Mick Hartley

As we expected. NHS review rejects puberty blockers for gender transition in children:

An entire field of medicine aimed at ­enabling children to change gender has been “built on shaky foundations”, the chairwoman of an NHS review has concluded.

Dr Hilary Cass found that there was no good evidence to support the global clinical practice of prescribing hormones to under-18s to halt puberty or transition to the opposite sex.

This method of medical intervention for young people who identify as transgender has become embedded in clinical guidelines around the world over the past two decades. Thousands of children have received puberty blockers on the NHS since 2011, and referrals to its youth gender identity service have increased 100-fold in little over a decade.

Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was commissioned by NHS ­England in 2020 to review services for children with gender dysphoria. Her final report has endorsed a ­fundamental shift in approach away from medical intervention towards a holistic model that addresses other mental health problems the children may have….

The report contains 32 recommendations for overhauling services. “For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress,” Cass said, adding that children must be seen “as a whole person and not just through the lens of their gender identity”.

She said it was vital that services take into account high rates of autism and mental health problems in children identifying as transgender.

Well done Hilary Cass! "Shaky foundations" is her polite way of saying: it was all ideologically-driven homophobic bollocks.

Has the war in Gaza just finished? Anshel Pfeffer at the JC:

Wars usually end with a formal act – a ceasefire being put into effect or one side surrendering and laying down its arms. But there are wars that you only realise ended long after the event. History may yet remember the early morning of 7 April, when the last forces of the IDF’s 98th Division crossed back into Israel, as the moment the war against Hamas in Gaza ended. Exactly six months after it began….

The full details of the tense phone call between Biden and Netanyahu last Thursday are still unknown. The White House readout of the call said simply that the president “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action.” But how did he make it clear?

What we know is that once the call was over, Netanyahu rushed to a cabinet meeting where he quickly passed two decisions – to open the Erez Crossing to supply convoys going into northern Gaza and to allow supplies to Gaza to arrive directly from Ashdod Port. These were two steps that Israel has resolutely refused to make since October 7, and all it took was a phone call from Biden to make them happen. Whatever the president said, it was the sternest warning Netanyahu has received in six months – one that motivated him to hold the cabinet vote before National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the meeting.

On Monday, Ben-Gvir’s warning that if the IDF doesn’t carry out a wide-scale operation in Rafah, Netanyahu “would not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister”, along with similar warnings passed on in a hastily convened meeting with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, forced Netanyahu to put out his statement on a date being set for the Rafah operation.

Netanyahu now has two sets of red lines, one put down by Biden and the other by Ben-Gvir. He will continue trying to walk between them for as long as he can. Meanwhile, he will pretend that the war is still happening and that the Rafah operation is just around the corner. Perhaps there will be a much smaller and largely symbolic operation in Rafah. Or perhaps we will eventually find out that this was the week that the war ended.

We shall see. Either way it's clear that Netanyahu's days are numbered.

Well who could have seen this coming?

Hate crime reports in Scotland are on course to outnumber all other offences put together, figures show, as front-line officers warned they “can’t cope” with the surge.

Around 8,000 hate crime reports have been made in the first week of the new Scottish legislation coming into force, which, if replicated through the year, would surpass the entire annual total of 416,000 crimes reported to police, according to an analysis of official data by The Telegraph….

David Threadgold, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents front-line officers, told the BBC: “Police Scotland have gone public and said that on every occasion, reports of hate crime will be investigated.

“That creates a situation where we simply cannot cope at the moment. Officers have been brought back in to do overtime shifts and the management of that is simply unsustainable.”…

Analysis by The Telegraph shows Police Scotland is already failing to solve an increasing number of shoplifting cases, sexual assaults and car thefts. Clear-up rates – referring to cases where there is enough evidence for criminal proceedings –for two-thirds of all offences have declined since 2011 including violent offences, fraud and rape.

It comes amid growing criticism of the Scottish Government’s crime policies, which have seen officer numbers fall to their lowest level in 15 years, the introduction of plans to shut 29 police stations and a policy of not investigating offences such as some minor thefts or criminal damage.

Even for @amnesty this is sick.
Daqqa abducted 19-year-old Moshe Tamam, castrated him, gouged his eyes out, mutilated the rest of his body and then shot him. https://t.co/Ft9Q9a1Z6H

— Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) April 8, 2024

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It gets worse. I hear that Israel executed this man merely for being an architect. https://t.co/bjRAtrFLlt pic.twitter.com/4qj5f7uV15

— Rachel Moiselle (@RachelMoiselle) April 9, 2024

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85 years ago.

#OnThisDay 1939: Labour Party newspaper, the Daily Herald, reporting on Nazi propaganda targeting Palestinian Arabs. “Arabs in the pay of German agents are collecting signatures all over the country for a petition asking Hitler to take Palestine under his protection” pic.twitter.com/oYho7m6uci

— James Vaughan (@EquusontheBuses) April 8, 2024

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Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph:

When Dr Hilary Cass was commissioned to report on standards of care within the NHS, it was as if finally an adult had stepped into the room. She and her team have looked at the evidence and practices that had recently evolved the affirmative model (designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity) and found much wanting. She also signalled the high levels of comorbidities with gender dysphoria. A high proportion of these girls who did not want to be girls were autistic. Many had troubled childhoods or had been in care. Many were gay. All of this resulted in the unravelling of Gids and a ban on puberty blockers.

In the full report, which is due to be published this week, Cass is not only concerned with medical intervention (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, surgery) but is also expected to come out against “social transition”. Though this is not something that happens within the health service it is, she says, an “active intervention because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of psychological functioning. There are different views on the benefits versus the harms of early social transition… it is not a neutral act and better information is needed about outcomes.”

