Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Changing gender

    Bridget Phillipson again. She really believes in the gender fairies.

    Pupils will be allowed to change their gender at school and use different pronouns, including in some “rare” instances those as young as four.

    New guidance issued by Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, will allow children to use pronouns of the opposite sex but only after schools have consulted with parents. It says clinical advice should be taken into account.

    Primary schools are told to exercise particular caution because allowing children to change their gender can put them on an “irrevocable pathway” and have significant, lasting effects. “We would expect support for full social transition [including changing names, pronouns and uniform] to be agreed very rarely,” the new rules say.

    She’s trying to sound responsible about it – and yes, at least the role of parents is emphasised – but she still believes girls can become boys and boys can become girls if they just wish hard enough.

    Maya Forstater, chief executive of the campaign group Sex Matters, said it was a “dangerous fairytale” to let children be treated as the opposite gender at all.

    “Schools are still being left with the idea that they can facilitate ‘social transition’ — which remains undefined — and that they should negotiate this on a case-by-case basis,” Forstater said. “It should be clear by now that allowing children and parents to think that a child who starts their education as a girl can graduate as a boy, or vice versa, is a dangerous fairytale.”…

    Meanwhile, Phillipson is still delaying guidance on single-sex spaces for businesses and public services. The Equality and Human Rights Commission submitted its guidance to ministers almost five months ago but it has yet to be laid before parliament.

  • At the EU Parliament

  • Brownshirt Bristol

    Not just Brighton.

    Fun fact: Israel’s population is 20% Arab. There are no Jews in Gaza. The proportion of Jews across the Arab Middle East is, to the nearest percentage point, zero. They were all thrown out.

  • Ayatollah BBC

    “It’s a public holiday today, and in Tehran it feels like a family festival…” intones this reporter.   No wonder Iranian dissidents call it Ayatollah BBC.

    A day of disgrace.

  • Given vouchers

    From the Telegraph:

    Children are being paid to take part in an NHS puberty blocker trial, The Telegraph can reveal.

    Some 226 children who believe they are transgender will be given puberty blockers as part of an investigation commissioned by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, into their effects on the young.

    The drugs, which stop the body’s natural development, were indefinitely banned by the Health Secretary after the Commission on Human Medicines said they posed “an unacceptable safety risk” to children.

    But they still decided on this trail. It’s only kids. Probably gay kids. No big deal.

    Participants will receive £30 vouchers for each of the 15 cognitive assessments they complete, as well as £15 vouchers for each of the three MRI scans they undertake, over the two years of the trial.

    Children in another arm of the trial, not taking the drugs, will be given £15 vouchers for each bone density scan and blood test they have.

    It is understood the children will be given Love2Shop vouchers which can be redeemed at retailers including Currys and John Lewis, as well as Uber Eats and Xbox, among others.

  • A Zionist-free Brighton

    If you are a member of Unison and antiZionist Jew hate appalls you, write and tell your union.

    And they’ll ignore you, like they ignore women. Unison leader Andrea Egan speaks at Free Palestine marches.

    A reminder:

  • And the Greens

  • A warning from Europe

    Marc Weitzmann writes at Tablet Magazine on the fall of Europe, where antisemitism is once again becoming the new norm, driven by an increasingly militant Muslim influx. By focusing on three countries – France, Belgium, and the UK – he hopes to provide a warning to the US not to follow the same sorry route. Zohran Mamdani has, after all, just been elected as New York’s first Muslim mayor, in a city celebrated as a symbol of Jewish success. This marked, according to the Qatari state daily Al Sharq, “a major shift against the Zionist narrative” in “the capital of the Zionist lobby”. So yes, there is cause for concern.

    In the UK Weitzmann focuses in particular on Birmingham and the Maccabi Tel Aviv debacle, but also on the grooming gangs. It’s a grim read – as it should be. What comes across, I think, is the mindless complicity in all this of what might be called the soft left – the BBC, the Guardian, the Labour party. There’s still that same refusal to take the grooming gangs seriously. There’s still the feeling that it’s all some kind of racist dog-whistle; that it’s all a far-right talking point. The Labour government’s response is to propose a new definition of Islamophobia.

    But read it all. It’s a powerful and well-researched piece.

    In July 2024, newly elected Birmingham MP Iqbal Mohamed said during his victory speech: “We must take over the whole of Birmingham. The whole of West Midlands. The whole of the U.K. We will not be taken for granted, and we will win.”

  • The state of the UN

    Just days after UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Franceca Albanese said that humanity has a “common enemy” in Israel.

    I think we’re getting the picture here.

    Added:

  • Not a female

    From the BBC report on the Canadian shootings:

    At a news conference, RCMP North District Commander Chief Supt Ken Floyd confirmed the suspect was the same person police described in an earlier alert sent to local residents.

    That alert described a “female in a dress with brown hair” – but the person’s name or gender are yet to be publicly released.

    A strange locution. By now everyone who’s looked into the case is clear that the killer was a man dressed as a woman. Not a female. But they won’t say that. The word “trans” will not be mentioned.

    Added, from Reduxx:

    The identity of the Tumbler Ridge shooter can now be confirmed as Jesse “Jess” Strang.

    Strang is a biological male who started to “identify” as a “girl” around 2023.