We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
I agree - it is the outputs that you need to look at, how good is the system working, not so much 'what percentage of men/women are there'. But then I don't think that there is anything really to celebrate in having more women than men in a class leaving medical school, it should be something that is of concern and looked in to; not a rush to judgement that men are lazy and retreating to an incel bunker.
Just wanted to let you know that divorce isnt funny
Gove's divorce is hilarious. Marries a woman that looks like a bloke and then has to get divorced when he gets caught ******* * *****.
I've read some remarkable stories online about Gove in recent days. I've no idea whether they are true. One poster claimed to be have been "walking around like a broken thing for several days", after spending the night with him.
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Mr. Royale, there's a perverse irony and unwitting idiocy in having a Select Committee dedicated to Women and Equalities.
Edited extra bit: for the sake of anyone who hasn't had their coffee yet, you can't have just one sex be equal. Like justice being for both accuser and accused, equality between the sexes has to necessarily involve both of them.
c.90% of primary school teachers were female, last time I checked.
If gender equality were consistent in its philosophy (spoiler: it's not) then we'd hear a bit more about that.
The lack of male teachers at primary school level (I am a trustee of a primary school so have an interest in this) is an issue I quite agree. Not sure why this is so. Perhaps @ydoethur has thoughts on why this might be so?
I don’t know.
I was told, when I started training, that if I went into primary education I would be a headteacher within four years,…
I’ve heard very similar stuff. Anecdote, sure, but four different primaries.
NZ elected its first transsexual MP in 1996. U.K. needs to get with the times.
We don't vote for Eddie Izzard because he's Eddie Izzard, not because of his cross-dressing.
Too many woke Fcukwits in this country , lots of weak dumb people running about trying to pretend there are many genders and men can be women and F*** knows what else. It is a sh**hole nowadays full of to***rs and wimps. It really has reached Little Britain status, any clown thinking it is anywhere near Great is a deluded halfwit. We don't vote for Izzard because he is just another useless donkey, an dattention seeking halfwit who is about as funny as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Crap comedian moves down market and tries to be an MP, who would have thought it, jumped straight over estate agent right to the bottom rung.
Puts his pious bleating about his staff into context.
'His newest restaurant, Southside Scran, has been mothballed since last July. Throughout the pandemic he has made redundancies across the Kitchin Group and cut down his team of 240 staff. In an interview with The Scotsman he said: “I had to make 100 people redundant within my company. A hundred people, phoning them up personally and telling them. Having people crying down the phone. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in business.”'
My ex was a trained chef, who talked openly about the bullying atmosphere in the restaurants she used to work. When I said that it shouldn't have to be like that, she would just shrug and say it was a pressured environment, and it was needed to get the food out.
Never made much sense to me.
That sounds like the classic justification for bullying/hazing environments. Strangely, it always turns out to be bullshit.
Quite. See it all the time.
Since plenty of pressured environments can produce results without needing bullying, there is not a need for it in any of them (though human nature means you cannot eliminate it entirely). Same reason the idea corporal punishment in schools to maintain discipline (or ok because helped the same) was horseshit, since we will all have known teachers who managed total control of their classes without either threat or actual physical chastisement.
Just wanted to let you know that divorce isnt funny
Gove's divorce is hilarious. Marries a woman that looks like a bloke and then has to get divorced when he gets caught ******* * *****.
I've read some remarkable stories online about Gove in recent days. I've no idea whether they are true. One poster claimed to be have been "walking around like a broken thing for several days", after spending the night with him.
Just wanted to let you know that divorce isnt funny
Gove's divorce is hilarious. Marries a woman that looks like a bloke and then has to get divorced when he gets caught ******* * *****.
I've read some remarkable stories online about Gove in recent days. I've no idea whether they are true. One poster claimed to be have been "walking around like a broken thing for several days", after spending the night with him.
That was because she tore of his triple layer of tesco carrier bags and realised what she had just shagged
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Six hundred and fifty MPs. How many people do you think are (or statistically would expect to be) non-binary? And do you mean that biologically (genetically), or people who are identifying that way?
Around 0.3% of the population identify as non-binary in population surveys, by self definition.
I wonder how many of that actually are, or just don't understand the question or are taking the piss or something? When you get very low numbers like that, even a small percentage of such people can affect the results significantly.
I think it is also non-binary for people to identify as non-binary, as frequently they will also identify as other gender labels.
Most surveys do come out with a figure of around 0.2-0.4% though. We may get some useful data from the recent census.
While there may be some genetic or other physical reason to be non-binary, that doesn't really fit with the epidemiology. We see rates much higher in the young, in some metropolitan areas, etc. This would suggest that sociological acceptance is a bigger factor than physical factors.
Yes, I think that's probably true. Funnily enough I was having this discussion with some friends of mine yesterday who have a distinctly non-binary son. They said in their other son's high school, several of his friends are non-binary and it's considered fashionable - "cool" if they still use that word. Certainly unimaginable when I was at a similar school decades back.
I'm not sure that most people know what the definition is - some confuse it with bisexual. That has certainly become more common, and defined as "possibly open to having sex with someone of the same gender" it probably covers a lot of people who in previous generations (like me) wouldn't have considered it for a second. Not being sure which gender you are still seems a bit strange to me, though not thinking it matters is fine, and I recognise that I'm just a child of my generation in slowly getting my head round it.
We are running a huge, uncontrolled experiment with children's mental health by encouraging them to feel insecure about their gender, and it will end very badly.
Mr. Royale, there's a perverse irony and unwitting idiocy in having a Select Committee dedicated to Women and Equalities.
Edited extra bit: for the sake of anyone who hasn't had their coffee yet, you can't have just one sex be equal. Like justice being for both accuser and accused, equality between the sexes has to necessarily involve both of them.
c.90% of primary school teachers were female, last time I checked.
If gender equality were consistent in its philosophy (spoiler: it's not) then we'd hear a bit more about that.
The lack of male teachers at primary school level (I am a trustee of a primary school so have an interest in this) is an issue I quite agree. Not sure why this is so. Perhaps @ydoethur has thoughts on why this might be so?
I don’t know.
I was told, when I started training, that if I went into primary education I would be a headteacher within four years,…
I’ve heard very similar stuff. Anecdote, sure, but four different primaries.
It was another thing that put me off primary, tbh.
In the first six years of my career, I was promoted to head of department within a year, head of faculty within three, head of year on top in four and in effect SLT in five.
But I have been very glad to give it all up and go back to being a teacher.
Even though that’s not inspiring me at the moment, as I have discussed, due to the uselessness and criminality of the DfE and their acolytes, but at least I don’t have the wholly unnecessary extra stresses they impose on those at the top.
And I certainly never wanted to be a head. That’s not for me. I might have made a capable deputy head, but I’m not going to attempt to reclimb that ladder.
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
Just wanted to let you know that divorce isnt funny
Gove's divorce is hilarious. Marries a woman that looks like a bloke and then has to get divorced when he gets caught ******* * *****.
I've read some remarkable stories online about Gove in recent days. I've no idea whether they are true. One poster claimed to be have been "walking around like a broken thing for several days", after spending the night with him.
That was because she tore of his triple layer of tesco carrier bags and realised what she had just shagged
I'm not sure of the sex of the person who posted that comment.
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
We had a female doctor several years whose interpersonal skills ranked among the worst I've known. And I've interacted with a LOT of doctors. We now have one who is the exact opposite, and when I complimented her on them she responded that at Uni she'd been told that she was really good and would really well as a GP. She'd wondered, she said, whether that was a way of telling her she wasn't in the top tier academically.
Some years ago too, I wrote a dissertation on changing practice, and found evidence that some doctors, although they went on course, did so because that was the 'thing to do' and made no changes as a result of what they had 'learned'.
It was an attitude I found in my reading, very typical of the farming community.
Sleep walking through courses that are required for "professional development" happens in many careers.
Unfortunately a lot of courses in all fields are full of unreaslitic fluff, and the process of development so tickbox (I went through one, and they wouldn't accept answers to written questions if you used a synonym, rather than the specific word they were looking for) that its not about developing yourself, it's about figuring out what they want from you and mindlessly doing that. And quite often 'attended course' is all they want from you or for you, since actually changing practice is hard and might mean others need to.
Mrs Stodge and I went to the zoo last evening - I'm reminded once more of the glorious diversity of life beyond homo sapiens. I also noted how many of the improvements at London Zoo were opened by the late Duke of Edinburgh, a reminder of his active commitment to animal welfare.
Not so happy with being told Regent's Park was "closed" at 8.30pm and we had to walk all the way round to get back to the Marylebone Road - I don't actually see how they can close that park (I can just about understand why).
I don't know who "runs" the park (as distinct from those who run in the park). We saw five youngsters on bicycles cycle straight in from the direction of Camden so I suspect I know another element of the "why".
Marginally on topic and anecdotally, in my work I tend to deal with a wide spectrum of professionals - property professionals tend to be mainly men, legal professionals are mainly women and finance professionals are a genuine mix. Programme and Project Managers (in my view a lower form of life) are a mix as well but competence is in no way related or unrelated to gender balance in my experience.
As others have said, the professions dealing with Children (psychologists, speech & language therapists and the like) are overwhelmingly female but there's more balance among housing officers (and while I'm in absolutely no way trying to belittle what happened to Chris Whitty, some of the experiences I've heard from housing officers are truly awful in terms of threats of personal and physical violence).
To take this further, there's a regular undercurrent of threatened and indeed actual violence toward come quite poorly-paid individuals in the public sector, those "on the frontline" (it's a widely used term but I'm not always certain it's appropriate in terms of the image it portrays).
