Just switched on TV to see Boris and Joe with their wives at Carbis Bay, and to be honest very good media coverage until Boris and Joe sat down in front of their flags
The media, led by Laura Kuenssberg, went completely out of control, hysterically shouting questions and were an utter embarrassment, so much so Boris shaking his head turned to Joe with a look of utter dismay
We deserve better, much better, from our media
I hate this importation of the American media way of just screaming questions at people.
England bowler Ollie Robinson will miss Sussex's first two T20 Blast games as he takes a "short break" from cricket.
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
Does anyone know what he actually said in these tweets when he was a teenager?
You can look them up, they are widely available. From recollection there is one what I would say really bad one, many of the others highlighted are more stupid jokey ones like women can't play video games.
OK, seen them, the worst one not nice, but I think he said sorry and seemed to mean it? Is apology and rehabilitation not a thing anymore? If this is a disciplinary matter, which it is fair it should be, there should be an adjudication in short order and punishment of some sort that reflects gravity but also mitigates against the fact he was 18 perhaps? To leave it unresolved will be terrible mentally for him and his family.
The ECB have totally thrown him under the bus. Before the first test, he did media saying well when I was 18/19, I was a total bellend, I was sacked, it was the kick up the arse I needed and I have rebuilt my career. Then these tweets were highlighted, the ECB made him go out and do a hostage style video to apologise.
One would have thought that would be the end of it.
Instead, the ECB then said, no, not enough, suspended while we investigate. I mean, surely they could have a) asked him and b) doesn't take more than a few days to check out his past social media and c) rung round some county people and said, is he still a bellend, have you ever heard him make racist comments.
They could have resolved all this by the end of the first test. Drawn a line under it, with perhaps an interview with a friendly journalist where he again tells his story and apologises.
And then we move on.
I, like many others, have known plenty of people who were bell ends aged 18 who turned out to be great 21year olds. Great shame.
Supply of Pfizer jabs 'will be particularly tight over the next few weeks', Scotland's health minister @HumzaYousaf has revealed in a letter to Matt Hancock.
"Mild" has been misused, but I have known people with genuinely very mild cases.
Oh, certainly. Most cases, in fact, even in the older groups. But a few percent of a very large number is still a lot of people. And that's the point - it may well drive the government to lock down everyone (including the young that @Philip_Thompson is rightly concerned about) for longer, because of fear of a theoretical and temporary 'unfairness'.
Politically, I don't think any tightening of restrictions will be stomached. Most definitely not from the backbenches. Gove and Boris are still talking of removal of restrictions. This is the direction of travel.
Certainly there will be an enormous political backlash if they don't remove most of the restrictions on June 21st. But given the way the figures are going, and the mood music both from advisers and ministers, I don't expect full re-opening.
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
She appears, like Jeremy Hunt and a few others, to be providing more acute Opposition than the Labour Party.
That's what happens when the opposition is useless.
England bowler Ollie Robinson will miss Sussex's first two T20 Blast games as he takes a "short break" from cricket.
The 27-year-old seamer was suspended from international cricket on Sunday after racist and sexist tweets he posted in 2012 and 2013 were shared online.
He will miss Sussex's matches against Gloucestershire and Hampshire on Friday and Saturday respectively.
There is currently no indication when he will play again.
Does anyone know what he actually said in these tweets when he was a teenager?
You can look them up, they are widely available. From recollection there is one what I would say really bad one, many of the others highlighted are more stupid jokey ones like women can't play video games.
OK, seen them, the worst one not nice, but I think he said sorry and seemed to mean it? Is apology and rehabilitation not a thing anymore? If this is a disciplinary matter, which it is fair it should be, there should be an adjudication in short order and punishment of some sort that reflects gravity but also mitigates against the fact he was 18 perhaps? To leave it unresolved will be terrible mentally for him and his family.
The ECB have totally thrown him under the bus. Before the first test, he did media saying well when I was 18/19, I was a total bellend, I was sacked, it was the kick up the arse I needed and I have rebuilt my career. Then these tweets were highlighted, the ECB made him go out and do a hostage style video to apologise.
One would have thought that would be the end of it.
Instead, the ECB then said, no, not enough, suspended while we investigate. I mean, surely they could have a) asked him and b) doesn't take more than a few days to check out his past social media and c) rung round some county people and said, is he still a bellend, have you ever heard him make racist comments.
They could have resolved all this by the end of the first test. Drawn a line under it, with perhaps an interview with a friendly journalist where he again tells his story and apologises.
And then we move on.
I, like many others, have known plenty of people who were bell ends aged 18 who turned out to be great 21year olds. Great shame.
Students judged by their actions in the first year of uni, 10 years later....forget staff shortages in the hospitality sector, the whole country would be grinding to a halt.
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
(also they link to Graham Lineham’s blog as a source in the article you link to, which is really nailing your colours to this particular mast...)
One can assume that Akua Reindorf knows her stuff. She is very much a leader in her field, employment and discriminatiion law.
Unless the Stonewall document has been updated (which is entirely possible) I /think/ the implication of the High Court judgement on whether AEA vs EHRC can go forward (which was “Nope, get lost.”) implies that the text in Stonewall’s document was a correct interpretation of the law.
But that text includes some very specific legal language which makes me think they might have changed it, hence my request to Cyclefree for a link to the original text she was complaining about.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if this is just another soundbite opinion that Cyclefree has picked up from GC social media without actually looking at the source documents. GC social media seems very prone to spreading legal opinions that end up falling apart when they actually get into court & this is exactly the kind of hearsay smear that GC social media loves to spread around.)
My understanding of this is the same as yours, ie Stonewall have done nothing scandalous at all here. Indeed the scandal is how they are suddenly being monstered by all and sundry. But I'm open to further info/debate on it.
Ana Simmons (sp?) - who brought the case in AEA vs EHRC - claims that the EHRC advice was changed in mid 2020 in response to her organisations complaints. But I haven’t seen any specifics anywhere, nor have I seen any detailed analysis of Stonewall’s supposed sins, just a blanket annoucement spread far and wide cherry-picked from the University of Essex report that they were “wrong in law”.
If they were wrong, then any deviance must either a) be incredibly small / essentially meaningless, since the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to fall strongly on interpreting current equalities law as requiring equal access to facialities regardless of whether a trans person has a GRC or b) used to contain very different wording that was wrong that has since been corrected.
I note that the substance of the AEA complaint seems to have been an attempt to split trans individuals with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) from those who had not (yet) acquired that legal document. i.e. they had already conceded that, in current equalities law, a person with a GRC could not be exlcuded from a single-sex establishment that matched their GRC without strong over-riding need.
