Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Just stirring up grievances

    Camilla Long in today’s Sunday Times, on the Greens:

    I wasn’t going to write about the by-election — the Greens, “F*** your bins”, campaign videos in Urdu. But there was one question that was bothering me. It was: what does the Green Party stand for? If, for example, you look through their hundreds of laughing TikToks, podcasts, cool memes, leaflets and press releases, you’ll struggle to find a single solid thought.

    It’s not, I think, that they don’t have them. It’s just we seem to have reached a peculiar state in politics, in which we lap up any old abstract, syrupy “beliefs”.

    On the economy, for example: Hannah Spencer, the Green candidate who won on Thursday, hates “billionaires”. That’s her whole policy.

    On women, there’s a clip of her sounding tearful over “the power of hope”.

    As for green issues, good luck with those. Occasionally she’ll mumble something about bringing “water back into public hands”.

    But somehow, over the past 18 months, the Green Party stopped being the party of the environment — of serious, practical solutions. It became the party of something else; something darker. And this is what it is.

    It is now a party that thinks nothing of promoting an antisemitic world-view. It is a party that repeatedly accuses the Jews of genocide. It fields a candidate who condemns Israel’s actions as “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid”, while dispensing leaflets in Urdu with the claim “Labour must be punished for Gaza”.

    It’s a party whose leader, Zack Polanski, himself a Jew, says he will happily support the extremely antisemitic party motion that “Zionism is racism”. (This makes the Green Jews feel “unwelcome”.)

    It’s a party whose joint deputy leader, when he won a council seat, bellowed “Allahu akbar” and “We will raise the voice of Palestine”. He also appeared to celebrate October 7.

    It’s a party that will speak of its opponents in crushing, livid, angry, dehumanising terms, but fail to blame actual terrorists, such as the perpetrators of the Manchester Arena bombing. That attack, according to Spencer, was in fact caused by “extremist” people like her opponent, Matt Goodwin of Reform, “dividing people”. What sort of person says that?

    It is a party in which all other issues — the economy, women’s rights, energy, infrastructure, education — fade in comparison with one single, monstrous but strategically obfuscated obsession. Anti-capitalism and, by extension, Gaza. When people now ask what “Green” stands for, the joke goes: it is the green of the flag of Palestine. It seems strange that can happen in this country.

    The party is now a bizarre alliance of two types of people: misogynistic, intolerant men and rich, liberal cat-lady women. It is Jeremy Corbyn’s escaped mad fringe 2015-19. It seems incredible to me that a man like its deputy leader Mothin Ali, whose wife wears a full burqa, would share a platform with ultraprogressives who believe in legalising prostitution, heroin and trans self-ID. But what can you say? Maybe he just really hates carbon emissions.

    Well yes. As I noted yesterday, these things happen in by-elections. We have to hope this is one of those weird occasions when people just vote against the current politics to show how fed up they are.

    And yes, here’s the Greens deputy leader, with wife:

  • Reactions

  • He’s gone

  • Standing with our allies

    ….and that brutally repressed pro-democracy protests only months ago and murdered thousands of its own people.

    Under my leadership, the Conservative Party will always put our national security first and work with our allies to make the world a safer place.

    Nothing yet from Starmer. Of course.

    Added: ooh, here we are:

    Inspiring it is not.

  • Gender ideology is a closed shop

    The effectiveness of pharmaceutical “treatment” for the supposed misalignment of those two things. Instead only those clinicians who are totally on board with the idea of gendered souls and “trans children” are allowed to express an opinion. 2/

    Last time I looked, science was about scepticism. You’d have thought that the presence of a voice of dissent would be seen as a necessary and welcome break on the excesses of ideological commitment, but clearly not. Again, Gender ideology is a closed shop. Anyone who disagrees 3/

    Is pushed out or silenced. So that’s where we are. The vested interests in damaging children in the name of gender have won again. The only people allowed to input into the study are those with a vested interest in making it happen. What a win Cathy Newman and the MSM. //

    See also this overview from SEENinJournalism:

    It’s not a theoretical spat: a medic who understands that sex is real and important has been removed from a role overseeing research on children which intimately concerns biological sex, while others who take a strongly trans affirmative position (publicly so) remain in place.

  • Ideologically driven

    More details on Jacob George, the professor who’s been recused from the Pathways puberty blocker trial for “bias”. He praised JK Rowling! He was concerned that Olympic boxer Imane Khelif turned out to be a man!! Clearly not someone to be trusted. From the Times:

    The health official who forced the pause of the controversial puberty blockers trial has been withdrawn from any further involvement following accusations of bias.

    A bias in favour of science, against the trans zealots.

    In the posts, now deleted, he criticised the “well-meaning idiocy” of those in the NHS in denying what he called the “basic biological fact” that gender is set at birth. He praised JK Rowling as a “treasure of our time” when she welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling that the legal definition of a woman should be based on biological sex. And in another post, when test results confirmed the Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif was a woman, he said “the denial of basic biological fact is concerning”.

    Doesn’t anyone read these articles? Like an editor or something? Imane Khelif was revealed to be a man. Ffs. [Added: they’ve edited that line. It now reads “And in another post, when questions arose whether Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif was a woman, he said “the denial of basic biological fact is concerning”.]

    Since the whole rationale for the Pathways trial is based on ideology – that children have a “gender identity” and can be “born in the wrong body” – this looks very much like an ideologically driven defenestration.