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Not true. I’ve had kidney stones - badly
Women who have experienced both (stones and childbirth) are unequivocal: kidney stones are notably more painful - thanks to a trillion nerve endings in the waterworks
That being said, I can’t say my demeanor was particularly heroic the night I was afflicted: I fell to the floor, sobbed and howled in agony, literally called for my ‘mummy’, projectile vomited down the landing (about 30 feet), then I passed out from the pain
The intensity of the pain did give me an insight into torture. If a torturer can induce as much pain as a kidney stone, then I’d last about 3 seconds before confessing to anything
The most likely consequence is political because if people are treated along group lines they will start to organise along group lines, and the consequences of that is not pleasant which is why I don't support it.
The Two Ronnies have already warned us how all this will turn out should we lack vigilance. Sleep with one eye open.
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Twisted bollock. No contest. We win.
To quote Ian Fleming in Dr No, ‘pain’s a funny thing. You can’t measure it - the difference between a man having a renal colic and a woman having a baby.’
I’m not sure these comparisons are meaningful given nobody has ever experienced both.
Mrs Stodge and I went to the zoo last evening - I'm reminded once more of the glorious diversity of life beyond homo sapiens. I also noted how many of the improvements at London Zoo were opened by the late Duke of Edinburgh, a reminder of his active commitment to animal welfare.
Not so happy with being told Regent's Park was "closed" at 8.30pm and we had to walk all the way round to get back to the Marylebone Road - I don't actually see how they can close that park (I can just about understand why).
I don't know who "runs" the park (as distinct from those who run in the park). We saw five youngsters on bicycles cycle straight in from the direction of Camden so I suspect I know another element of the "why".
Marginally on topic and anecdotally, in my work I tend to deal with a wide spectrum of professionals - property professionals tend to be mainly men, legal professionals are mainly women and finance professionals are a genuine mix. Programme and Project Managers (in my view a lower form of life) are a mix as well but competence is in no way related or unrelated to gender balance in my experience.
As others have said, the professions dealing with Children (psychologists, speech & language therapists and the like) are overwhelmingly female but there's more balance among housing officers (and while I'm in absolutely no way trying to belittle what happened to Chris Whitty, some of the experiences I've heard from housing officers are truly awful in terms of threats of personal and physical violence).
To take this further, there's a regular undercurrent of threatened and indeed actual violence toward come quite poorly-paid individuals in the public sector, those "on the frontline" (it's a widely used term but I'm not always certain it's appropriate in terms of the image it portrays).
Within the legal profession, I think family law, probate, and conveyancing are mostly female, areas like criminal law, company law, finance are mostly male.
Dr. Foxy, aye. But liking a particular sport or period of history is fundamentally different to claiming you don't belong to either gender in vague and strange ways.
Ironically, perhaps, I strongly agree with you on sexual stereotypes, to the extent that some people now think if a chap's into sewing or a girl's into engineering then they're 'really' the other sex.
I'd support the right of a knowing adult to transition, though once again that's beyond me, but marketing this stuff to kids is deeply disturbing, as is the degradation of women's sport and having rapists sent to women's prison when they choose to identify that way.
A very disturbing judgment yesterday in the High Court about transwomen and prisons, essentially saying, that yes rights for men claiming to be women did harm women but too bad, their rights overrode those of women. So a man claiming to be a woman and convicted of sexual offences against women can demand to be put in a woman's prison even though the court accepted that this made women prisoners feel unsafe and put them at risk of attack.
Lovely.
The case was a judicial review which limits what a court can actually do as the test is whether the prison service has taken into account all the relevant factors in coming to its decision not whether the decision is necessarily right or, indeed, desirable. But the consequence is that once again women's safeguarding is taken less seriously than it should be. Because self-ID is, frankly, a crock of shit. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and people with it are no threat to anyone. But people who claim to have it without more are completely undermining the very real needs of trans people.
“ Transgender politics – like any politics – can be divisive. Yet in the case of Karen White, who is legally still a man but was put in a female-only prison, both sides of the transgender rights debate are united in the belief mistakes were made.
White entered the UK prison system as transgender. However, despite dressing as a woman, the 52-year-old had not undergone any surgery and was still legally a male. She was also a convicted paedophile and on remand for grievous bodily harm, burglary, multiple rapes and other sexual offences against women.
In September last year she was transferred to New Hall prison in West Yorkshire. During a three-month period at the female prison she sexually assaulted two other inmates.“
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
We had a female doctor several years whose interpersonal skills ranked among the worst I've known. And I've interacted with a LOT of doctors. We now have one who is the exact opposite, and when I complimented her on them she responded that at Uni she'd been told that she was really good and would really well as a GP. She'd wondered, she said, whether that was a way of telling her she wasn't in the top tier academically.
Some years ago too, I wrote a dissertation on changing practice, and found evidence that some doctors, although they went on course, did so because that was the 'thing to do' and made no changes as a result of what they had 'learned'.
It was an attitude I found in my reading, very typical of the farming community.
Sleep walking through courses that are required for "professional development" happens in many careers.
My 'favourite' experience in professional development was when giving a lecture to a group of GP's in the early days of 'compulsory professional development'. It was 8.30 to 9, but when the clock struck nine half of them left the room. It was explained to me that they had 'completed' however many hours were required to claim the CPD payment.
But in my years around CPD I've seen many 'sleepwalkers'!
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
We had a female doctor several years whose interpersonal skills ranked among the worst I've known. And I've interacted with a LOT of doctors. We now have one who is the exact opposite, and when I complimented her on them she responded that at Uni she'd been told that she was really good and would really well as a GP. She'd wondered, she said, whether that was a way of telling her she wasn't in the top tier academically.
Some years ago too, I wrote a dissertation on changing practice, and found evidence that some doctors, although they went on course, did so because that was the 'thing to do' and made no changes as a result of what they had 'learned'.
It was an attitude I found in my reading, very typical of the farming community.
Sleep walking through courses that are required for "professional development" happens in many careers.
Unfortunately a lot of courses in all fields are full of unreaslitic fluff, and the process of development so tickbox (I went through one, and they wouldn't accept answers to written questions if you used a synonym, rather than the specific word they were looking for) that its not about developing yourself, it's about figuring out what they want from you and mindlessly doing that. And quite often 'attended course' is all they want from you or for you, since actually changing practice is hard and might mean others need to.
I recall one course, where a vast fortune was spent, residential etc... Utter waste of time
One chap actually made something of it - he spent the 75% of the time not in the class room in the er... company of the lady giving the course.
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Twisted bollock. No contest. We win.
To quote Ian Fleming in Dr No, ‘pain’s a funny thing. You can’t measure it - the difference between a man having a renal colic and a woman having a baby.’
I’m not sure these comparisons are meaningful given nobody has ever experienced both.
Am I missing something, please? Don't women have renal colic too?
Puts his pious bleating about his staff into context.
'His newest restaurant, Southside Scran, has been mothballed since last July. Throughout the pandemic he has made redundancies across the Kitchin Group and cut down his team of 240 staff. In an interview with The Scotsman he said: “I had to make 100 people redundant within my company. A hundred people, phoning them up personally and telling them. Having people crying down the phone. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in business.”'
This Tom Kitchin:
HOTEL and restaurants are on the brink of going bust because they can’t recruit enough overseas staff due to Brexit, industry leaders warn.
Hospitality chiefs revealed they have been forced to scale back services and opening hours amid a desperate struggle to fill key jobs such as kitchen porters, housekeepers and chefs.
...
Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin also told of his fears for his Edinburgh restaurant. He said: “It’s front of house. It’s kitchen staff. It’s all over.
“After this terrible pandemic, which has suffocated our industry, they can’t open again because they can’t find the staff.”
Mrs Stodge and I went to the zoo last evening - I'm reminded once more of the glorious diversity of life beyond homo sapiens. I also noted how many of the improvements at London Zoo were opened by the late Duke of Edinburgh, a reminder of his active commitment to animal welfare.
Not so happy with being told Regent's Park was "closed" at 8.30pm and we had to walk all the way round to get back to the Marylebone Road - I don't actually see how they can close that park (I can just about understand why).
I don't know who "runs" the park (as distinct from those who run in the park). We saw five youngsters on bicycles cycle straight in from the direction of Camden so I suspect I know another element of the "why".
Marginally on topic and anecdotally, in my work I tend to deal with a wide spectrum of professionals - property professionals tend to be mainly men, legal professionals are mainly women and finance professionals are a genuine mix. Programme and Project Managers (in my view a lower form of life) are a mix as well but competence is in no way related or unrelated to gender balance in my experience.
As others have said, the professions dealing with Children (psychologists, speech & language therapists and the like) are overwhelmingly female but there's more balance among housing officers (and while I'm in absolutely no way trying to belittle what happened to Chris Whitty, some of the experiences I've heard from housing officers are truly awful in terms of threats of personal and physical violence).
To take this further, there's a regular undercurrent of threatened and indeed actual violence toward come quite poorly-paid individuals in the public sector, those "on the frontline" (it's a widely used term but I'm not always certain it's appropriate in terms of the image it portrays).
The Royal Parks administer Regent’s Park, among others, and it has always been locked at dusk. Quite successfully. I once got locked in and you have to scale nasty spiked railings to get out. An elderly or infirm person would be stuck.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
Ronnie's known to be a 'bit of a character'; almost a professional Lancastrian. Never regarded him myself as a Test player. Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
Donald Trump is the fourth worst American President according to C-Span's regular survey of historians.
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 4 Theodore Roosevelt 5 Dwight D. Eisenhower 6 Harry S. Truman 7 Thomas Jefferson 8 John F. Kennedy 9 Ronald Reagan 10 Barack Obama
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Twisted bollock. No contest. We win.