The judge in that case said that line of thinking was completely wrong & that equalities legislation had been established as applied equally to both so their request for judgement was bound to fail at the first hurdle.
NB. I’m not a lawyer, but the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to be in direct opposition to that given by Akua Reindorf in their U.of.Essex report. Their assertion that the Equalities Act doesn’t say what Stonewall said it does relies on the wording of the Equalities Act only applying to “gender reassignment” whereas the judgement in AEA vs EHRC appears to be clear that this definition has been expanded more widely by subsequent case law.
Happy to be corrected on this, but it seems to me that the cherry-picked quote that is being used to bash Stonewall is based on a misunderstanding of the law as currently applied.
Supply of Pfizer jabs 'will be particularly tight over the next few weeks', Scotland's health minister @HumzaYousaf has revealed in a letter to Matt Hancock.
As our data from July 2020 shows, the proportion of both Conservative and Labour voters who view the United States as more of an ally has increased in the time since Joe Biden was elected President of the United States—from 58% to 65% for Conservative voters and 33% to 48% for Labour voters. This suggests that the UK is more open to closer relations with the United States now that Donald Trump is no longer in power, though some Labour voters continue to oppose this prospect regardless.
I’d love to interrogate those that answered “Ireland”. That can objectively be shown to be wrong. Not because we have any issue with the Irish but because Ireland is objectively too small and too neutral to ever be that useful as an ally.
I would say Ireland has the potential to be a useful ally for the UK because it has an interest in what goes on in the British Isles that no other country has. That is not to say it does what the UK tells it, but it is amenable to be co-opted in what it perceives as its interest. Ireland also has very good diplomatic channels, as the UK has discovered to its cost.
But then I think Brexit has been executed in a very misconceived way.
Make sure you don't used seasonal terms such as Spring or Autumn though....apparently they shouldn't be used, as it stigimises those of us not in the Northern Hemisphere for which it is a different season.
NHS England have updated - both the daily activity and the monthly age analysis.
Age analysis-wise, the proportion of admissions under 55 is now averaging over 60%, so the hospital admissions surge is certainly from the younger echelons. (For comparison, during the last peak, the same groups accounted for 20%-25% of admissions).
Number of beds occupied has gone over 900 in England (906), up over 100 on the week. The gradient is definitely upwards and possibly accelerating - but it must be emphasised that this is far less steep than it would have been in previous surges.
Admissions up to 147 on the 8th for English hospitals; highest daily admissions since the first half of April. As has been discussed, though, the shorter apparent time in hospital thanks to the victims being younger means that the total number hospitalised will be less than before.
@jessicaelgot Theresa May has just made a very very strident intervention on lockdowns in the Commons, saying it is "incomprehensible" that foreign travel is not allowed from one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.
May really goes for the traffic light system, arguing the amber category is nonsensical and says ministers are giving mixed messaging
It’s not clear what this means, is it supposed to be woke?
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
NHS England have updated - both the daily activity and the monthly age analysis.
Age analysis-wise, the proportion of admissions under 55 is now averaging over 60%, so the hospital admissions surge is certainly from the younger echelons. (For comparison, during the last peak, the same groups accounted for 20%-25% of admissions).
Number of beds occupied has gone over 900 in England (906), up over 100 on the week. The gradient is definitely upwards and possibly accelerating - but it must be emphasised that this is far less steep than it would have been in previous surges.
Admissions up to 147 on the 8th for English hospitals; highest daily admissions since the first half of April. As has been discussed, though, the shorter apparent time in hospital thanks to the victims being younger means that the total number hospitalised will be less than before.
On the face of it, hospitalisation and admissions numbers seem to be encouraging, and continue to point to a break between infection, and serious illness, compared to the previous two waves.
Very very early days. Far too early to extrapolate.
But this is PB.
So what the hell.
If @Philip_Thompson got this right, it will be one of the best PB calls of all time.
Unfortunately, I'm not getting excited about it. It's only been five days since a day-on-day fall in reported cases
We've had occasions where it's dropped two days in a row - four times since mid-May.
We need to see the 7-day average dropping.
And applying my physics teacher "are you sure about that point on your graph, Scroggins Minor?" spider sense, yesterday looks like an outlier on the upside.
It’s not clear what this means, is it supposed to be woke?
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
No-one wants to say it, but the issue isn’t travel per se - it’s mass market holidays to the places of debauchery where everyone in Europe mixes together every summer. It’s almost the perfect way of massive spreading and possibly creating new variants.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
Like Cameron before her she was stabbed in the back by a treacherous, duplicitous, self-serving scoundrel. The same treacherous, duplicitous, self-serving, scoundrel infact.
Isn’t there quite likely to have been a mini surge in case numbers at the start of the week due to school kids testing themselves post half term (and then following up with PCR tests). I also read something about some under- reporting in Wales numbers being corrected.
After a lot of thought Marc Morris gave his (very readable) new book, published last month, on post Roman history up to about 1066 in the southern half of Britain the startlingly original title 'The Anglo-Saxons'. Brave just doesn't begin to describe it. He's probably gone into hiding.
While England football team is spoiled for attacking talent, I think we can safely say England cricket team certainly aren't....totally reliant on two OAPs in the bowling department and 3 batters.
Very very early days. Far too early to extrapolate.
But this is PB.
So what the hell.
If @Philip_Thompson got this right, it will be one of the best PB calls of all time.
Unfortunately, I'm not getting excited about it. It's only been five days since a day-on-day fall in reported cases
We've had occasions where it's dropped two days in a row - four times since mid-May.
We need to see the 7-day average dropping.
And applying my physics teacher "are you sure about that point on your graph, Scroggins Minor?" spider sense, yesterday looks like an outlier on the upside.
Sure, it's almost certainly just noise. As I say, I was extrapolating a single data point for fun.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
A WOMAN who lost her job after tweeting that “male people are not women” has won a landmark employment case.
The victory for Maya Forstater, who was backed by JK Rowling and SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, means people with ‘gender critical’ beliefs must not be sacked simply for holding them.
However, they cannot express them in a way that discriminates against trans people.
Ms Cherry said the decision should end discrimination against academics, trade unionists and others like herself who had been bullied and threatened because of their beliefs.
“This judgment does not mean that those with gender-critical beliefs can ‘misgender’ trans persons with impunity.The Claimant, like everyone else, will continue to be subject to the prohibitions on discrimination and harassment that apply to everyone else. Whether or not conduct in a given situation does amount to harassment or discrimination within the meaning of EqA will be for a tribunal to determinein a given case.”
It seems that the judgement is essentially saying that GC beliefs are not grounds for dismissal, as they are philosophical beliefs & thus protected. However, if Forster acts on those beliefs then that action would be grounds for dismissal.
