When every cause becomes an excuse to target Jews, the far right, Islamists, the far left end up marching in the same direction.
Mick Hartley
Politics and Culture
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“We are facing a well funded regressive right wing movement and they really have placed trans people at the center of that effort… threats towards trans people are threats towards all women.”
But trans women are not women.
Why Trump won. And why the Dems need a clean-out. Urgently.
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A comprehensive take-down by Julie Bindel in the Mail on Sunday – Why Bridget Phillipson is the worst Education Secretary in memory:
A child’s first day at school is challenging enough. But now parents must worry that their four-year-old may come home in the afternoon professing to be a different gender.
This might sound far-fetched, but under new guidelines announced by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, teachers will be allowed to affirm the gender choice of any child….
So when I read the Government’s new trans guidance for primary schools, released on Friday as a draft and now open to consultation, I sensed the hand of gender activists, whose chief concern is not for child welfare but for political ideology.
But let’s not be surprised by Phillipson’s relaxed attitude to safety in the classroom, given her department’s recent directive to headteachers, as revealed in today’s Mail on Sunday, not to expel children caught carrying knives.
It is, apparently, better for them to be kept in school, while the wellbeing of their classmates and teachers takes a back seat.
Following her absurd Marxist attacks on the successful academy system, her VAT raid on private schools and her wilful ignorance of free speech issues on university campuses, her latest interventions prove she is not only the worst, but the most dangerous Education Secretary in living memory.…
Bridget Is ruining children’s lives out of an ideological blindness and a desire to look and feel like she is a good person.
And teachers won’t speak out about it because it is the Labour Party. They won’t break ranks.
On top of all that, there’s Phillipson’s role as Minister for Women and Equalities, where she’s been sitting on the EHRC single-sex ruling for months now, in the hope that it’ll go away.
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After ignoring the slaughter of the innocents in Iran, BBC reporter Lyse Doucet reported from Tehran on the public holiday last week, “where it feels like a family festival”. How lovely.
Now – the lead item on the BBC website – she’s interviewing the Iranian deputy Foreign Minister:
Iran is ready to consider compromises to reach a nuclear deal with the US if the Americans are willing to discuss lifting sanctions, an Iranian minister has told the BBC.
US officials have repeatedly emphasised that Iran, not the US, is holding up progress in this protracted negotiating process.
On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump preferred a deal but it was “very hard to do” one with Iran.
But in an interview with the BBC in Tehran, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said the ball was “in America’s court to prove that they want to do a deal”, adding: “If they are sincere, I’m sure we will be on the road to an agreement.”
This is a rogue regime. It’s busy slaughtering a whole generation of young Iranians. But for the BBC It’s just another country where leaders can be interviewed with the full solemnity and deference appropriate to a foreign dignitary. For them there’s only one rogue regime in the Middle East – and it’s not Iran.
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Are we surprised?
This definition — now rebranded as “anti-Muslim hostility” — will have a chilling effect on free speech. It will silence legitimate criticism of Islam and its practices, and deter open discussion of serious public concerns, including the grooming gangs scandal and Islamist extremism.
So who is behind Britain’s new Muslim blasphemy law? FSU Director of Policy and Research @DavidRoseUK has published a new briefing exposing the Working Group’s members and their links to Islamists.
Full report here.
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Seth Mandel at Commentary on Palestine’s new Constitution:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s constitution-writing committee has produced a draft of what would theoretically be the basic-law document of the State of Palestine. The document is a major blow to anyone’s hopes of a two-state solution, dwindling as those hopes already were. The “Palestine” “Constitution,” as currently envisioned, seems to be Abbas’s way of burning everything down behind him.
In Princeton Professor Zaid Al-Ali’s English translation of the document, there is no mention of Jews or Israel. Reporting confirms the same is true of the Arabic original.
It’s not that other religions are excluded—there are specific mentions of the rights of Christians, for example. But the State of Palestine declares itself judenrein.
At least Hamas mention Jews in their charter: they must be eliminated. No such problem here.
The original Hamas charter, it’s worth noting, was straightforward in its “struggle against the Jews.” The Palestinian Authority’s own proposed constitution doesn’t mention Jews at all. This is the problem when dealing with each of the Palestinian national movement’s leaders in its century-old existence: Jews are either excluded entirely or they are mentioned only as the object of a genocidal raison d’etre. To these Palestinian nationalists, Jews either don’t exist or else they must be made to not exist.
Western leaders like Macron and Starmer persist in their illusion that the Palestinians want a two state solution, with the implication that the Israelis are the stumbling block. As the Palestinians make clear again and again, all they’re willing to consider is a one-state solution, with no Jews. Isn’t it about time the message got through?
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Janice Turner, in the Times, interviews Sandie Peggie:
When Upton, then 27, joined the hospital in August 2023, just a year after transition, he sought and received permission to use female changing rooms. The nurses, however, were told nothing. “He just kind of popped up,” Peggie says. “It was a bit of a talking point. Everybody had something to say. I think it was probably the older crowd who were more shocked. The younger ones were more scared to speak out. But there was a big proportion of us — male and female nurses — who agreed he shouldn’t be there.” An Asian nurse stopped using the locker rooms; another woman started changing in a nearby cupboard.
Peggie assumed the issue would be resolved, that Upton would be found a gender-neutral changing space. (In fact, Upton had dismissed this option as “othering”.) After their Christmas encounter she finished her shift, and went home to celebrate with her family. Then on December 29 her charge nurse called to say there was a serious complaint of bullying against her. “I was a bit confounded,” she says. “It was just a discussion, me letting him know that I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t think it was serious.” Davidson called to say she was handling the complaint, but promising support.
Then in early January, Davidson called again, summoning Peggie to the hospital where she was abruptly suspended. “They said my emails would stop, they took my badge and I had to stay away from my workplace. And at the time, I was just thinking, ‘I have to bring my mother-in-law here tomorrow for tests.’ ” She left the hospital in tears.
It transpired that on Christmas Day Upton had complained to his boss, Dr Kate Searle, who — breaking all complaints protocols — quickly emailed fellow consultants labelling Peggie’s words a “hate incident”. Upton revealed that on the two occasions Peggie left rather than change in front of him, he had logged this on his phone. Now he made graver claims, that twice when working with Peggie in A&E she had endangered patients. First, she’d walked out of a resuscitation; second, a patient who was triaged had left without being treated. Although Peggie says Upton had not noted or mentioned these incidents at the time….
As an internal disciplinary hearing was launched, she contacted her Royal College of Nurses rep. When he was reluctant to act, she was put in touch with the campaign group Sex Matters, who recommended Gribbon, a veteran trade union lawyer. “Any experienced union rep should have recognised that Sandie was the real victim here,” she says. “This was an unwritten policy. There were no public sector equality duty obligations, no impact assessment or risk assessment; there was no consultation with the trade union or the women. In any other matter, a union would have been up in arms about that. Instead, they did absolutely nothing.”
It’s the same old story: useless unions in thrall to gender ideology; hospital officials siding with the man against the women; so many people involved just going with the tide. Plus…well, this is Scotland. Still in thrall to the gender cult.
“Before this happened to me,” Sandie Peggie says, “I’d never heard of terms like ‘gender critical’. I was just a nurse doing my job. I can’t believe I’ve had to go through all this just because I didn’t want to undress in front of a man.”
Mick Hartley 