To quote Ian Fleming in Dr No, ‘pain’s a funny thing. You can’t measure it - the difference between a man having a renal colic and a woman having a baby.’
I’m not sure these comparisons are meaningful given nobody has ever experienced both.
Am I missing something, please? Don't women have renal colic too?
I was thinking of the twisted bollock, but I realise that my post was ambiguous and badly worded.
‘ Why Britain needs a trans gender MP, and the reprimand Boris Johnson gave his Cabinet over LGBT culture wars. My interview with Lord Herbert in @TheTimes today. Listen to it on T&G on @TimesRadio tomorrow.’
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
Ronnie's known to be a 'bit of a character'; almost a professional Lancastrian. Never regarded him myself as a Test player. Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
He coaches at New Hall I think. Maybe coaching my boys in 10-12 years (in my dreams)
I am moving near Chelmsford soon, got the keys this week. Would be nice to see you over there one weekday
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
Ronnie's known to be a 'bit of a character'; almost a professional Lancastrian. Never regarded him myself as a Test player. Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
He coaches at New Hall I think. Maybe coaching my boys in 10-12 years (in my dreams)
I am moving near Chelmsford soon, got the keys this week. Would be nice to see you over there one weekday
Donald Trump is the fourth worst American President according to C-Span's regular survey of historians.
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 4 Theodore Roosevelt 5 Dwight D. Eisenhower 6 Harry S. Truman 7 Thomas Jefferson 8 John F. Kennedy 9 Ronald Reagan 10 Barack Obama
Donald Trump is the fourth worst American President according to C-Span's regular survey of historians.
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 4 Theodore Roosevelt 5 Dwight D. Eisenhower 6 Harry S. Truman 7 Thomas Jefferson 8 John F. Kennedy 9 Ronald Reagan 10 Barack Obama
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
For a job, I am reading the NY Supreme Court's judgement against Giuliani, suspending his law licence. It is actually compulsive reading, if you can get over the dry and pretentious language common to most legal opinions. It is also hilarious, presumably unintentionally so.
Here is a fairly typical passage:
[Giuliani claimed that ] 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.The Georgia Office of the Secretary of State undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all of the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed that there were zero (0) underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters (four) had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, they all turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
[Giuliani] does not expressly deny the truth of this information. Instead [Giuliani] claims that he reasonably reliedon “expert” affidavits, including one by Bryan Geels, in believing the facts he stated were true. None of these affidavits were provided to the Court ... Other than [Giuliani] calling him an “expert,” we do not know Mr.Geels' actual area of expertise or what qualifies him as such. Merely providing names and conclusory assertions that respondent had a basis for what he said, does not raise any disputed issue about whether misconduct has occurred.
Anyway, I'm finding it funny. But, more importantly, I think that, while parts of America's democracy may be under threat, its courts are still independent and robust.
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
Ronnie's known to be a 'bit of a character'; almost a professional Lancastrian. Never regarded him myself as a Test player. Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
He coaches at New Hall I think. Maybe coaching my boys in 10-12 years (in my dreams)
I am moving near Chelmsford soon, got the keys this week. Would be nice to see you over there one weekday
Hope the move goes smoothly.
Thanks
Got the keys Wednesday, by Thursday I had been quoted 15k to move a manhole 🙈
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
Ronnie's known to be a 'bit of a character'; almost a professional Lancastrian. Never regarded him myself as a Test player. Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
He coaches at New Hall I think. Maybe coaching my boys in 10-12 years (in my dreams)
I am moving near Chelmsford soon, got the keys this week. Would be nice to see you over there one weekday
Think you're right about Nasser & New Hall. Are you moving to one of the estates nearby?
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Twisted bollock. No contest. We win.
To quote Ian Fleming in Dr No, ‘pain’s a funny thing. You can’t measure it - the difference between a man having a renal colic and a woman having a baby.’
I’m not sure these comparisons are meaningful given nobody has ever experienced both.
Am I missing something, please? Don't women have renal colic too?
I was thinking of the twisted bollock, but I realise that my post was ambiguous and badly worded.
Never mind, we all drop bollocks inadvertently at times.
Donald Trump is the fourth worst American President according to C-Span's regular survey of historians.
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 4 Theodore Roosevelt 5 Dwight D. Eisenhower 6 Harry S. Truman 7 Thomas Jefferson 8 John F. Kennedy 9 Ronald Reagan 10 Barack Obama
Donald Trump is the fourth worst American President according to C-Span's regular survey of historians.
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 4 Theodore Roosevelt 5 Dwight D. Eisenhower 6 Harry S. Truman 7 Thomas Jefferson 8 John F. Kennedy 9 Ronald Reagan 10 Barack Obama
My Neighbour turned up at my door in an anxious state one afternoon a few years ago. He said he owns our garden, based on some document from a hundred years ago - even though the title plan for both properties indicates otherwise, as well as the reality on the ground.
The cause of this outburst was that we had a planning application in to do some minor works. I told him he would have to put his case to the Council (if he was correct, I would have needed to have filled in a different ownership certificate). The Council took one look at the land registry plan and found in my favour, helpfully the planning officer then wrote as much in the officer report.
He hasn't raised it again for a few years, but I am not convinced it has completely gone away.
The problem with these situations is that they quickly descend in to a fog where it is not clear who is right or wrong (as is the case with the conservative councillor).
Important point, that.
When one thing arises, everybody checks everything and all the issues get flushed out at once.
I think "found in my favour" is the wrong terminology. AIUI the Council have no power to make such a finding - only to decide their opinions and how their process should operate.
He should have taken his advice from a solicitor or MRICS.
Well they agreed that I had filled out the correct ownership certificate, meaning that on the evidence before them he doesn't have any interest in the land. But you are right that this is not a binding finding over the issue. That would need to be determined in a court.
What was interesting is the fact that the land registry plan is not really absolute in relation to boundaries, there is also a procedure of changing title plans if they are incorrectly drawn based on earlier information. So this type of problem can really happen to anyone - I've come to the view that freehold land isn't really what it seems.
A friend of mine had an amusing fight over land a few years ago. Usually the Crown owns the foreshore (I think) as a matter of right, except for a chunk of North Somerset which was granted to my friend’s ancestors a while back.
The government tried to claim it but it was proved in court they didn’t. But they then stated in the recitals of some act of parliament that they owned this specific piece of foreshore… that had to go pretty far up the chain to sort out
These feudal irregularities should be killed off.
The Crown should seize your friend’s foreshore by compulsory purchase.
Why? Why should the state seize private property?
In the national interest to prevent it being sold to a russian oligarch.
These guys were French oligarchs whose family moved here a while back
eek emoji
Nearly 1000 years ago…
Bloody foreigners.
Indeed, I have a purity of Celtic heritage that pre dates all the invaders.
I stake my claim!
You tell them MP. A quick blast of “Get off my land!” Will have those Bloody normans running.
I am quite surprised there has been no demands for reparations from a Celtic rights group. I am only saying this semi humorously.
What about the pre-Celtic groups? Bloody Celts with their hill forts tearing up the landscape. Built on Green Belt with no planning permission....
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
Ronnie's known to be a 'bit of a character'; almost a professional Lancastrian. Never regarded him myself as a Test player. Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
He coaches at New Hall I think. Maybe coaching my boys in 10-12 years (in my dreams)
I am moving near Chelmsford soon, got the keys this week. Would be nice to see you over there one weekday
Think you're right about Nasser & New Hall. Are you moving to one of the estates nearby?
No, to Ingatestone. The school there is a very interesting looking ‘Anglo European’. I think it sounds quite cool, but is an Academy
Dr. Foxy, aye. But liking a particular sport or period of history is fundamentally different to claiming you don't belong to either gender in vague and strange ways.
Ironically, perhaps, I strongly agree with you on sexual stereotypes, to the extent that some people now think if a chap's into sewing or a girl's into engineering then they're 'really' the other sex.
I'd support the right of a knowing adult to transition, though once again that's beyond me, but marketing this stuff to kids is deeply disturbing, as is the degradation of women's sport and having rapists sent to women's prison when they choose to identify that way.
A very disturbing judgment yesterday in the High Court about transwomen and prisons, essentially saying, that yes rights for men claiming to be women did harm women but too bad, their rights overrode those of women. So a man claiming to be a woman and convicted of sexual offences against women can demand to be put in a woman's prison even though the court accepted that this made women prisoners feel unsafe and put them at risk of attack.
Lovely.
The case was a judicial review which limits what a court can actually do as the test is whether the prison service has taken into account all the relevant factors in coming to its decision not whether the decision is necessarily right or, indeed, desirable. But the consequence is that once again women's safeguarding is taken less seriously than it should be. Because self-ID is, frankly, a crock of shit. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and people with it are no threat to anyone. But people who claim to have it without more are completely undermining the very real needs of trans people.
Interestingly, as in the Keira Bell case, it appears that the Prison Service has not been collecting data on who in prison is or is not trans and, following this judgment, they will have to do so. Similar to the lack of evidence for some of the medical treatment given to allegedly trans children.
It is alarming when policies with significant consequences for individuals and societies are taken with very little or no data or evidence in support.
The irony about self-ID is that it is fundamentally rooted in old-fashioned stereotypes which feminism has tried hard to overcome. It is also inherently homophobic. After all, if gender is a choice why shouldn't sexuality also be a choice? Which is exactly the argument that a lot of people used against gay people - that homosexuality is a choice and that they had made the wrong choice of an evil lifestyle. Whereas it isn't. And they haven't.