Do I have that right? I think that’s the court’s conclusion.
Since the whole subject of the tweets for which Forster was let go was her insistence on being able to call trans women men to their face, which the court has explictly told her she can’t do, this isn’t quite the victory she thinks it is.
Right decision IMO: uphold the law, but not the idea that mere thoughtcrime is grounds for dismissal.
I expect the GC crowd to crow about this for a few days, until eventually they realise that nothing has actually changed.
Except that isn't what she said as the judgment makes clear. This is what she said about what to call people in one of the contested tweets -
"Of course in social situations I would treat any trans-woman as an honorary female, and use whatever pronouns etc... I wouldn’t try to hurt anyone’s feelings" (see page 5 of the judgment).
The judgment does make a significant difference because it establishes the principle that:- - someone stating what is biological fact is a belief worthy of protection under the relevant legislation - it is irrelevant what others may think of that belief or indeed how dogmatically or firmly it is held - it is not for the court to determine the legitimacy of the belief (one of the errors which the Employment Tribunal made) - such protection is not dependant on whether others may be offended by such a belief (another error of the tribunal) - the tribunal was wrong to impose a requirement that she must refer to a trans woman as a woman to avoid harassment as this was a blanket restriction and it could not be said that failing to do so would in all circumstances and without knowing the context amount to harassment - see paras.103 and 104. This is a very important wider principle because it effectively states that limits on the expressions of one's belief should be the bare minimum ie that merely avoiding offence is not a sufficient reason for limiting what people can say. " the accepted evidence before the Tribunal was that she believed that it is not “incompatible to recognise that human beings cannot change sex whilst also protecting the human rights of people who identify as transgender”: see para 39.2 of the Judgment. That is not, on any view, a statement of a belief that seeks to destroy the rights of trans persons. It is a belief that might in some circumstances cause offence to trans persons, but the potential for offence cannot be a reason to exclude a belief from protection altogether."
The court went on to say that her belief that sex is immutable and binary is in fact in accordance with the law - "Where a belief or a major tenet of it appears to be in accordance with the law of the land, then it is all the more jarring that it should be declared as one not worthy of respect in a democratic society."
The whole lengthy judgment is worth reading.
I've read it. It's rigorous and coherent. But not sure it changes much. If you deliberately misgender a transperson - from their viewpoint - it may or may not be a violation of the Equality Act depending on situation and context. No change there.
What struck me in general was that - contrary to what many believe - there's a high bar for what is deemed illegal speech. There's little you can say that will get you into legal trouble, ie convicted of an offence in a court of law.
As it should be. The problem is more around workplaces, some of which have installed a very low and continually lowering bar on speech that gets you fired.
Well you'd expect a lower bar there. That's also as it should be. And I'm skeptical about large numbers of people being fired purely for saying stuff. Is there any data on this?
We're now ahead of the USA in terms of fully vaxxed and will remain there whatever our future supply. To have a demand problem at this stage would be far worse than any supply hiccup.
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
She appears, like Jeremy Hunt and a few others, to be providing more acute Opposition than the Labour Party.
That's what happens when the opposition is useless.
Blaming Labour for Tory failings now, are we? Nice one.
Just switched on TV to see Boris and Joe with their wives at Carbis Bay, and to be honest very good media coverage until Boris and Joe sat down in front of their flags
The media, led by Laura Kuenssberg, went completely out of control, hysterically shouting questions and were an utter embarrassment, so much so Boris shaking his head turned to Joe with a look of utter dismay
We deserve better, much better, from our media
Our politicians get the media they deserve. Probably.
Just switched on TV to see Boris and Joe with their wives at Carbis Bay, and to be honest very good media coverage until Boris and Joe sat down in front of their flags
The media, led by Laura Kuenssberg, went completely out of control, hysterically shouting questions and were an utter embarrassment, so much so Boris shaking his head turned to Joe with a look of utter dismay
We deserve better, much better, from our media
Our politicians get the media they deserve. Probably.
I know that the Vaccines Taskforce and colleagues in BEIS are working incredibly hard to maximise volumes of all supply including Pfizer. Notwithstanding this, I would be grateful to discuss what more could be done to further increase the available supply in the coming weeks to support efforts to deliver the programme at pace.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
The normally sensible @Big_G_NorthWales 's tendency to go ad hom (or fem) on Boris' critics is regrettable.
It’s not clear what this means, is it supposed to be woke?
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
Someone calling himself Axel Folio thinks that "Anglo-Saxon" is racist. I can't see what the issue is supposed to be.
Just switched on TV to see Boris and Joe with their wives at Carbis Bay, and to be honest very good media coverage until Boris and Joe sat down in front of their flags
The media, led by Laura Kuenssberg, went completely out of control, hysterically shouting questions and were an utter embarrassment, so much so Boris shaking his head turned to Joe with a look of utter dismay
We deserve better, much better, from our media
Our politicians get the media they deserve. Probably.
Theresa May went proper anti-lockdown re international travel while I wasn't watching the Commons...... ....."Last year in 2020 I went to Switzerland in Aug, S Korea in Sep, there was no vaccine, travel was possible; this year there is a vaccine, travel is not possible. I really do not understand the stance the govt is taking"......
"We will not eradicate Covid-19 in the UK; variants will keep on coming – if the govt's position is that we cannot open up travel until there are no new variants elsewhere in the world then we will never be able to travel abroad ever again".....
"The 3rd fact that the govt needs to state much more clearly is that sadly people will die from Covid here in the UK, as 10-20k do every year from flu, and we are falling behind the rest of Europe in our decisions to open up" https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1402992109137784835?s=20
She falls into that rare category of better ex-PM than PM. A sort of British Jimmy Carter.
She appears, like Jeremy Hunt and a few others, to be providing more acute Opposition than the Labour Party.
That's what happens when the opposition is useless.
Blaming Labour for Tory failings now, are we? Nice one.
I think we can. Labour has been a hopeless opposition since the Tories first took power after Brown. It isn't as though there are not decent Labour MPs, it is just that most are languishing on the back benches still. The reason we have Boris Johnson with such a huge majority is Labour ineptitude. The reason we have Boris Johnson is Labour, because if we didn't have Corbyn we would probably not have Johnson. They are two cheeks of the populist arse.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
The normally sensible @Big_G_NorthWales 's tendency to go ad hom (or fem) on Boris' critics is regrettable.
It’s also odd as he spends half the time pretending he would be “content to see Boris go”.
It’s not clear what this means, is it supposed to be woke?
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
Someone calling himself Axel Folio thinks that "Anglo-Saxon" is racist. I can't see what the issue is supposed to be.