  • Palestine Studies at Cambridge

    From the JC:

    An academic who praised the “heroism” of the October 7 attack is leading a high-profile drive to establish a Palestine Studies course at Cambridge.

    The campaign by Makram Khoury-Machool, founding director of the Cambridge Centre for Palestine Studies (CCPS), is backed by the university’s chancellor, Lord Smith of Finsbury, and former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, both of whom joined him for an event on Tuesday to argue the case for the course.

    Machool, who regularly writes for Al Mayadeen, a Hezbollah-aligned publication based in Beirut, has also previously appeared to blame the Manchester terror attack on British Jews’ support for Israel. 

    Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott said his involvement in the campaign was “utterly appalling”.

    The initiative, which is not officially endorsed by the university, is also supported by Baroness Warsi and Baroness Kennedy.

    What a surprise.

    Khoury-Machool has also faced criticism for social media posts on the day of the Hamas-led attack on October 7 2023.

    On X, he wrote: “Palestinian […] courage, relentless heroism and sacrifice in their road for liberation”.

    Just call it the AntiZionist Studies course. Make it clear.

  • The new Greens

    Janice Turner in the Times on the Gorton and Denton election – This sectarian campaign should alarm us all:

    At the last election I followed Adrian Ramsay, the Green candidate, on the stump in rural mid-Suffolk as he won a Tory seat by unifying opposition to pylons and polluting water companies. Remember when the Greens believed in consensus-building or talked about the environment?

    That party is dead. Like a parasite moving from one body to another, the entryists who took over Labour under Jeremy Corbyn now have full control of the Greens. They won in Gorton & Denton by fighting the most irresponsible, divisive and sectarian campaign ever conducted by a party with claims on the mainstream. As one Labour MP put it: “They’re just like Respect — it’s like fighting a by-election against George Galloway.”

    Except Respect was a one-gobshite band: the Greens are a national political brand with far broader potential. After last night there can’t be a Labour councillor or MP in a metropolitan seat who isn’t quaking — including most of the cabinet.

    However touching Hannah Spencer’s victory homily about the cost of living, that’s not why she won. She wouldn’t be an MP without endorsement by The Muslim Vote, an umbrella group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Mend (Muslim Engagement and Development), whose website notes it is “a powerful, united force of four million acting in unison”. In 2024 it helped to elect four Muslim “Gaza independents”, ousting three sitting Labour MPs. In Gorton & Denton it saw the candidate most likely to cede to its demands as Green.

    Spencer certainly leant into her role, issuing a campaign video in Urdu which showed Keir Starmer shaking hands with the Indian PM Narendra Modi (Hindu-lover!), with Binyamin Netanyahu (Zionist!) in the background. She said the Manchester Arena bombing was not caused by Islamist terrorism but “divisiveness”.

    Meanwhile, the Green leader Zack Polanski chatted on the hardline Islamist platform 5Pillars, which has hosted the former BNP leader Nick Griffin and has been accused of airing antisemitic conspiracy theories and describing homosexuality as “a crime against Allah”. Only after an outcry did Polanski, a gay man, pull his interview.

    Yes it was nasty. We knew it was going to be nasty. But can the two sides of the Green vote – the young left-wing types enamoured of the Greens’ strong pro-trans stand, and the Islamists who hate all that stuff – stick together? It’s surely unsustainable.

    And by-elections often throw up these strange results – with the press going into meltdown about the breakdown of our precious two-party system, and the imminent collapse of all we hold dear.

    We shall see.

  • Scientist understands biology shock

    Professor Jacob George was appointed by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as their Chief Medical and Scientific Officer last month. Now, in a stunning shock horror revelation, old media posts have been unearthed in which the wretched man has expressed gender critical views. Yes, he actually stated – reportedly stated, the actual posts have not been published as far as far as I’m aware – his belief in the immutability of biological sex.

    The MHRA are overseeing the Pathways puberty blocker trial. It seems the professor has now been recused from participation after these new revelations have been unearthed by diligent reporters. Clearly we can’t have a man who understands biological science having anything to do with such a delicate project.

  • Seeking transfer to a women’s prison

    Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx on the latest Canadian horror:

    A Montreal man who has spent the majority of his life in prison for repeatedly sexually assaulting women is seeking a transfer to a female prison. Manfred Sperling, 58, began to self-declare a transgender status while behind bars and now blames his predatory behavior on his “dead self.”

    What could possibly go wrong?

    There are precedents. Some history:

    Data from Corrections Canada reveals that there have been 129 requests from male convicts seeking transfers to women’s prisons during the period between 2017 and 2025. Of that total, 35 requests have been approved.

    During that period, Corrections Canada approved the transfer of a sadistic pedophile known as Adam Laboucan, or Tara Desousa, to a women’s prison. Like Sperling, Laboucan is designated as a dangerous offender and is serving an indeterminate sentence.

    In 1997, Laboucan was convicted of the violent rape of a 3-month-old infant. The infant was so brutally injured by the attack that he had to be flown to Vancouver, 410 miles away, to undergo reconstructive surgery.

    After committing the horrific assault, Laboucan “mutilated himself and ate his own flesh,” according to news reports.

    Laboucan began identifying as transgender while incarcerated and is currently being held in a women’s correctional facility with a mother and child unit where he has been said to be leering at the children. After a female inmate approached him and demanded that he desist in his threatening conduct, Laboucan assaulted her, fracturing several of her ribs.