I suspect the only fix for this issue is going to be a small prison or section for transwomen prisoners. Nothing else is practical...
Effectively this is what has happened in Scotland in that someone in the same position as described by @Cyclefree is in a woman's prison but is kept in a separate wing with no contact with the remainder of the population there. I really do not see how Prison authorities can do anything else in the face of such an obvious risk. They will be sued if they don't.
That is the obvious practical solution. But the demand by trans activists is that they should be in a women's prison with full access to other women prisoners even if (a) they have been found guilty of sexual assaults against women; (b) this increases the risk to women prisoners; and (c) they genuinely feel unsafe.
And yesterday's judgment makes this more likely.
It is both absurd and horrifying. The effect of the judgment is to diminish the rights of women. Because this is about prisoners no-one will give a damn. Sadly, it will likely be when such a policy is adopted among the non-prison population and some tragedy results that people might start asking some obvious questions about how and why this has occurred.
"For context, the court heard that a significant number of transwomen in jail are there for sexual offences. In March/April 2019, there were 163 transgender prisoners, of whom 81 had been convicted of one or more sexual offences. 129 of those prisoners were allocated to the male estate, 34 to the female estate."
"The judge also found that female prisons, who are disproportionately likely to have been victims of sexual assault, may be frankly terrified of being confined with a male-bodied sex offender: "
Dr. Foxy, aye. But liking a particular sport or period of history is fundamentally different to claiming you don't belong to either gender in vague and strange ways.
Ironically, perhaps, I strongly agree with you on sexual stereotypes, to the extent that some people now think if a chap's into sewing or a girl's into engineering then they're 'really' the other sex.
I'd support the right of a knowing adult to transition, though once again that's beyond me, but marketing this stuff to kids is deeply disturbing, as is the degradation of women's sport and having rapists sent to women's prison when they choose to identify that way.
A very disturbing judgment yesterday in the High Court about transwomen and prisons, essentially saying, that yes rights for men claiming to be women did harm women but too bad, their rights overrode those of women. So a man claiming to be a woman and convicted of sexual offences against women can demand to be put in a woman's prison even though the court accepted that this made women prisoners feel unsafe and put them at risk of attack.
Lovely.
The case was a judicial review which limits what a court can actually do as the test is whether the prison service has taken into account all the relevant factors in coming to its decision not whether the decision is necessarily right or, indeed, desirable. But the consequence is that once again women's safeguarding is taken less seriously than it should be. Because self-ID is, frankly, a crock of shit. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and people with it are no threat to anyone. But people who claim to have it without more are completely undermining the very real needs of trans people.
Interestingly, as in the Keira Bell case, it appears that the Prison Service has not been collecting data on who in prison is or is not trans and, following this judgment, they will have to do so. Similar to the lack of evidence for some of the medical treatment given to allegedly trans children.
It is alarming when policies with significant consequences for individuals and societies are taken with very little or no data or evidence in support.
The irony about self-ID is that it is fundamentally rooted in old-fashioned stereotypes which feminism has tried hard to overcome. It is also inherently homophobic. After all, if gender is a choice why shouldn't sexuality also be a choice? Which is exactly the argument that a lot of people used against gay people - that homosexuality is a choice and that they had made the wrong choice of an evil lifestyle. Whereas it isn't. And they haven't.
I suspect the only fix for this issue is going to be a small prison or section for transwomen prisoners. Nothing else is practical...
Effectively this is what has happened in Scotland in that someone in the same position as described by @Cyclefree is in a woman's prison but is kept in a separate wing with no contact with the remainder of the population there. I really do not see how Prison authorities can do anything else in the face of such an obvious risk. They will be sued if they don't.
That is the obvious practical solution. But the demand by trans activists is that they should be in a women's prison with full access to other women prisoners even if (a) they have been found guilty of sexual assaults against women; (b) this increases the risk to women prisoners; and (c) they genuinely feel unsafe.
And yesterday's judgment makes this more likely.
It is both absurd and horrifying. The effect of the judgment is to diminish the rights of women. Because this is about prisoners no-one will give a damn. Sadly, it will likely be when such a policy is adopted among the non-prison population and some tragedy results that people might start asking some obvious questions about how and why this has occurred.
"For context, the court heard that a significant number of transwomen in jail are there for sexual offences. In March/April 2019, there were 163 transgender prisoners, of whom 81 had been convicted of one or more sexual offences. 129 of those prisoners were allocated to the male estate, 34 to the female estate."
"The judge also found that female prisons, who are disproportionately likely to have been victims of sexual assault, may be frankly terrified of being confined with a male-bodied sex offender: "
For a job, I am reading the NY Supreme Court's judgement against Giuliani, suspending his law licence. It is actually compulsive reading, if you can get over the dry and pretentious language common to most legal opinions. It is also hilarious, presumably unintentionally so.
Here is a fairly typical passage:
[Giuliani claimed that ] 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.The Georgia Office of the Secretary of State undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all of the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed that there were zero (0) underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters (four) had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, they all turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
[Giuliani] does not expressly deny the truth of this information. Instead [Giuliani] claims that he reasonably reliedon “expert” affidavits, including one by Bryan Geels, in believing the facts he stated were true. None of these affidavits were provided to the Court ... Other than [Giuliani] calling him an “expert,” we do not know Mr.Geels' actual area of expertise or what qualifies him as such. Merely providing names and conclusory assertions that respondent had a basis for what he said, does not raise any disputed issue about whether misconduct has occurred.
Anyway, I'm finding it funny. But, more importantly, I think that, while parts of America's democracy may be under threat, its courts are still independent and robust.
The think I find extraordinary is the gap between the funny, articulate, clever* Giuliani who smashed the Mob in New York and the current version.
*As seen in contemporary interview, film footage etc.
The Royal Parks administer Regent’s Park, among others, and it has always been locked at dusk. Quite successfully. I once got locked in and you have to scale nasty spiked railings to get out. An elderly or infirm person would be stuck.
Thanks - there looked to be plenty of small exits onto the Outer Circle by Cumberland Terrace which weren't staffed or appeared to have any kind of gate. As I say, we saw five young gentlemen cycle straight into the park from the direction of Camden and they didn't look the type who would take the advice of a single park keeper to "leave quietly". To be fair, we did also see plenty of Police in the area so perhaps they assist the more recalcitrant.
We were prevented from walking down The Broad Walk from the zoo just after 8.30pm.
The access roads into the Outer Circle and Ulster Terrace could be closed off I imagine - there's a gate at Park Square East and I imagine another by the Royal Academy of Music.
The odd thing about walking round the Outer Circle, especially on the northern side, is there's almost no traffic and you could think you were in rural England rather than the middle of London.
The park is delightful as you've often said. I presume you know it more from the Primrose Hill side.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
Very few people would remain silent, when subjected to intense pain. My understanding is that agents are trained to mislead their interrogators, if facing torture. Or to release genuine information at the point at which it ceases to endanger other operatives.
There's no doubt Violet Szabo was tortured, but thankfully, some of the more lurid stories that were circulated about her fate (and which caused her daughter a lot of distress) were untrue.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
Dr. Foxy, aye. But liking a particular sport or period of history is fundamentally different to claiming you don't belong to either gender in vague and strange ways.
Ironically, perhaps, I strongly agree with you on sexual stereotypes, to the extent that some people now think if a chap's into sewing or a girl's into engineering then they're 'really' the other sex.
I'd support the right of a knowing adult to transition, though once again that's beyond me, but marketing this stuff to kids is deeply disturbing, as is the degradation of women's sport and having rapists sent to women's prison when they choose to identify that way.
A very disturbing judgment yesterday in the High Court about transwomen and prisons, essentially saying, that yes rights for men claiming to be women did harm women but too bad, their rights overrode those of women. So a man claiming to be a woman and convicted of sexual offences against women can demand to be put in a woman's prison even though the court accepted that this made women prisoners feel unsafe and put them at risk of attack.
Lovely.
The case was a judicial review which limits what a court can actually do as the test is whether the prison service has taken into account all the relevant factors in coming to its decision not whether the decision is necessarily right or, indeed, desirable. But the consequence is that once again women's safeguarding is taken less seriously than it should be. Because self-ID is, frankly, a crock of shit. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and people with it are no threat to anyone. But people who claim to have it without more are completely undermining the very real needs of trans people.
Interestingly, as in the Keira Bell case, it appears that the Prison Service has not been collecting data on who in prison is or is not trans and, following this judgment, they will have to do so. Similar to the lack of evidence for some of the medical treatment given to allegedly trans children.
It is alarming when policies with significant consequences for individuals and societies are taken with very little or no data or evidence in support.
The irony about self-ID is that it is fundamentally rooted in old-fashioned stereotypes which feminism has tried hard to overcome. It is also inherently homophobic. After all, if gender is a choice why shouldn't sexuality also be a choice? Which is exactly the argument that a lot of people used against gay people - that homosexuality is a choice and that they had made the wrong choice of an evil lifestyle. Whereas it isn't. And they haven't.
I suspect the only fix for this issue is going to be a small prison or section for transwomen prisoners. Nothing else is practical...
Effectively this is what has happened in Scotland in that someone in the same position as described by @Cyclefree is in a woman's prison but is kept in a separate wing with no contact with the remainder of the population there. I really do not see how Prison authorities can do anything else in the face of such an obvious risk. They will be sued if they don't.
That is the obvious practical solution. But the demand by trans activists is that they should be in a women's prison with full access to other women prisoners even if (a) they have been found guilty of sexual assaults against women; (b) this increases the risk to women prisoners; and (c) they genuinely feel unsafe.
And yesterday's judgment makes this more likely.