The phrase "Anglo-Saxon" is used as a kind of term of abuse by the French, so perhaps it is.
It’s not clear what this means, is it supposed to be woke?
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
Someone calling himself Axel Folio thinks that "Anglo-Saxon" is racist. I can't see what the issue is supposed to be.
Can you believe not a single thane identified as trans?
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
The normally sensible @Big_G_NorthWales 's tendency to go ad hom (or fem) on Boris' critics is regrettable.
It’s also odd as he spends half the time pretending he would be “content to see Boris go”.
With the occasional GBNews endorsement thrown in.
I see references to GBNews on here. Should I look it up, or is it something on the dark web?
Well this is what Stonewall themselves have said - https://twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1307598543729852416?s=21. Now, while it is correct that trans people get the benefit of the Equality Act, it is also correct that there are some important exceptions and those are sex-based not gender-based exemptions. Stonewall is campaigning to remove such sex-based rights and exemptions and its statement here is inaccurate. It is describing the law as it wants it to be not as it is.
Stonewall gets money from lots of organisations for advising on their policies etc. The very least it should be expected to do is not misrepresent the law when giving out that advice. It is not, after all, hard to get legal advice on what the current law actually says.
When called out on these mistakes its reaction is not to apologise and correct them but to accuse those pointing these mistakes out of conducting some bad faith campaign against it. It seems to think that it should be beyond criticism and that to do so is to make one a bigot.
The relevant paragraphs from the Reindorf report that the GC world is gleefully spreading everywhere appear to be these: (225 is quoting University Policy, 226 is Reindorf’s opinion) 225. The policy sets out the relevant law as follows: “Under the Equality Act 2010, it is unlawful to discriminate against or treat someone unfairly because of their gender identity or trans status. Examples of discrimination include outing someone as trans without their permission, refusing to use someone’s preferred name and correct gender pronouns and denying someone access to appropriate single-sex facilities.” 226. This does not accurately state the law, since “gender identity or trans status” are not protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010; rather, the protected characteristic is gender reassignment (see §177 above). Moreover, it cannot be said that the examples given would invariably amount to unlawful discrimination (or, in some cases more accurately, harassment). In particular, “denying someone access to appropriate single-sex facilities” is a contested issue and the Equality Act 2010 contains specific “sex-based exceptions” relating to this (see §187 above)... ... 243.11 “The policy is reviewed annually by Stonewall, and its incorrect summary of the law does not appear to have been picked up by them. In my view the policy states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is. To that extent the policy is misleading.”
Strong stuff!
The University of Essex document has since been updated to state:
“Under the Equality Act 2010, it is unlawful to discriminate against or treat someone unfairly because of the protected characteristic ‘gender reassignment’, defined as ‘where a person has proposed, started or completed the process to change his or her sex’”
So the document now hews more closely to the wording of the equalities act, obviously in response to the Reindorf report. We have gone from “gender identity or trans status” to ‘where a person has proposed, started or completed the process to change his or her sex’. As far as I can see, this still includes every trans individual in the UK: The people thrown under the bus by this change are the non-binary / pangender / etc etc crowd. Sucks to be them I guess.
So the GC press / social media appear to be commiting a deliberate sin of omission here. What Stonewall actually did was approve wording by the University of Essex that included not just trans people but also other non-binary gender presentations. This is where they “erred in law”. This is why they never actually quote the text, because it would undermine the narrative that trans people are a threat to women.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
The normally sensible @Big_G_NorthWales 's tendency to go ad hom (or fem) on Boris' critics is regrettable.
It’s also odd as he spends half the time pretending he would be “content to see Boris go”.
With the occasional GBNews endorsement thrown in.
I feel like I’ve missed something. What is the reason why GB News is vilified so much on these pages, when they haven’t even aired yet?
Interesting. Not having the tables in front of me are trans people really "one of the most discriminated against" in the UK?
I suppose if the proportion of trans people who are discriminated against is higher that the proportion of other minorities then perhaps. Who has the stats?
I mean of course one trans person discriminated against is one too much but what a strange thing for SKS to say.
Impolitic perhaps, but not strange, since it's quite likely true.
You won't find any 'tables' since for reasons which ought to be obvious, it's not a group easy for statisticians to identify even if it were a priority for them, which it hasn't been.
Even the government's own publications suggest as much. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf How many trans people are there? We don’t know. No robust data on the UK trans population exists. We tentatively estimate that there are approximately 200,000-500,000 trans people in the UK. The Office for National Statistics is researching whether and how to develop a population estimate. Facts and Figures 41% of trans men and trans women responding to a Stonewall survey said they had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months. They also found that 25% of trans people had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Our national LGBT survey found similar results, with 67% of trans respondents saying they had avoided being open about their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others...
I'd be wary about believing what Stonewall issues these days on this topic since they give out misleading and incorrect advice on what the law on sex-based rights actually is. This ought to be a bigger scandal than it is, especially given that they are paid by a lot of government departments and other big companies to issue advice. Lying about what the law says in order to suit a particular agenda is utterly disgraceful.
This is a constant GC talking point: that Stonewall gave incorrect & misleading advice on the law on sex based rights.
Can you point to the actual text that you believe overstepped the legal stipulation? I’d like to compare it with the recent judgement in the High Court where the attempt to have a judicial review of the EHRC guidance on the Equality Act & it’s implications was refused by the judge on the grounds that the EHRC’s interpretation of the law was the correct one.
“Schools, colleges and settings should ensure that a trans child or young person is supported to use the toilets and changing rooms they feel most comfortable with, including the facilities matching their gender.
Under the Equality Act a trans child or young person can use the toilets and changing rooms that match their gender.
Under the Act, a school can only prevent a trans child or young person from using the facilities matching their gender if they can demonstrate that doing so is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’, which is a high legal bar to clear. Schools, colleges and settings should also support trans children and young people to use gender-neutral facilities or a private space, if that is what they prefer. The most important thing is to talk to the child or young person rather than making assumptions about the facilities they would like to use.”
Which seems in line with the judgement in AEA vs EHRC - i.e. this is a “should”, not a “must” & exceptions can & do apply - but it’s posible that this is not the original document & that Stonewall has (rightly if so) updated the text since the judgement in that case was published.
There is this. The report for Essex University concluded that Stonewall was misrepresenting the law on free speech/
So the statement that Stonewall had misrepresented the EHRC advice is the opinion of one barrister & not a court judgement?
Obviously, a barrister’s opinion of the law carries more weight than the average numpty, but it’s not exactly definitive.
(NB. “Lesbian and Gay News” appears to be an anti-trans organisation from a quick scan of their Twitter, so I would imagine their reporting carries the same slant.)
