Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • May be hurtful

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  • “This is the cause of my life”

    Egyptian author and former MP Youssef Al-Qa'id:

    July 31 show on Ten TV (Egypt):

    "In my view, any dealings with Israelis constitute treason. Once I entered the Groppi café at noon – only because of the air conditioning – and I sat down. Then someone came in after me and sat down, He took out his passport, and I saw that it was an Israeli passport, so I got up and left the place, because I believe that breathing the same air as he does is a crime or treason against myself and the cause of my life.

    "This is the cause of my life, and I disdain any cultural or ideological heritage coming from the [Israeli] entity. I do not read their newspaper that are published in Hebrew, and I do not want to read them, because at some point I thought reading them would constitute normalization.

    "They are the enemies of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and we should raise our children on this. I believe that the Israeli enemy comes before any other enemy and confronting it should be the primary mission of this generation our generation. This will only be completed with the annihilation of the state of Israel."

    Well, that's clear enough.

  • A clique of sanctimonious zealots

    A cautionary tale from Jo Bartosch on the horrors of a workplace staffed by "the petty, the prescriptive, and the pious":

    On the morning of Monday, 29th July, lawyers were preparing to question witnesses for Cambridge County Council (CCC) about the harm caused by the misgendering of a dachshund during a workplace meeting. The dog owner, a social worker, claimed he had been shaken by the incident — left crying, and struggling to sleep. This and other disagreements during staff LGBTQ+ sessions led to social worker Liz Pitt being investigated for transphobia.

    The subsequent hearing was set to determine whether CCC had discriminated against Pitt, who describes herself as “a lesbian who believes that sex is real,” over her expression of gender-critical beliefs. However, just thirty minutes before the employment tribunal was due to commence, the council backed out.

    CCC admitted liability, agreeing to pay compensation to Pitt and promising to roll out new training on freedom of belief in the workplace. This case is the latest addition to the growing list of employers who have discriminated against employees for not toeing the trans activist line.

    The details are as comic as they are cautionary. Documents prepared for the hearing reveal the dangers of allowing a clique of sanctimonious zealots to set policy for an entire organisation.

    Following an acrimonious exchange during a workplace LGBTQ+ network meeting, Pitt was investigated by human resources. She was told that she had “demonstrated behaviours which were non-inclusive and perceived as transphobic” and was suspended from the network.

    Accusations were quickly collected from attendees at the meeting. These included that Pitt and a more junior colleague she managed (who has since left CCC) had shared hateful views, including “that all pregnant people are women.” Pitt was also criticised for arguing “that using the pronoun ‘they’ to refer to one person was silly as it wasn’t grammatically correct.”

    This latter point particularly upset the communications and marketing officer, who wrote in an email following the meeting:

    I shut down and sat there silently, unable to respond to any of the rhetoric. I was shaking in disbelief, waiting for the meeting to finish – traumatised….

    Eventually, the complaints reached the council CEO, Stephen Moir. He told the entire organisation in a recorded address that trans members of staff had been subjected to abuse, discrimination, and harassment. He added he would not tolerate such behaviour and that within CCC there was “no LGB without the T.”

    It was a few months later, in November 2023, that Pitt launched the legal action.

    The threat of a tribunal appeared not to deter CCC management. The service director for human resources wrote in her witness statement for the court that Pitt and her colleague who had spoken during the meeting had “been oppressive in their assertions that biological sex was scientifically fixed and there were two genders and therefore talk of other views was not credible.” She also complained that Pitt was not prepared to prioritise the “lived experience” of her colleagues and that she instead “focused on reciting facts and scientific data, including statistics about gender minorities.”

    God forbid the poor sensitive social workers, already traumatised by dog misgendering and other such transphobic horrors, should have to listen to facts and scientific data.

    Workplace identity groups were established as spaces where people could share their experiences of belonging to a minority group. Perhaps once they served a useful function. But since the passing of equalities legislation, it has become unlawful to pay someone less or treat them less favourably because of the colour of their skin, disability, or who they fancy.

    As such, today, groups like CCC’s LGBTQ+ network pull in the petty, the prescriptive, and the pious. Employees are no longer drawn together because of shared characteristics but by shared beliefs about identity politics.

    When employers cede responsibility for policy to those deemed to be marginalised purely because of their protected characteristics, whole organisations are left vulnerable to the whims of fanatics. Divisive ideas about gender identity or race are then written into policy and performed in practice. Fighting this bigotry and breaking through suffocating groupthink has been left to brave individuals like Liz Pitt….

    Deferring to workplace identity groups is a reckless dereliction of duty by our institutions which must not continue. It’s time for us all to point out the dachshund’s bollocks and bite back.

  • Charcoal pouches

    The fetishistic reverence for portraits of the Kims, supposed to have pride of place in every home, provides a regular source of amusement for North Korea watchers as an expression of Kim idolatry and its insane excesses. Here's the latest, from the Daily NK:

    Following heavy rains that caused flood damage across North Korea, residents of Pyoktong county, in North Pyongan province, are frustrated with party and youth organizations for prioritizing portraits of former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il over relief for flood victims.

    Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in the province told Daily NK on Tuesday that the county’s party committee and the local chapter of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League quickly set up teams to check whether the portraits of the former leaders at various organizations and homes were being properly cared for after the flooding.

    In North Korea, great importance is placed on taking care of portraits and statues of the Kim family and monuments to their on-the-spot guidance.

    Community-level organizations are acting on orders from the county’s party committee and youth league to check for leaks at revolutionary historical sites and study centers and to make sure that portraits of the former leaders at various organizations, schools and homes were not damaged by moisture or flooding.

    “Officials from local party committees in Yonpung and Songi villages in Pyoktong county and low-level officials from farm chapters of the youth league have been making the rounds of homes to check on the condition of the portraits there. Most of the families are being told to replace their charcoal pouches,” the source said.

    Charcoal is known to be highly effective at removing moisture and smell from the air. In North Korea, pouches holding this natural moisture remover are placed behind Kim family portraits. Families are supposed to take care of the charcoal pouches and dry out or replace the charcoal when it gets too wet.

    “Middle and high schools in Pyoktong county are also inspecting and replacing charcoal pouches attached to the portraits there. The whole county is a disaster zone after the flood, but the priority is on caring for the portraits in accordance with the orders received,” the source said.

    “The authorities have stressed the importance of checking on the charcoal pouches, which they say are an indicator of how well people are caring for the portraits. Local chapters of the youth league even held a meeting about replacing charcoal pouches and youth league members are currently being mobilized to make new pouches.”

  • The XX protest

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  • Blaming the Zionists

    A letter to the Times this morning, from a (considerable) number of lords and baronesses:

    Sir, In their letter to The Times (Aug 7) Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Sayed Razawi, Chief Imam of the Scottish Ahlul Bayt Society, and other faith leaders point out that an appropriate response to the outbreak of hatred, violence and vandalism is to work on building “a cohesive and harmonious society for all”. The Islamic Human Rights Commission has adopted a different approach. Its letter dated August 6 to the home secretary and police chiefs asserts (with, of course, no factual foundation) that “far-right elements” have been “enabled by their Zionist financiers abroad”. Such primitive, dangerous and disgraceful antisemitism needs to be called out and condemned.

    Blaming the Zionists, otherwise known as the Jews, is (unsurprisingly) quite the thing now:

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  • “Simply not acceptable”

    Doctors are not happy with the BMA. Good news from the Times:

    The British Medical Association is being criticised by doctors and NHS leaders for its “unethical” demand for children to be given puberty blockers.

    The doctors’ union announced last week that it would oppose the implementation of recommendations in a report by Dr Hilary Cass, which called for an overhaul of services for children wanting to change gender. At a meeting that critics described as secretive, the BMA’s governing council passed a motion calling for a “critique” of the Cass review and arguing it is discriminatory to stop prescribing sex hormones to children.

    But the decision angered medical leaders and doctors, including many of the union’s 195,000 members. They have organised an open letter saying that the BMA’s “unacceptable” stance “does not reflect the views of the wider membership”.

    The letter, addressed to Professor Philip Banfield, chairman of the BMA, says: “We write as doctors to say, ‘not in my name’. We are extremely disappointed that the BMA council has passed a motion to conduct a ‘critique’ of the Cass review and to lobby to oppose its recommendations.

    “The passing of the motion was opaque and secretive. It does not reflect the views of the wider membership, whose opinion you did not seek. We understand that no information will be released on the voting figures and how council members voted. That is a failure of accountability to members and simply not acceptable.”

    The letter goes on to say that implementing the Cass review is essential to ensuring children get appropriate care, and it “is the most comprehensive review into healthcare for children with gender related distress ever conducted”.

    It urges the BMA to “abandon its pointless exercise” of critiquing the Cass review, adding: “By lobbying against the best evidence we have, the BMA is going against the principles of evidence-based medicine and against ethical practice.”

    Well said. The BMA has disgraced itself, allowing trans ideology to overrule clinical evidence. First do no harm.

  • Taking the hormones

    A "first person" story from the Times – My teen son got hormone pills online with his pocket money:

    Harry told us his authentic self was a woman during the second wave of lockdowns. That was the period from November 2020 to the following spring. He was 15. Teachers were doing their best to provide work but he spent a lot of time online. He watched a YouTube channel, Philosophy Tube, which involved a man in his late twenties talking about philosophy. One day, the presenter transformed himself into a woman and appeared on the video with make-up, long hair and wearing a dress.

    About a week after Harry watched it he told us he was transgender. In the video the presenter had said that as a woman all the stress had been lifted off her shoulders. My son said to us: “I feel the same way. I’ve realised my stress is because I’ve been pretending to be this person I’m not. I’ve been living this inauthentic life.”