It is both absurd and horrifying. The effect of the judgment is to diminish the rights of women. Because this is about prisoners no-one will give a damn. Sadly, it will likely be when such a policy is adopted among the non-prison population and some tragedy results that people might start asking some obvious questions about how and why this has occurred.
"For context, the court heard that a significant number of transwomen in jail are there for sexual offences. In March/April 2019, there were 163 transgender prisoners, of whom 81 had been convicted of one or more sexual offences. 129 of those prisoners were allocated to the male estate, 34 to the female estate."
"The judge also found that female prisons, who are disproportionately likely to have been victims of sexual assault, may be frankly terrified of being confined with a male-bodied sex offender: "
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Wasn't that a Chubby Brown joke? You all go back and have another baby. We get our cock caught in our zip once and we get our mum to put buttons on our trousers.
Funny how the "more geniuses" bell-curve mob rarely mention the left hand side.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
Very few people would remain silent, when subjected to intense pain. My understanding is that agents are trained to mislead their interrogators, if facing torture. Or to release genuine information at the point at which it ceases to endanger other operatives.
There's no doubt Violet Szabo was tortured, but thankfully, some of the more lurid stories that were circulated about her fate (and which caused her daughter a lot of distress) were untrue.
Yes. But the facts are still that she was interrogated by some of the worst torturers in modern history. And didn't break.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Donald Trump is the fourth worst American President according to C-Span's regular survey of historians.
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 4 Theodore Roosevelt 5 Dwight D. Eisenhower 6 Harry S. Truman 7 Thomas Jefferson 8 John F. Kennedy 9 Ronald Reagan 10 Barack Obama
Donald Trump is the fourth worst American President according to C-Span's regular survey of historians.
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 4 Theodore Roosevelt 5 Dwight D. Eisenhower 6 Harry S. Truman 7 Thomas Jefferson 8 John F. Kennedy 9 Ronald Reagan 10 Barack Obama
Yes but one founded the country and the other doubled its size. I'd put Roosevelt over Washington myself - but the former's Supreme Court packing, anti-imperialism and closeness to Stalin cost him the top spot.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
But if they do exist: chapeau
You have to hive off the pain into a separate space, deep deep inside you, and resolve not to visit it until sufficient time has passed for it to have withered away to something bearable. This is what I did after 12th Dec 2019 and it did the trick. Brave? No, not really. Necessary.
Dr. Foxy, aye. But liking a particular sport or period of history is fundamentally different to claiming you don't belong to either gender in vague and strange ways.
Ironically, perhaps, I strongly agree with you on sexual stereotypes, to the extent that some people now think if a chap's into sewing or a girl's into engineering then they're 'really' the other sex.
I'd support the right of a knowing adult to transition, though once again that's beyond me, but marketing this stuff to kids is deeply disturbing, as is the degradation of women's sport and having rapists sent to women's prison when they choose to identify that way.
A very disturbing judgment yesterday in the High Court about transwomen and prisons, essentially saying, that yes rights for men claiming to be women did harm women but too bad, their rights overrode those of women. So a man claiming to be a woman and convicted of sexual offences against women can demand to be put in a woman's prison even though the court accepted that this made women prisoners feel unsafe and put them at risk of attack.
Lovely.
The case was a judicial review which limits what a court can actually do as the test is whether the prison service has taken into account all the relevant factors in coming to its decision not whether the decision is necessarily right or, indeed, desirable. But the consequence is that once again women's safeguarding is taken less seriously than it should be. Because self-ID is, frankly, a crock of shit. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and people with it are no threat to anyone. But people who claim to have it without more are completely undermining the very real needs of trans people.
Interestingly, as in the Keira Bell case, it appears that the Prison Service has not been collecting data on who in prison is or is not trans and, following this judgment, they will have to do so. Similar to the lack of evidence for some of the medical treatment given to allegedly trans children.
It is alarming when policies with significant consequences for individuals and societies are taken with very little or no data or evidence in support.
The irony about self-ID is that it is fundamentally rooted in old-fashioned stereotypes which feminism has tried hard to overcome. It is also inherently homophobic. After all, if gender is a choice why shouldn't sexuality also be a choice? Which is exactly the argument that a lot of people used against gay people - that homosexuality is a choice and that they had made the wrong choice of an evil lifestyle. Whereas it isn't. And they haven't.
I suspect the only fix for this issue is going to be a small prison or section for transwomen prisoners. Nothing else is practical...
Effectively this is what has happened in Scotland in that someone in the same position as described by @Cyclefree is in a woman's prison but is kept in a separate wing with no contact with the remainder of the population there. I really do not see how Prison authorities can do anything else in the face of such an obvious risk. They will be sued if they don't.
That is the obvious practical solution. But the demand by trans activists is that they should be in a women's prison with full access to other women prisoners even if (a) they have been found guilty of sexual assaults against women; (b) this increases the risk to women prisoners; and (c) they genuinely feel unsafe.
And yesterday's judgment makes this more likely.
It is both absurd and horrifying. The effect of the judgment is to diminish the rights of women. Because this is about prisoners no-one will give a damn. Sadly, it will likely be when such a policy is adopted among the non-prison population and some tragedy results that people might start asking some obvious questions about how and why this has occurred.
"For context, the court heard that a significant number of transwomen in jail are there for sexual offences. In March/April 2019, there were 163 transgender prisoners, of whom 81 had been convicted of one or more sexual offences. 129 of those prisoners were allocated to the male estate, 34 to the female estate."
"The judge also found that female prisons, who are disproportionately likely to have been victims of sexual assault, may be frankly terrified of being confined with a male-bodied sex offender: "
The Karen White case is an example of this madness. Where academic over-thinking meets reality, and wins
It's like being required to accept the "truth" of Lysenkoism, or eugenics.
The Karen White case is like some kind of old fable where a fox glues feathers to his fur and tells the farmer he is now a chicken, so the farmer lets him live in the hen house
Just wanted to let you know that divorce isnt funny
Gove's divorce is hilarious. Marries a woman that looks like a bloke and then has to get divorced when he gets caught ******* * *****.
I've read some remarkable stories online about Gove in recent days. I've no idea whether they are true. One poster claimed to be have been "walking around like a broken thing for several days", after spending the night with him.
My limited experience of looking stuff up on twitter is that some of it is true, most of it is rubbish, and there is no easy way of telling the difference.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
Very few people would remain silent, when subjected to intense pain. My understanding is that agents are trained to mislead their interrogators, if facing torture. Or to release genuine information at the point at which it ceases to endanger other operatives.
There's no doubt Violet Szabo was tortured, but thankfully, some of the more lurid stories that were circulated about her fate (and which caused her daughter a lot of distress) were untrue.
Yes. But the facts are still that she was interrogated by some of the worst torturers in modern history. And didn't break.
The worst torturers in modern times were probably the people who carried out Operation Condor. They were revoltingly inventive. There's a great Peter O'Toole film called Power Play where Donald Pleasance, playing a vile security chief named Blair (!) tortures a young woman in similar fashion. It's not particularly graphic, but it's really chilling.
The Royal Parks administer Regent’s Park, among others, and it has always been locked at dusk. Quite successfully. I once got locked in and you have to scale nasty spiked railings to get out. An elderly or infirm person would be stuck.
Thanks - there looked to be plenty of small exits onto the Outer Circle by Cumberland Terrace which weren't staffed or appeared to have any kind of gate. As I say, we saw five young gentlemen cycle straight into the park from the direction of Camden and they didn't look the type who would take the advice of a single park keeper to "leave quietly". To be fair, we did also see plenty of Police in the area so perhaps they assist the more recalcitrant.
We were prevented from walking down The Broad Walk from the zoo just after 8.30pm.
The access roads into the Outer Circle and Ulster Terrace could be closed off I imagine - there's a gate at Park Square East and I imagine another by the Royal Academy of Music.
The odd thing about walking round the Outer Circle, especially on the northern side, is there's almost no traffic and you could think you were in rural England rather than the middle of London.
The park is delightful as you've often said. I presume you know it more from the Primrose Hill side.
Are you a fan of the zoo?
It’s a glorious park, perhaps the most beautiful in the world, because of the Nash Terraces all around and dotted within.
I am fairly sure the entirety of the main park is sealed at night. All gates close and lock. There are fringe areas around the outer circle which cannot be sealed
I like the zoo but it suffers for me from over-familiarity. I must have taken my kids there a million times because it is so near. However I do love picnicking on a sunny day in the very English gardens and then hearing the roar of an Asian lion, rolling across the sward
If you get the chance, go visit St John’s Lodge gardens. A secretive enclave hidden away with its own gate by the inner circle. Absolutely exquisite
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
Very few people would remain silent, when subjected to intense pain. My understanding is that agents are trained to mislead their interrogators, if facing torture. Or to release genuine information at the point at which it ceases to endanger other operatives.
There's no doubt Violet Szabo was tortured, but thankfully, some of the more lurid stories that were circulated about her fate (and which caused her daughter a lot of distress) were untrue.
Virginia McKenna blasting away with a sub-machine gun in Carve Her Name with Pride. The trick, aiui, is to make sure the agent knows as little as possible in the first place. And to give them a cyanide pill.
Six hundred and fifty MPs. How many people do you think are (or statistically would expect to be) non-binary? And do you mean that biologically (genetically), or people who are identifying that way?
Around 0.3% of the population identify as non-binary in population surveys, by self definition.
I wonder how many of that actually are, or just don't understand the question or are taking the piss or something? When you get very low numbers like that, even a small percentage of such people can affect the results significantly.
I think it is also non-binary for people to identify as non-binary, as frequently they will also identify as other gender labels.