(also they link to Graham Lineham’s blog as a source in the article you link to, which is really nailing your colours to this particular mast...)
One can assume that Akua Reindorf knows her stuff. She is very much a leader in her field, employment and discriminatiion law.
Unless the Stonewall document has been updated (which is entirely possible) I /think/ the implication of the High Court judgement on whether AEA vs EHRC can go forward (which was “Nope, get lost.”) implies that the text in Stonewall’s document was a correct interpretation of the law.
But that text includes some very specific legal language which makes me think they might have changed it, hence my request to Cyclefree for a link to the original text she was complaining about.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if this is just another soundbite opinion that Cyclefree has picked up from GC social media without actually looking at the source documents. GC social media seems very prone to spreading legal opinions that end up falling apart when they actually get into court & this is exactly the kind of hearsay smear that GC social media loves to spread around.)
My understanding of this is the same as yours, ie Stonewall have done nothing scandalous at all here. Indeed the scandal is how they are suddenly being monstered by all and sundry. But I'm open to further info/debate on it.
Ana Simmons (sp?) - who brought the case in AEA vs EHRC - claims that the EHRC advice was changed in mid 2020 in response to her organisations complaints. But I haven’t seen any specifics anywhere, nor have I seen any detailed analysis of Stonewall’s supposed sins, just a blanket annoucement spread far and wide cherry-picked from the University of Essex report that they were “wrong in law”.
If they were wrong, then any deviance must either a) be incredibly small / essentially meaningless, since the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to fall strongly on interpreting current equalities law as requiring equal access to facialities regardless of whether a trans person has a GRC or b) used to contain very different wording that was wrong that has since been corrected.
I note that the substance of the AEA complaint seems to have been an attempt to split trans individuals with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) from those who had not (yet) acquired that legal document. i.e. they had already conceded that, in current equalities law, a person with a GRC could not be exlcuded from a single-sex establishment that matched their GRC without strong over-riding need.
The judge in that case said that line of thinking was completely wrong & that equalities legislation had been established as applied equally to both so their request for judgement was bound to fail at the first hurdle.
NB. I’m not a lawyer, but the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to be in direct opposition to that given by Akua Reindorf in their U.of.Essex report. Their assertion that the Equalities Act doesn’t say what Stonewall said it does relies on the wording of the Equalities Act only applying to “gender reassignment” whereas the judgement in AEA vs EHRC appears to be clear that this definition has been expanded more widely by subsequent case law.
Happy to be corrected on this, but it seems to me that the cherry-picked quote that is being used to bash Stonewall is based on a misunderstanding of the law as currently applied.
Yep, pretty much my take too. I'm generally on the Trans side of this argument but I'm wary of taking what either side says at face value because there's so much invested in it, thus a lot of twisting and dogmatism in play. So here, with Stonewall, because some of those piling into them were pundits who I like and respect (eg Parris), I took a dive into it to see what was going on with this "incorrect legal advice" business. And my conclusion as we speak is it's a feeding frenzy based on precious little. Their error is not one of malice or substance. Transpeople ARE protected by Equalities Law and the default is they should NOT be excluded from single sex spaces - but they can be if a good reason is demonstrated.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Well that’s me on this Board in 2021 saying as such.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
Her citizens of nowhere comment related to big business not paying their share if tax didn’t it?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
I put Labour and Tory together in 2017 because they both scored massive vote share when they agreed to respect the referendum vote, to contrast with 2015 and 2019 when Labour campaigned against the referendum, then against its result, and lost more heavily
Thanks for the advice, but I will do what I like x
It’s not clear what this means, is it supposed to be woke?
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
Someone calling himself Axel Folio thinks that "Anglo-Saxon" is racist. I can't see what the issue is supposed to be.
Can you believe not a single thane identified as trans?
According to "The Life of Brian" in New Testament times there was a bloke called Stan who wanted to be known as Loretta. Another part of that movie that would probably be censored now I guess.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
The normally sensible @Big_G_NorthWales 's tendency to go ad hom (or fem) on Boris' critics is regrettable.
It’s also odd as he spends half the time pretending he would be “content to see Boris go”.
With the occasional GBNews endorsement thrown in.
I would be happy to see Rishi takeover, and your comment re GBNews, without it even having been aired, seems a case of blind prejudice
I have held various senior offices in organisations and charities, (all non political), and whenever I left Office I made a point of never attacking my successor, as I accepted they would most likely do things differently and I did not want to be accused of 'sour grapes'
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Well that’s me on this Board in 2021 saying as such.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
Her citizens of nowhere comment related to big business not paying their share if tax didn’t it?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
I put Labour and Tory together in 2017 because they both scored massive vote share when they agreed to respect the referendum vote, to contrast with 2015 and 2019 when Labour campaigned against the referendum, then against its result, and lost more heavily
Thanks for the advice, but I will do what I like x
Took your brain cell a while to come back with that witty response. Congrats.
It’s not clear what this means, is it supposed to be woke?
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
Someone calling himself Axel Folio thinks that "Anglo-Saxon" is racist. I can't see what the issue is supposed to be.
Can you believe not a single thane identified as trans?
The word bædling suggests that might not have been true.
NB. I’m not a lawyer, but the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to be in direct opposition to that given by Akua Reindorf in their U.of.Essex report. Their assertion that the Equalities Act doesn’t say what Stonewall said it does relies on the wording of the Equalities Act only applying to “gender reassignment” whereas the judgement in AEA vs EHRC appears to be clear that this definition has been expanded more widely by subsequent case law.
Happy to be corrected on this, but it seems to me that the cherry-picked quote that is being used to bash Stonewall is based on a misunderstanding of the law as currently applied.
NB. Having now read the relevant bits of Reindorf, it’s clear that they understand the the Equalities Act applied equally to trans people with & without a GRC.
It’s GC social media who are busily spreading carefully ambiguous mis-readings of Reindorf as part of the wider attempt to smear Stonewall.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
Mr. Walker, she thrice put it to the Commons and a combination of Conservative MPs rebelling and the Labour Party (and other opposition MPs) en masse voted it down.
I said at the time that when you've got MPs who really like the EU and MPs who really dislike the EU voting the same way, someone's screwing it up.
The dumb soft pro-EU MPs of the Commons rejected everything and guaranteed that we'd leave on harder terms. It was epitomised by the lauded Grieve shrieking it was 'too late' when he was given the exact concession he'd asked for, but still didn't vote for it.
I know this is going over old ground, but people generally should try to at least learn something from it. To tie it into the football story, pointing at people and telling them they're wicked for disliking the EU, or a gesture associated with iconoclast barbarians, isn't going to persuade them. The Little Englander nonsense from Cameron was dumb as hell, yet there were plenty of pro-EU types here tittering about it.