    “I’m really a woman,” he said.

    I was quite calm about it. “How could you possibly know what feeling like a woman is?” I said, to which he had no answer but took offence at the question. From then on there was quite a lot of tension at home.

    At his single-sex state school in London, he told his friends his new feminine name. He joined the LGBTQ+ club, run by a teaching assistant who had helped her own son transition. Later, when we were called into a meeting with the school — over his absences and because he said he was unhappy that we weren’t calling him by his new name — the teaching assistant was wheeled in to give her perspective. She said it was a good thing our son was coming to terms with this new reality.

    Harry applied to a mixed sixth form college using his new name and gender. The school took him in as a girl from the outset. He started wearing make-up, very short skirts and short dresses. I did say: “I think that’s really inappropriate clothing for school.” To his credit he didn’t wear one particular short skirt again. But I was quite tortured by all of it. I found it difficult to say anything without crying or arguing so I gradually started to not say anything at all.

    We tried family therapy. I found someone who didn’t have strong views on trans issues and I said it was not that particular issue we wanted to talk about. It was the conflict. We wanted to be able to live together having different views. My son was adamant, he said there are no compromises: “I will cut off ties with you at some point.”

    He’s polite when he argues. He doesn’t shout, he just comes back with a word salad: Authentic self. People assigned sex at birth. Gender is in your mind.

    I believe that being a part of the club at school gave him a sense of belonging. He was excited to find out he was special and would command respect in this group, that he had an explanation for why he felt uncomfortable. He had always been small, thin and never at all sporty. He never wanted to admit to himself that he cared [what others thought] and yet this sideways move to become someone of note on the school scene must have felt special.

    He did go to the GP. From age 17 you can go without telling your parents. And he was added to the adult gender clinic waiting list. But the list is five years long, he said. The doctor declined to prescribe hormones on the basis that he didn’t have enough expertise, which is right.

    Aged 18, Harry took what he felt was the next logical step. He went online, without any medical supervision or prescription, and ordered his own hormones. They came from India or China. We realised what the package was straight away and we didn’t let him have it. We said this was borderline illegal — yet the law seems to be quite grey in this area, possibly because it was not a British company. He accused us of stealing. As he had bought it with money earned on his Saturday job he reported us to the police for theft.

    Young people are able to buy these hormones online with their pocket money, essentially. They’re not too expensive either. There has to be a way to stop it. My daughter, currently at university, knows several people who buy these drugs in bulk online and hand them out as a charitable act.

    My son is definitely taking the hormones. I can see the effect on his body because he has got larger breasts. He still lives here. He comes down for meals but we don’t talk very much. We don’t use his new name and we avoid pronouns in his presence as we know that will kick off arguments.

    I don’t think he has any regrets. He has said to me he feels a social responsibility to be a pioneer, even if it doesn’t bring him happiness, that he needs to sacrifice himself for the good of other people. He’s always been quite a social justice warrior, even if he doesn’t do the recycling.

    Our family life has been completely destroyed. I find the situation so depressing. I can’t talk him out of it. I’ve tried. It only seems to make the situation worse.

  • Based on Sharia Law

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  • The political dispute between the IOC and the IBA

    This is a very useful overview of the situation, from Alan Abrahamson:

    Part of this has to do with the political dispute between the IOC and the IBA, which ultimately saw the IOC banish the IBA in June 2023. Ordinarily, the IBA would have been in charge of boxing at the Olympics. But because of the politics, the IOC ran boxing in Tokyo in 2021 and is doing so again at the Paris Games.

    The root of the political dispute is the IOC’s relationship – or lack of one – with Russia, personified by IBA president Umar Kremlev, who is not only Russian but has ties with top Russian leadership….

    Meanwhile, because of Kremlev’s Kremlin relationships, some significant number of media outlets are highly disinclined to believe anything the IBA says. Because almost no journalists in the Western media have spoken to Kremlev personally, fewer still have reason to trust a word he says. This why-trust-the-IBA is a position the IOC has explicitly sought to encourage – indeed, not disputing that the IBA told it in June 2023 about the XY tests but saying, essentially, without offering evidence on the point itself about the tests, that nothing the IBA says is credible.

    This is why getting to the facts in this matter is so essential.

    And, too, why it’s hugely frustrating for not only so many of the ladies and gentlemen of the press – as well as keen readers and viewers – who want to see the tests, but cannot, because of privacy reasons.

    Which IBA officials made clear at Monday’s news conference.

    Indeed, Chris Roberts, the federation’s chief executive, said the IBA had gotten be-careful letters over the past 24 hours from the national Olympic committees of Algeria and Chinese Taipei.

    With all of that as backdrop, facts, and in this context it is helpful in assessing the documents to turn to a saying that any first-year law student knows: res ipsa loquitur.

    This means: the thing speaks for itself.

    Put another way, whatever the noise, the test results say what they say.

    And the test results say: both Khelif and Lin are men.