Most surveys do come out with a figure of around 0.2-0.4% though. We may get some useful data from the recent census.
While there may be some genetic or other physical reason to be non-binary, that doesn't really fit with the epidemiology. We see rates much higher in the young, in some metropolitan areas, etc. This would suggest that sociological acceptance is a bigger factor than physical factors.
Yes, I think that's probably true. Funnily enough I was having this discussion with some friends of mine yesterday who have a distinctly non-binary son. They said in their other son's high school, several of his friends are non-binary and it's considered fashionable - "cool" if they still use that word. Certainly unimaginable when I was at a similar school decades back.
I'm not sure that most people know what the definition is - some confuse it with bisexual. That has certainly become more common, and defined as "possibly open to having sex with someone of the same gender" it probably covers a lot of people who in previous generations (like me) wouldn't have considered it for a second. Not being sure which gender you are still seems a bit strange to me, though not thinking it matters is fine, and I recognise that I'm just a child of my generation in slowly getting my head round it.
We are running a huge, uncontrolled experiment with children's mental health by encouraging them to feel insecure about their gender, and it will end very badly.
That's... that's the exact opposite of what is happening.
JUST IN: Ollie Robinson has been handed a suspension of 8 matches, 5 of those suspended for 2 years, following an investigation into his historic offensive tweets.
Three matches have already been served and he is available to play immediately. He has also been fined £3,200
Ridiculous OTT punishment. For context Craig Overton got a 2 match ban for racist abuse during a game.
Yes, but they like him. He was picked on potential, Robinson because he took so many wickets they couldn’t ignore him any longer without looking even stupider than they are.
Overton isn't good enough for international cricket.
So? For how many years were the likes of Ronnie Irani and Ian Salisbury picked?
Don't you be rude about Ronnie. Highly thought of in Essex cricketing circles. Since he's been cricket chairman we've won a lot of trophies.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
He was a great county all rounder, especially as a batsman later in his career. And Ian Salisbury was a brilliant county spinner.
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
Ronnie's known to be a 'bit of a character'; almost a professional Lancastrian. Never regarded him myself as a Test player. Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
He coaches at New Hall I think. Maybe coaching my boys in 10-12 years (in my dreams)
I am moving near Chelmsford soon, got the keys this week. Would be nice to see you over there one weekday
Think you're right about Nasser & New Hall. Are you moving to one of the estates nearby?
No, to Ingatestone. The school there is a very interesting looking ‘Anglo European’. I think it sounds quite cool, but is an Academy
The Anglo-European always had a good reputation when I was concerned about such things. Someone I knew at school moved there when he had a family because of it, but that was a long, long time ago. There's a horse sanctuary there, too.
For a job, I am reading the NY Supreme Court's judgement against Giuliani, suspending his law licence. It is actually compulsive reading, if you can get over the dry and pretentious language common to most legal opinions. It is also hilarious, presumably unintentionally so.
Here is a fairly typical passage:
[Giuliani claimed that ] 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.The Georgia Office of the Secretary of State undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all of the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed that there were zero (0) underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters (four) had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, they all turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
[Giuliani] does not expressly deny the truth of this information. Instead [Giuliani] claims that he reasonably reliedon “expert” affidavits, including one by Bryan Geels, in believing the facts he stated were true. None of these affidavits were provided to the Court ... Other than [Giuliani] calling him an “expert,” we do not know Mr.Geels' actual area of expertise or what qualifies him as such. Merely providing names and conclusory assertions that respondent had a basis for what he said, does not raise any disputed issue about whether misconduct has occurred.
Anyway, I'm finding it funny. But, more importantly, I think that, while parts of America's democracy may be under threat, its courts are still independent and robust.
The think I find extraordinary is the gap between the funny, articulate, clever* Giuliani who smashed the Mob in New York and the current version.
*As seen in contemporary interview, film footage etc.
He's obviously clever, but I heard from somebody who worked for the NY DA's at the time (and, improbably, dated a relative of mine for a while) that he was much better at PR than at smashing the mob, which was in any case a huge team effort. I got the sense that he did 5% of the work and got 95% of the credit. Not that he didn't do good work - just that his role was totally oversold by the media, who of course like to focus on personalities.
But then there might have been some sour grapes as my acquaintance worked for the city while Giuliani was federal.
Just seeing the photos of Engkand squad travelling to Italy.
After 18 months of this pandemic, I am still shocked that VVIP aren't wearing high quality masks. For footballers literally have any other inch of their lives optimised for performance, but they are given the crappiest masks.
For a job, I am reading the NY Supreme Court's judgement against Giuliani, suspending his law licence. It is actually compulsive reading, if you can get over the dry and pretentious language common to most legal opinions. It is also hilarious, presumably unintentionally so.
Here is a fairly typical passage:
[Giuliani claimed that ] 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.The Georgia Office of the Secretary of State undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all of the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed that there were zero (0) underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters (four) had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, they all turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
[Giuliani] does not expressly deny the truth of this information. Instead [Giuliani] claims that he reasonably reliedon “expert” affidavits, including one by Bryan Geels, in believing the facts he stated were true. None of these affidavits were provided to the Court ... Other than [Giuliani] calling him an “expert,” we do not know Mr.Geels' actual area of expertise or what qualifies him as such. Merely providing names and conclusory assertions that respondent had a basis for what he said, does not raise any disputed issue about whether misconduct has occurred.
Anyway, I'm finding it funny. But, more importantly, I think that, while parts of America's democracy may be under threat, its courts are still independent and robust.
I think many legal judgements on such emotive issues can be downright hilarious, precisely because they have to be written in dry, pretentious language, and the occasional overt criticism therefore stands out and packs a punch. 'It is not clear from z how X can genuinely assert y' may look bland, but amidst such a judgement is tantamount to the author going 'Dude's a liar, and a bad one'.
For a job, I am reading the NY Supreme Court's judgement against Giuliani, suspending his law licence. It is actually compulsive reading, if you can get over the dry and pretentious language common to most legal opinions. It is also hilarious, presumably unintentionally so.
Here is a fairly typical passage:
[Giuliani claimed that ] 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.The Georgia Office of the Secretary of State undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all of the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed that there were zero (0) underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters (four) had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, they all turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
[Giuliani] does not expressly deny the truth of this information. Instead [Giuliani] claims that he reasonably reliedon “expert” affidavits, including one by Bryan Geels, in believing the facts he stated were true. None of these affidavits were provided to the Court ... Other than [Giuliani] calling him an “expert,” we do not know Mr.Geels' actual area of expertise or what qualifies him as such. Merely providing names and conclusory assertions that respondent had a basis for what he said, does not raise any disputed issue about whether misconduct has occurred.
Anyway, I'm finding it funny. But, more importantly, I think that, while parts of America's democracy may be under threat, its courts are still independent and robust.
The think I find extraordinary is the gap between the funny, articulate, clever* Giuliani who smashed the Mob in New York and the current version.
*As seen in contemporary interview, film footage etc.
He's obviously clever, but I heard from somebody who worked for the NY DA's at the time (and, improbably, dated a relative of mine for a while) that he was much better at PR than at smashing the mob, which was in any case a huge team effort. I got the sense that he did 5% of the work and got 95% of the credit. Not that he didn't do good work - just that his role was totally oversold by the media, who of course like to focus on personalities.
But then there might have been some sour grapes as my acquaintance worked for the city while Giuliani was federal.
It was my understanding that he drove the team effort - which achieved something that no previous effort had got even vaguely close to.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
TBH that account looks possibly bowdlerised (ie it was more serious than documented), but there is no easy way to tell.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Certainly also accounts from other resistance movements eg Norway. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Vera Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
We seem to have moved beyond gender equality to saying that women are better than men, and no percentage of the former can be high enough.
It's a view but let's not pretend it's consistent.
I think though that men need to up their game. Women are often out competing us, despite male privilege still in many areas. Medicine is just one of many fields where female abilities with academic and interpersonal skills are ahead of males.
It is no good sitting in some incel bunker, men need to put some effort in.
There is obviously something in male privilege; but it is naive to think that women don't use the situation to their advantage. My own assessment is that some organisations and professions become feminised, as may be happening with medicine. Men may not want to/ or otherwise find it hard to adapt to the situation, they will just vote with their feet. I've seen this happen time and time again; it isn't retreating in to an incel bunker it is exercising freedom of choice.
If women tend to be better at academic learning and interpersonal skills, they will be better doctors. If feminising the profession means having someone who will listen to you before diagnosing, that is great. I've had good and bad doctors, both male and female, but I remember from a few years ago that some of the more traditional, older male doctors were fairly shit. Had no truck with the idea of mental health problems, would diagnose on a whim and persist with the same old same old ineffective treatment. "Oh it's not working. We just need to do some more of it". Standard blinkered I-know-best stereotypical male attitude
On the other hand, men have bigger brains than women, are on average slightly more intelligent, are physically much stronger, are more innovative and risk-taking, and there are many more male geniuses than female, due to differing bell curves
So there’s that
Yeah - but we get to have babies and even the strongest man could not cope with that pain. What's more we repeat the experience.
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Wasn't that a Chubby Brown joke? You all go back and have another baby. We get our cock caught in our zip once and we get our mum to put buttons on our trousers.
Funny how the "more geniuses" bell-curve mob rarely mention the left hand side.
Because it’s bloody obvious. There are more male idiots than female
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
TBH that account looks possibly bowdlerised (ie it was more serious than documented), but there is no easy way to tell.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
The Knights of Bushido is very unpleasant reading.
Dr. Foxy, aye. But liking a particular sport or period of history is fundamentally different to claiming you don't belong to either gender in vague and strange ways.