Absolutely the "too late" remark was peak hubris.
The pro-EU MPs swallowed their own spin hook, line and sinker and thought they would win and overturn Brexit entirely rather than compromise on a BRINO Backstop that effectively kept us trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union with the EU having a veto on us ever leaving it.
Seeing Grieve kicked out of the party after his behaviour, then comprehensively thrashed at Beaconsfield and an hard rather than soft Brexit follow was really enjoyable.
I actually can’t remember those tumultuous moments.
The key prize for Remainers (rather than pro-EU which probably describes very few) was a second vote.
May refused to concede that.
There was a clear majority for a softish Brexit, but the various parties could not coalesce and let the loons (mostly on the Brexity side) win.
This is Mark Francois’s Brexit: petty, painful, and underpinned by inchoate fantasies about “de Jarmins”.
We'll never know how a second vote would have gone but, if Remain had narrowly won it, the country and our political system would have gone apeshit.
The fall out would have totally dominated our politics for years. With lots of anger and disorder as well.
There was no putting it back into Pandora's Box. The die was cast when we voted Leave, IMHO, and at that point we had to Leave - the best thing Remainers could have done was to influence its form and play the long game.
Cummings predicted civil strife if we'd had a second vote without enacting the first, and I believe he was right
Imagine the anger. The biggest mandate in British democratic history - 17.4 million voters - simply ignored? Overruled? Cancelled?
The stupidity of those that avowed a "people's vote" is quite something. They would also have trashed democracy for generations. Why bother voting for anything if the elite can just ignore it. So we become North Korea. Where elections are charades. With Potemkin referendums. Imagine doing the same in the Scottish indyref. Imagine if that had produced a YES vote (taking it out of the EU at the time), would ANYONE have suggested overruling it?
No. So why was it deemed permissible to overturn Brexit?
The campaign for a 2nd vote was also self-defeating, as you say. If the Remainers had accepted the first vote, then got behind ultra-soft Brexit, we would have got exactly that; they might even have kept Freedom of Movement inside EFTA
How many times do you need to be reminded that hard Brexit was committed to by May in 2016, and indicative votes on a soft Brexit (CU/SM) were voted down as a result of Tory whipping, with Labour overwhelmingly voting for it. It was the Tory obsession with a hard Brexit that prevented a soft Brexit, not Remainer opposition.
I've always admitted this. TMay (a Remainer) is as much to blame as the leftwing Remainers. Her insane red lines boxed her in from the start
However the push for a 2nd vote made Brexiteers worry that the whole thing would be overturned, which persuaded many Leavers to go for a Hard, irreversible Brexit. The two sides conspired to get a Brexit very few originally desired.
It will be a poignant passage in Brexit: the History
No, Brexiteers went for a hard Brexit because that was what they wanted. Was May a Remainer? Barely. She gave Cameron the minimal support necessary in the referendum campaign and immediately adopted these crazy red lines under the influence of Nick Timothy. Most Remainers were pragmatic and pushed for a soft Brexit but were met with inplacable hostility from Leavers, who insisted that they had won and would dictate terms. Personally I would have been OK with a 2nd referendum but a soft Brexit was preferable because it honoured the vote, however imperfect a process that was. By the time the referendum was lost there were no good outcomes.
Yes. The vote sparked a bizarre kulturkamp almost from the beginning, with Remainers and the EU accused of treachery with increasing fervour.
It made me realise I am not British, which I had previously assumed I was.
The thing is one thing fuels another.
Remainers saying "they're no longer British" and then arguing for the vote to be overturned fuelled charges of treason.
Leavers attacking every institution that put caveats or limits on the interpretation of the vote similarly infuriated Remainers and made them want to disassociate themselves from a decision they couldn't understand or identify with.
Well that’s me on this Board in 2021 saying as such.
I don’t remember a mass disavowal of citizenship in the wake of the vote, so your post just reads like a rewrite of history, if not victim blaming.
The Mail’s editorial (not wholly separable from govt comms policy) during this period was truly sickening. And even May was not immune, with disastrous criticisms of “citizens of nowhere” and grotesque suggestions that the EU was interfering in the 2017 election.
Her citizens of nowhere comment related to big business not paying their share if tax didn’t it?
I believe she meant something along those lines.
But within the toxic discourse of the post-referendum period, it carried other, terrifyingly inflammatory connotations.
But people who wanted a second referendum wilfully misunderstood her comments so as to pour petrol on any Brexit induced fireworks. And they were clever people, they just could not stomach being defeated.
Hence Boris, 80 seat majority, and the Brexit we have now.
Our crooked system says hello.
2014 - UKIP win Euro Elections under PR 2015 - CON promising a referendum win GE under FPTP 2016 - LEAVE win binary referendum 2017 - CON & LAB promising to respect LEAVE vote poll 84% under FPTP May 2019 - BREXIT PARTY win Euros under PR Dec 2019 - CON ‘Get Brexit Done’ win 80 seat majority under FPTP
Doesn’t it make you think the country wanted to leave the EU?
Full marks for the data manipulation and bias. Vladimir has a job for you.
As a counterpoint, here is a bit of bias of my own in the form of a question: What percentage of the total population who could vote voted Leave in the referendum?
It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.
Seriously though, people need to move on on the question of Brexit. To those of us that lost the argument, we need to shut up and move on.
For those of you that "won" you need to shut up as well. You claim to be patriots, but patriots should seek to unite, not to divide.
I don’t go on about it, I just can’t have people trying to make out it was some electoral system glitch that led to the current situation. Brexit won six times on the trot
Where the data manipulation and bias? Leave won six times under three different conditions
And I don’t claim to be a patriot, or anything else
“ It is a rhetorical question, so you don't need to answer as I already know it.”
It’s a stupid question, as I could ask what population of the total population who could vote voted remain. And the share is ‘less than who voted leave’
It was an illustration in bias, ie. some people (I don't share this view) believe that there should be an absolute majority to make major constitutional change. You manipulated data by putting the Labour and Tory vote together which was just plain silly. Just stop bleating. I know most Leave fanatics (as opposed to more reasonable Leave voters) still have massive chips on their shoulders because they were enthusiastically in bed with fascists xenophobes and racists, but get over it. You won. Learn some humility. Move on.
I put Labour and Tory together in 2017 because they both scored massive vote share when they agreed to respect the referendum vote, to contrast with 2015 and 2019 when Labour campaigned against the referendum, then against its result, and lost more heavily
Thanks for the advice, but I will do what I like x
Took your brain cell a while to come back with that witty response. Congrats.