Some believe that socially transitioning kids will lock them into a gender identity and medical pathway that is detrimental. Cass emphasises that gender expression is indeed fluid and changeable for adolescents and that many may take till their mid-20s to settle. In other words, leave these kids alone.

Indeed, faced with this huge increase in kids saying they are trans, many schools have acquiesced. Yet teachers are not clinicians, nor are they there to diagnose children. Do they understand what they are doing? The entire narrative around trans children has been imported from America but it is breaking apart.

Breaking apart here, maybe. In America, I think, not so much. And we still don't know how the next Labour government will deal with this. Starmer is already under huge pressure from the left – notably at the moment over Gaza. Can he afford to battle them on gender stuff as well? It's clear enough that he doesn't have any firm personal beliefs here: he'll just do what he thinks will make life easier. All the more reason then to establish firm principles on protecting children from the gender cult before Labour comes to power.

Now is the time to step back and ask ourselves how we got here. The trans child is a manifestation of a recent story that the culture has told itself. This is a story of social contagion combined with the genuine distress of mostly young girls.

Children cannot be blamed for acting out but the adults who have encouraged this, while patting themselves on the back for their progressive views, still need to be challenged. Cass is but the start. 

The Telegraph previews the Cass review, due to be released on Wednesday – Children must not be rushed to change gender, report warns:

Children who believe they are transgender may actually have mental health issues, a landmark report is set to find this week.

It is expected to advise that children should not be rushed onto a path to change gender, and that they receive counselling that addresses the mental health issues they may have rather than being put on drugs.

Dr Hillary Cass, a paediatrician, will on Wednesday unveil her long-awaited review into how transgender children are supported and the medical treatment they receive.

It comes amid concern that children are being allowed to change gender in school without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and after the routine prescription of puberty blockers was banned by NHS England.

The Telegraph understands that the report will find that children who think they are trans disproportionately have mental health issues stemming from a difficult family situation or having suffered from abuse. They are also more likely to be neurodiverse.

We know all this, of course, but it's good to see it laid out clearly in an official review.

It is expected to suggest that these children need counselling to tackle these issues holistically, rather than them automatically being put on a path to change gender.

The report is expected to warn that it is wrong to assume it is in the best interest of children who think they are trans to change gender, and urge extreme caution over the use of drugs such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to facilitate this, even once someone is over 18 years old.

"Children who think they are trans", not "trans children": that's important. No children are trans – "born in the wrong body" – but plenty of vulnerable children have been persuaded to believe it, through social media and the pernicious influence of groups like Mermaids and Stonewall. Let's hope this marks a turning point.

As we heard last week, a new study in the Netherlands found that most gender-confused kids just grow out of it. It's no surprise, of course, though the silence from trans advocates – keen to seize the kids at their most vulnerable and mutilate them – has been noticeable. Jo Bartosch at Spiked:

The Dutch study demands more attention than this. Although the findings simply confirm what anyone with a brain already knew, they are nonetheless significant. As Oxford sociology professor Michael Biggs tells me:

‘It provides additional evidence for what we already know. First, a significant minority of children – 11 per cent – sometimes wish they were the opposite sex. Second, that children who wish to be the opposite sex are more likely to end up as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Third, most kids who wish to be the opposite sex eventually grow into adults who don’t have any desire to change sex.’

These facts have been in the public domain for a long time now. Whistleblowing clinicians, academics and detransitioners have been warning for the best part of a decade about the dangers of blindly affirming children in their faddish identities. Figures from the now-closed gender-identity development services (GIDS) at the Tavistock clinic in London show that the kids most at risk of being put on a medical pathway towards ‘transition’ are overwhelmingly same-sex attracted. If left to figure things out, these kids would likely grow up to simply be gay, lesbian or bisexual, rather than transgender.

The children fed into the gender-medicine machine are among the most vulnerable. A hugely disproportionate number are also autistic and many come from care backgrounds. These kids are more likely than most to struggle with coming to terms with their identities through adolescence. They need compassion and support. Instead, they have been used as pawns….

Adults who should know better have abdicated their responsibility to the most vulnerable in society. They have allowed themselves to be taken in by a trendy ideology. And they have hidden their ignorance behind glitter, rainbows and catchy slogans. A simple ‘sorry’ won’t give the children experimented upon their fertility, health or self-esteem back. But it would be a start.

Published by Bluecoat Press, a new book from photographer Janine Wiedel looks at West Midlands industry in the late 1970s:

An internationally acclaimed documentary photographer, Janine Wiedel spent five years in the late 1970s embedded with industrial communities in the West Midlands. Her compelling images poetically capture the harsh realities faced by workers as their livelihoods and heritage were threatened.

[Photos © Bluecoat Press/Janine Weidel]

From Daniel Bel-David at the JC:

Only 1 in 4 British Muslims believe that Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on October 7, according to the largest survey conducted of British Muslims since the Israel-Hamas war began.

The survey, commissioned by the Henry Jackson Society, a counter-extremism think-tank, found that just under half of British Muslims, 46 per cent, said they sympathise with Hamas….

Asked whether Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on October 7, only 24 per cent of British Muslims said they had, compared to 62 per cent of the wider public.

The report found that younger and well-educated Muslims were the most likely to think Hamas carried out no atrocities on October 7, with 47 per cent of 18–24-year-olds and 40 per cent of the university-educated.

The survey also found that over half of British Muslims, 52 per cent, want to make it illegal to show a picture of the Prophet Mohammed, and about a third, 32 per cent, wish to see Shariah law implemented in the UK.

We have a problem.