Ironically, perhaps, I strongly agree with you on sexual stereotypes, to the extent that some people now think if a chap's into sewing or a girl's into engineering then they're 'really' the other sex.
I'd support the right of a knowing adult to transition, though once again that's beyond me, but marketing this stuff to kids is deeply disturbing, as is the degradation of women's sport and having rapists sent to women's prison when they choose to identify that way.
A very disturbing judgment yesterday in the High Court about transwomen and prisons, essentially saying, that yes rights for men claiming to be women did harm women but too bad, their rights overrode those of women. So a man claiming to be a woman and convicted of sexual offences against women can demand to be put in a woman's prison even though the court accepted that this made women prisoners feel unsafe and put them at risk of attack.
Lovely.
The case was a judicial review which limits what a court can actually do as the test is whether the prison service has taken into account all the relevant factors in coming to its decision not whether the decision is necessarily right or, indeed, desirable. But the consequence is that once again women's safeguarding is taken less seriously than it should be. Because self-ID is, frankly, a crock of shit. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and people with it are no threat to anyone. But people who claim to have it without more are completely undermining the very real needs of trans people.
Interestingly, as in the Keira Bell case, it appears that the Prison Service has not been collecting data on who in prison is or is not trans and, following this judgment, they will have to do so. Similar to the lack of evidence for some of the medical treatment given to allegedly trans children.
It is alarming when policies with significant consequences for individuals and societies are taken with very little or no data or evidence in support.
The irony about self-ID is that it is fundamentally rooted in old-fashioned stereotypes which feminism has tried hard to overcome. It is also inherently homophobic. After all, if gender is a choice why shouldn't sexuality also be a choice? Which is exactly the argument that a lot of people used against gay people - that homosexuality is a choice and that they had made the wrong choice of an evil lifestyle. Whereas it isn't. And they haven't.
I suspect the only fix for this issue is going to be a small prison or section for transwomen prisoners. Nothing else is practical...
Effectively this is what has happened in Scotland in that someone in the same position as described by @Cyclefree is in a woman's prison but is kept in a separate wing with no contact with the remainder of the population there. I really do not see how Prison authorities can do anything else in the face of such an obvious risk. They will be sued if they don't.
That is the obvious practical solution. But the demand by trans activists is that they should be in a women's prison with full access to other women prisoners even if (a) they have been found guilty of sexual assaults against women; (b) this increases the risk to women prisoners; and (c) they genuinely feel unsafe.
Putting views and matters of personal identity above practical considerations and legitimate concerns for the safety of others. Just doesn't seem right.
For a job, I am reading the NY Supreme Court's judgement against Giuliani, suspending his law licence. It is actually compulsive reading, if you can get over the dry and pretentious language common to most legal opinions. It is also hilarious, presumably unintentionally so.
Here is a fairly typical passage:
[Giuliani claimed that ] 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.The Georgia Office of the Secretary of State undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all of the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed that there were zero (0) underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters (four) had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, they all turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
[Giuliani] does not expressly deny the truth of this information. Instead [Giuliani] claims that he reasonably reliedon “expert” affidavits, including one by Bryan Geels, in believing the facts he stated were true. None of these affidavits were provided to the Court ... Other than [Giuliani] calling him an “expert,” we do not know Mr.Geels' actual area of expertise or what qualifies him as such. Merely providing names and conclusory assertions that respondent had a basis for what he said, does not raise any disputed issue about whether misconduct has occurred.
Anyway, I'm finding it funny. But, more importantly, I think that, while parts of America's democracy may be under threat, its courts are still independent and robust.
The think I find extraordinary is the gap between the funny, articulate, clever* Giuliani who smashed the Mob in New York and the current version.
*As seen in contemporary interview, film footage etc.
He's obviously clever, but I heard from somebody who worked for the NY DA's at the time (and, improbably, dated a relative of mine for a while) that he was much better at PR than at smashing the mob, which was in any case a huge team effort. I got the sense that he did 5% of the work and got 95% of the credit. Not that he didn't do good work - just that his role was totally oversold by the media, who of course like to focus on personalities.
But then there might have been some sour grapes as my acquaintance worked for the city while Giuliani was federal.
It was my understanding that he drove the team effort - which achieved something that no previous effort had got even vaguely close to.
Mine is that he took over a process already underway driven by many people and agencies and took a disproportionate share of the credit. He also glamorised and vulgarised it by introducing publicity stunts like the "perp walk".
Same with his record as Mayor - he took the credit for the fall in crime, which was already underway under his predecessor, because of decisions the latter took, and which occurred in many other American cities at the same time. He's a competent official, but a genius at publicity.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
But if they do exist: chapeau
I understand it’s largely training
It’s why “name rank and number” is drilled into you - it’s a response that become automatic and consistent and doesn’t require thought
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
TBH that account looks possibly bowdlerised (ie it was more serious than documented), but there is no easy way to tell.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Certainly also accounts from other resistance movements eg Norway. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Vera Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
I'm certainly not about to watch a film like Men behind the Sun.
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
TBH that account looks possibly bowdlerised (ie it was more serious than documented), but there is no easy way to tell.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
The Knights of Bushido is very unpleasant reading.
Yes. Contemporary accounts have a completely understandable faux-cheerfulness about them - imo a way of self-distancing. Totally understandable of course, like people not talking about their experiences in WW1 - I had a grandfather (not known to me personally - died when I was young) who was like that.
Does this mean the likes of the US and Israel are going to need to do another round of jabs?
That's not proven, so far Pfizer and Moderna with a 3/4 week gap has proven to give very good long term protection with no noticeable drop off in efficacy.
I have my eye on Nicholas Dupont-Aignan. He sticks around, and he tries various things. (He's an énarque too.)
Some of his moves are not so intelligently conceived, but one day one of them (especially if he buys some decent advice) might work, and all of a sudden we'll find he's in the peloton (in 2017 he didn't get into it but he was the leading non-member) and then he's in the Elysée. Interesting from a betting POV. He had the skill to make himself very popular in Yerres too.
(Macron is unlikely to get impeached quite just yet, and if he ever does it probably won't be over lockdown, but after an impeachment conviction it would be Senate President Gérard Larcher - like NDA a big fan of General de Gaulle - who took over.)
@Leon, Experienced torturers know that you can inflict immense pain on a person, without endangering their life. For example, you can repeatedly electrocute someone over the course of several hours, without their dying, so long as you use a weak current.
Ugh
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
TBH that account looks possibly bowdlerised (ie it was more serious than documented), but there is no easy way to tell.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
The Knights of Bushido is very unpleasant reading.
Yes. Contemporary accounts have a completely understandable faux-cheerfulness about them - imo a way of self-distancing. Totally understandable of course, like people not talking about their experiences in WW1 - I had a grandfather (not known to me personally - died when I was young) who was like that.
A couple of years ago, I just had to give up reading a book about the Sack of Nanking, it was so nauseating (and the author wasn't writing for titillation, it was all very sober). Nemesis, by Max Hastings, is a difficult read in places, for similar reasons.
Dr. Foxy, aye. But liking a particular sport or period of history is fundamentally different to claiming you don't belong to either gender in vague and strange ways.
Ironically, perhaps, I strongly agree with you on sexual stereotypes, to the extent that some people now think if a chap's into sewing or a girl's into engineering then they're 'really' the other sex.
I'd support the right of a knowing adult to transition, though once again that's beyond me, but marketing this stuff to kids is deeply disturbing, as is the degradation of women's sport and having rapists sent to women's prison when they choose to identify that way.
A very disturbing judgment yesterday in the High Court about transwomen and prisons, essentially saying, that yes rights for men claiming to be women did harm women but too bad, their rights overrode those of women. So a man claiming to be a woman and convicted of sexual offences against women can demand to be put in a woman's prison even though the court accepted that this made women prisoners feel unsafe and put them at risk of attack.
Lovely.
The case was a judicial review which limits what a court can actually do as the test is whether the prison service has taken into account all the relevant factors in coming to its decision not whether the decision is necessarily right or, indeed, desirable. But the consequence is that once again women's safeguarding is taken less seriously than it should be. Because self-ID is, frankly, a crock of shit. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and people with it are no threat to anyone. But people who claim to have it without more are completely undermining the very real needs of trans people.
Interestingly, as in the Keira Bell case, it appears that the Prison Service has not been collecting data on who in prison is or is not trans and, following this judgment, they will have to do so. Similar to the lack of evidence for some of the medical treatment given to allegedly trans children.
It is alarming when policies with significant consequences for individuals and societies are taken with very little or no data or evidence in support.
The irony about self-ID is that it is fundamentally rooted in old-fashioned stereotypes which feminism has tried hard to overcome. It is also inherently homophobic. After all, if gender is a choice why shouldn't sexuality also be a choice? Which is exactly the argument that a lot of people used against gay people - that homosexuality is a choice and that they had made the wrong choice of an evil lifestyle. Whereas it isn't. And they haven't.
I suspect the only fix for this issue is going to be a small prison or section for transwomen prisoners. Nothing else is practical...
Effectively this is what has happened in Scotland in that someone in the same position as described by @Cyclefree is in a woman's prison but is kept in a separate wing with no contact with the remainder of the population there. I really do not see how Prison authorities can do anything else in the face of such an obvious risk. They will be sued if they don't.
That is the obvious practical solution. But the demand by trans activists is that they should be in a women's prison with full access to other women prisoners even if (a) they have been found guilty of sexual assaults against women; (b) this increases the risk to women prisoners; and (c) they genuinely feel unsafe.
Putting views and matters of personal identity above practical considerations and legitimate concerns for the safety of others. Just doesn't seem right.