Haha, dont be silly Nige I have been out and about, cant be looking on here ALL day.
The comebacks are instant, esp when I am set up for an open goal!
Well this is what Stonewall themselves have said - https://twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1307598543729852416?s=21. Now, while it is correct that trans people get the benefit of the Equality Act, it is also correct that there are some important exceptions and those are sex-based not gender-based exemptions. Stonewall is campaigning to remove such sex-based rights and exemptions and its statement here is inaccurate. It is describing the law as it wants it to be not as it is.
Stonewall gets money from lots of organisations for advising on their policies etc. The very least it should be expected to do is not misrepresent the law when giving out that advice. It is not, after all, hard to get legal advice on what the current law actually says.
When called out on these mistakes its reaction is not to apologise and correct them but to accuse those pointing these mistakes out of conducting some bad faith campaign against it. It seems to think that it should be beyond criticism and that to do so is to make one a bigot.
The relevant paragraphs from the Reindorf report that the GC world is gleefully spreading everywhere appear to be these: (225 is quoting University Policy, 226 is Reindorf’s opinion) 225. The policy sets out the relevant law as follows: “Under the Equality Act 2010, it is unlawful to discriminate against or treat someone unfairly because of their gender identity or trans status. Examples of discrimination include outing someone as trans without their permission, refusing to use someone’s preferred name and correct gender pronouns and denying someone access to appropriate single-sex facilities.” 226. This does not accurately state the law, since “gender identity or trans status” are not protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010; rather, the protected characteristic is gender reassignment (see §177 above). Moreover, it cannot be said that the examples given would invariably amount to unlawful discrimination (or, in some cases more accurately, harassment). In particular, “denying someone access to appropriate single-sex facilities” is a contested issue and the Equality Act 2010 contains specific “sex-based exceptions” relating to this (see §187 above)... ... 243.11 “The policy is reviewed annually by Stonewall, and its incorrect summary of the law does not appear to have been picked up by them. In my view the policy states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is. To that extent the policy is misleading.”
Strong stuff!
The University of Essex document has since been updated to state:
“Under the Equality Act 2010, it is unlawful to discriminate against or treat someone unfairly because of the protected characteristic ‘gender reassignment’, defined as ‘where a person has proposed, started or completed the process to change his or her sex’”
So the document now hews more closely to the wording of the equalities act, obviously in response to the Reindorf report. We have gone from “gender identity or trans status” to ‘where a person has proposed, started or completed the process to change his or her sex’. As far as I can see, this still includes every trans individual in the UK: The people thrown under the bus by this change are the non-binary / pangender / etc etc crowd. Sucks to be them I guess.
So the GC press / social media appear to be commiting a deliberate sin of omission here. What Stonewall actually did was approve wording by the University of Essex that included not just trans people but also other non-binary gender presentations. This is where they “erred in law”. This is why they never actually quote the text, because it would undermine the narrative that trans people are a threat to women.
NB. I’m not a lawyer, but the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to be in direct opposition to that given by Akua Reindorf in their U.of.Essex report. Their assertion that the Equalities Act doesn’t say what Stonewall said it does relies on the wording of the Equalities Act only applying to “gender reassignment” whereas the judgement in AEA vs EHRC appears to be clear that this definition has been expanded more widely by subsequent case law.
Happy to be corrected on this, but it seems to me that the cherry-picked quote that is being used to bash Stonewall is based on a misunderstanding of the law as currently applied.
NB. Having now read the relevant bits of Reindorf, it’s clear that they understand the the Equalities Act applied equally to trans people with & without a GRC.
It’s GC social media who are busily spreading carefully ambiguous mis-readings of Reindorf as part of the wider attempt to smear Stonewall.
More seriously, the staff have been doxxed, and several have regular police patrols at their properties.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
The normally sensible @Big_G_NorthWales 's tendency to go ad hom (or fem) on Boris' critics is regrettable.
It’s also odd as he spends half the time pretending he would be “content to see Boris go”.
With the occasional GBNews endorsement thrown in.
I would be happy to see Rishi takeover, and your comment re GBNews, without it even having been aired, seems a case of blind prejudice
I have held various senior offices in organisations and charities, (all non political), and whenever I left Office I made a point of never attacking my successor, as I accepted they would most likely do things differently and I did not want to be accused of 'sour grapes'
I say the same about Theresa
Are you comparing your roles to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
You can be as law abiding as it is possible to be and do exactly what the police tell you to do in the US & they will still kill you without a second thought with no personal consequences for the officers involved.
She may have a point but she is really very bitter.
Sad really
I don't think she is bitter (see her question at PMQs about Public Enquiry evidence) - what she has got is a lot of constituents that work in and around Heathrow and she's been consistent in her criticism of the government's approach to travel.
The normally sensible @Big_G_NorthWales 's tendency to go ad hom (or fem) on Boris' critics is regrettable.
It’s also odd as he spends half the time pretending he would be “content to see Boris go”.
With the occasional GBNews endorsement thrown in.
I say the same about Theresa
So if she thinks current government policy is wrong and detrimental to her constituents she should keep quiet?
Nothing to see here. Just Peter Daszak, of the Wuhan lab, calmly chatting about his Chinese colleagues doing gain-of-function research on SARS-like bugs, so they become more pathogenic to humans. In the end, he says, you get “killer coronaviruses”. His exact phrase
Comments
Eddie Jones rests Youngs, Ford and May for July Tests
https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/57429357
Edit - Oh my bad, he isn't picking any players still involved in the playoffs.
This statement from an English hospital region seems to differ,
Perhaps Humza lost them.
If they were wrong, then any deviance must either a) be incredibly small / essentially meaningless, since the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to fall strongly on interpreting current equalities law as requiring equal access to facialities regardless of whether a trans person has a GRC or b) used to contain very different wording that was wrong that has since been corrected.
I note that the substance of the AEA complaint seems to have been an attempt to split trans individuals with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) from those who had not (yet) acquired that legal document. i.e. they had already conceded that, in current equalities law, a person with a GRC could not be exlcuded from a single-sex establishment that matched their GRC without strong over-riding need.
The judge in that case said that line of thinking was completely wrong & that equalities legislation had been established as applied equally to both so their request for judgement was bound to fail at the first hurdle.
NB. I’m not a lawyer, but the judgement in AEA vs EHRC seems to be in direct opposition to that given by Akua Reindorf in their U.of.Essex report. Their assertion that the Equalities Act doesn’t say what Stonewall said it does relies on the wording of the Equalities Act only applying to “gender reassignment” whereas the judgement in AEA vs EHRC appears to be clear that this definition has been expanded more widely by subsequent case law.
