seemingly unrelated issues can sometimes reveal the same deep-rooted problems in society. On the one hand there are the UK grooming gang scandals – horrifying crimes, ignored for decades, involving networks of Pakistani Muslim men who targeted vulnerable teenage girls. On the other, there’s the sudden explosion of teenagers, particularly girls, identifying as trans – many of whom are suffering irreversible harm as a consequence of inappropriate medical transition. At first glance you may not think these two crises have much in common, but scratch the surface and a disturbing pattern emerges.

    In both cases, the adults in charge looked the other way. Institutions minimised. Social workers made the wrong calls. Mental health professionals rarely helped – and often caused harm. Journalists stayed silent. Officials deflected. Very few people in positions of authority had the courage to confront the shocking reality, and those who did were labelled as bigots.

    Meanwhile parents’ pleas were ignored and dismissed as either “Islamophobic” or “transphobic”…