Happy to be corrected on this, but it seems to me that the cherry-picked quote that is being used to bash Stonewall is based on a misunderstanding of the law as currently applied.
Gender-critical views are a protected belief, appeal tribunal rules . Hello my ex-employers...what a joke.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/jun/10/gender-critical-views-protected-belief-appeal-tribunal-rules-maya-forstater
https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/1402958187876294656?s=20
Astra - 74 days
Pfizer - 88 days !
Was 7590 yesterday and
5,274 new cases June 3rd (Week ago)
4,330 June 2nd (Week ago yesterday)
‘I have hit that point in book-writing where I need to decide what to call the Anglo-Saxons.’
https://twitter.com/cath_fletcher/status/1402926308326268928?s=21
But then I think Brexit has been executed in a very misconceived way.
Independent SAGE did predict this.
But this is PB.
So what the hell.
If @Philip_Thompson got this right, it will be one of the best PB calls of all time.
Age analysis-wise, the proportion of admissions under 55 is now averaging over 60%, so the hospital admissions surge is certainly from the younger echelons.
(For comparison, during the last peak, the same groups accounted for 20%-25% of admissions).
Number of beds occupied has gone over 900 in England (906), up over 100 on the week. The gradient is definitely upwards and possibly accelerating - but it must be emphasised that this is far less steep than it would have been in previous surges.
Admissions up to 147 on the 8th for English hospitals; highest daily admissions since the first half of April. As has been discussed, though, the shorter apparent time in hospital thanks to the victims being younger means that the total number hospitalised will be less than before.
Theresa May has just made a very very strident intervention on lockdowns in the Commons, saying it is "incomprehensible" that foreign travel is not allowed from one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.
May really goes for the traffic light system, arguing the amber category is nonsensical and says ministers are giving mixed messaging
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1403010355358584840
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1403010355358584840?s=20
It's only been five days since a day-on-day fall in reported cases
We've had occasions where it's dropped two days in a row - four times since mid-May.
We need to see the 7-day average dropping.
At this rate we could be back up to 100 daily deaths by Christmas 2023.
Perhaps historians have realised that there were few Angles and no Saxons, so the name is simply inaccurate, rather than being (as you seem to suggest) a label so hideously drenched in whiteness it can no longer be voiced without oral disinfectant.
Sad really
Saturday to sunday reported is always a fall, even when rising.
This is PB, after all.
James Bracey is a pound shop Richard Blakey.
For context Richard Blakey averaged 1.75 with the bat in tests, yes one point seven five.
Non cricket fans.
James Bracey is the Keir Starmer of wicketkeepers.
A pound shop Richard Blakey is really savage.
https://twitter.com/StephenSeanFord/status/1402511004735447040
I know that the Vaccines Taskforce and colleagues in BEIS are working incredibly hard to maximise volumes of all supply including Pfizer. Notwithstanding this, I would be grateful to discuss what more could be done to further increase the available supply in the coming weeks to support efforts to deliver the programme at pace.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/covid-scotland-humza-yousaf-concerned-24292173
I'm not sure what he expects Hancock to do with supply at a weeks' notice.....
Oh, sorry. Misunderstood. That's the route of all evil.
The only question is whether Bracey will manage to end his test career with more runs than catches. I'd say odds are against him.
With the occasional GBNews endorsement thrown in.
A Crumpled, Dried-Out Relic of the Pandemic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/office-return-apple/619131/
https://www.essex.ac.uk/-/media/documents/review/public_version_-_events_review_report_-_university_of_essex---17-may-2021.pdf?la=en
The relevant paragraphs from the Reindorf report that the GC world is gleefully spreading everywhere appear to be these:
(225 is quoting University Policy, 226 is Reindorf’s opinion)
225.
The policy sets out the relevant law as follows:
“Under the Equality Act 2010, it is unlawful to discriminate against or treat someone
unfairly because of their gender identity or trans status. Examples of discrimination
include outing someone as trans without their permission, refusing to use someone’s
preferred name and correct gender pronouns and denying someone access to appropriate
single-sex facilities.”
226.
This does not accurately state the law, since “gender identity or trans status”
are not protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010; rather, the
protected characteristic is gender reassignment (see §177 above). Moreover, it
cannot be said that the examples given would invariably amount to unlawful
discrimination (or, in some cases more accurately, harassment). In particular,
“denying someone access to appropriate single-sex facilities” is a contested
issue and the Equality Act 2010 contains specific “sex-based exceptions”
relating to this (see §187 above)...
...
243.11 “The policy is reviewed
annually by Stonewall, and its incorrect summary of the law does not
appear to have been picked up by them. In my view the policy states
the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is.
To that extent the policy is misleading.”
Strong stuff!
The University of Essex document has since been updated to state:
“Under the Equality Act 2010, it is unlawful to discriminate against or
treat someone unfairly because of the protected characteristic ‘gender
reassignment’, defined as ‘where a person has proposed, started or
completed the process to change his or her sex’”
So the document now hews more closely to the wording of the equalities act, obviously in response to the Reindorf report. We have gone from “gender identity or trans status” to ‘where a person has proposed, started or completed the process to change his or her sex’. As far as I can see, this still includes every trans individual in the UK: The people thrown under the bus by this change are the non-binary / pangender / etc etc crowd. Sucks to be them I guess.
So the GC press / social media appear to be commiting a deliberate sin of omission here. What Stonewall actually did was approve wording by the University of Essex that included not just trans people but also other non-binary gender presentations. This is where they “erred in law”. This is why they never actually quote the text, because it would undermine the narrative that trans people are a threat to women.
Thanks for the advice, but I will do what I like x
I have held various senior offices in organisations and charities, (all non political), and whenever I left Office I made a point of never attacking my successor, as I accepted they would most likely do things differently and I did not want to be accused of 'sour grapes'
I say the same about Theresa
I really enjoyed it.
It’s GC social media who are busily spreading carefully ambiguous mis-readings of Reindorf as part of the wider attempt to smear Stonewall.
@jeremycorbyn92 at the Cambridge Union
https://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1403019870468464643
Corbyn at the Cambridge Union is a bit like entering a toddler with arm bands into the 400m butterfly at the Tokyo Olympics, surely?
The man is as thick as mince. Now if only he got himself a jab, so he was connected to Skynet, he might up his IQ by a few points.
The comebacks are instant, esp when I am set up for an open goal!
L
O
L
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/leading-biologist-dampens-his-smoking-gun-covid-lab-leak-theory
Just astonishing.
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1403017956444016644?s=20
Video from 2015
https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/daszak-reveals-chinese-colleagues-manipulating-coronaviruses/