It isn't. I hope it is appealed and overturned.
James Kirkup sums it up in his Spectator article - "the High Court ruling has confirmed beyond doubt something that a great many women have been trying to say for several years, often meeting with aggressive rejection and accusations of bigotry. The court confirmed that in some circumstances, accommodating the interests of male-born transwomen means imposing costs and burdens on women.
And that raises a question that society as a whole still needs to answer: why should women pay and suffer to serve the interests of people who were born male."
Agree with every word. Save that in most cases the transwomen are still male ie they still have male genitalia and, second, the burdens he talks about are the burden of being sexually assaulted. The judicial review was brought by a female prisoner who was sexually attacked in prison by a male transwoman who had been locked up for sexual attacks.
Comments
So you can stick your risk-taking solitary geniuses where the sun don't shine - 😁.
Since plenty of pressured environments can produce results without needing bullying, there is not a need for it in any of them (though human nature means you cannot eliminate it entirely). Same reason the idea corporal punishment in schools to maintain discipline (or ok because helped the same) was horseshit, since we will all have known teachers who managed total control of their classes without either threat or actual physical chastisement.
https://twitter.com/TheSun/status/1411062119567593473?s=20
In the first six years of my career, I was promoted to head of department within a year, head of faculty within three, head of year on top in four and in effect SLT in five.
But I have been very glad to give it all up and go back to being a teacher.
Even though that’s not inspiring me at the moment, as I have discussed, due to the uselessness and criminality of the DfE and their acolytes, but at least I don’t have the wholly unnecessary extra stresses they impose on those at the top.
And I certainly never wanted to be a head. That’s not for me. I might have made a capable deputy head, but I’m not going to attempt to reclimb that ladder.
And he only played three Tests, but 31 ODI's.
Mrs Stodge and I went to the zoo last evening - I'm reminded once more of the glorious diversity of life beyond homo sapiens. I also noted how many of the improvements at London Zoo were opened by the late Duke of Edinburgh, a reminder of his active commitment to animal welfare.
Not so happy with being told Regent's Park was "closed" at 8.30pm and we had to walk all the way round to get back to the Marylebone Road - I don't actually see how they can close that park (I can just about understand why).
I don't know who "runs" the park (as distinct from those who run in the park). We saw five youngsters on bicycles cycle straight in from the direction of Camden so I suspect I know another element of the "why".
Marginally on topic and anecdotally, in my work I tend to deal with a wide spectrum of professionals - property professionals tend to be mainly men, legal professionals are mainly women and finance professionals are a genuine mix. Programme and Project Managers (in my view a lower form of life) are a mix as well but competence is in no way related or unrelated to gender balance in my experience.
As others have said, the professions dealing with Children (psychologists, speech & language therapists and the like) are overwhelmingly female but there's more balance among housing officers (and while I'm in absolutely no way trying to belittle what happened to Chris Whitty, some of the experiences I've heard from housing officers are truly awful in terms of threats of personal and physical violence).
To take this further, there's a regular undercurrent of threatened and indeed actual violence toward come quite poorly-paid individuals in the public sector, those "on the frontline" (it's a widely used term but I'm not always certain it's appropriate in terms of the image it portrays).
Women who have experienced both (stones and childbirth) are unequivocal: kidney stones are notably more painful - thanks to a trillion nerve endings in the waterworks
That being said, I can’t say my demeanor was particularly heroic the night I was afflicted: I fell to the floor, sobbed and howled in agony, literally called for my ‘mummy’, projectile vomited down the landing (about 30 feet), then I passed out from the pain
The intensity of the pain did give me an insight into torture. If a torturer can induce as much pain as a kidney stone, then I’d last about 3 seconds before confessing to anything
Seen Chavez's daughter etc.
It's as if giving people the power to take anything they want, results in them taking everything *they* want. And keeping it.
I’m not sure these comparisons are meaningful given nobody has ever experienced both.
White entered the UK prison system as transgender. However, despite dressing as a woman, the 52-year-old had not undergone any surgery and was still legally a male. She was also a convicted paedophile and on remand for grievous bodily harm, burglary, multiple rapes and other sexual offences against women.
In September last year she was transferred to New Hall prison in West Yorkshire. During a three-month period at the female prison she sexually assaulted two other inmates.“
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison
But in my years around CPD I've seen many 'sleepwalkers'!
But they were not up to international cricket, through a variety of technical and/or mental failings.
Irani seemed to be picked for his friendship with Hussain in the hope that things would be different.
Meanwhile Hugh Morris - barely talked about. Although I think they played the same number of tests.
One chap actually made something of it - he spent the 75% of the time not in the class room in the er... company of the lady giving the course.
While a splendid result for him....
HOTEL and restaurants are on the brink of going bust because they can’t recruit enough overseas staff due to Brexit, industry leaders warn.
Hospitality chiefs revealed they have been forced to scale back services and opening hours amid a desperate struggle to fill key jobs such as kitchen porters, housekeepers and chefs.
...
Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin also told of his fears for his Edinburgh restaurant. He said: “It’s front of house. It’s kitchen staff. It’s all over.
“After this terrible pandemic, which has suffocated our industry, they can’t open again because they can’t find the staff.”
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/7283107/scotland-hotels-brexit-workers-coronavirus/
Don't think Nasser and Ronnie were friendly. Rarely, if ever, see Nasser at Chelmsford these days. (well, when people could actually go!)
Barack Obama is the only living former-President to scrape into the top ten.
1 Abraham Lincoln
2 George Washington
3 Franklin D. Roosevelt
4 Theodore Roosevelt
5 Dwight D. Eisenhower
6 Harry S. Truman
7 Thomas Jefferson
8 John F. Kennedy
9 Ronald Reagan
10 Barack Obama
https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1411244653609955329?s=21
How can people resist this, and stay quiet? People who can endure torture and remain defiant must have incredible willpower. And I mean incredible. I find it hard to believe anyone could suffer truly extreme pain (eg something like kidney stones) without blabbing
But if they do exist: chapeau
I am moving near Chelmsford soon, got the keys this week. Would be nice to see you over there one weekday
Here is a fairly typical passage:
[Giuliani claimed that ] 65,000 or 66,000 or 165,000 underage voters illegally voted in the Georgia 2020 election.The Georgia Office of the Secretary of State undertook an investigation of this claim. It compared the list of all of the people who voted in Georgia to their full birthdays. The audit revealed that there were zero (0) underage voters in the 2020 election. While a small number of voters (four) had requested a ballot prior to turning 18, they all turned 18 by the time the election was held in November 2020.
[Giuliani] does not expressly deny the truth of this information. Instead [Giuliani] claims that he reasonably reliedon “expert” affidavits, including one by Bryan Geels, in believing the facts he stated were true. None of these affidavits were provided to the Court ... Other than [Giuliani] calling him an “expert,” we do not know Mr.Geels' actual area of expertise or what qualifies him as such. Merely providing names and conclusory assertions that respondent had a basis for what he said, does not raise any disputed issue about whether misconduct has occurred.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/14578484/2021/06/Matter-of-Giuliani-2021-00506-PC.pdf
Anyway, I'm finding it funny. But, more importantly, I think that, while parts of America's democracy may be under threat, its courts are still independent and robust.
Got the keys Wednesday, by Thursday I had been quoted 15k to move a manhole 🙈
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57705253
*stares out of window*
Or in the case of Thomas Jefferson, all three.
"The judge also found that female prisons, who are disproportionately likely to have been victims of sexual assault, may be frankly terrified of being confined with a male-bodied sex offender: "
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-court-judgement-that-confirms-women-pay-for-trans-rights
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57682233
Does this mean the likes of the US and Israel are going to need to do another round of jabs?
*As seen in contemporary interview, film footage etc.
We were prevented from walking down The Broad Walk from the zoo just after 8.30pm.
The access roads into the Outer Circle and Ulster Terrace could be closed off I imagine - there's a gate at Park Square East and I imagine another by the Royal Academy of Music.
The odd thing about walking round the Outer Circle, especially on the northern side, is there's almost no traffic and you could think you were in rural England rather than the middle of London.
The park is delightful as you've often said. I presume you know it more from the Primrose Hill side.
Are you a fan of the zoo?
There's no doubt Violet Szabo was tortured, but thankfully, some of the more lurid stories that were circulated about her fate (and which caused her daughter a lot of distress) were untrue.
Which is fine from a personal point of view, as it means I can get mine bang on the start of the summer holidays if I go to a walk in centre.
That link doesn’t go into the gory details of her torture but I found it elsewhere
Humbling
Funny how the "more geniuses" bell-curve mob rarely mention the left hand side.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x684znd
I am fairly sure the entirety of the main park is sealed at night. All gates close and lock. There are fringe areas around the outer circle which cannot be sealed
I like the zoo but it suffers for me from over-familiarity. I must have taken my kids there a million times because it is so near. However I do love picnicking on a sunny day in the very English gardens and then hearing the roar of an Asian lion, rolling across the sward
If you get the chance, go visit St John’s Lodge gardens. A secretive enclave hidden away with its own gate by the inner circle. Absolutely exquisite
@EssexPR
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We need an England win later, then for it to leak that Gove completely ignored the lockdown rules he helped set and pushed.
If Carlsberg did Saturdays, that would be it.
🙏🏽🏴
But then there might have been some sour grapes as my acquaintance worked for the city while Giuliani was federal.
After 18 months of this pandemic, I am still shocked that VVIP aren't wearing high quality masks. For footballers literally have any other inch of their lives optimised for performance, but they are given the crappiest masks.
I think many legal judgements on such emotive issues can be downright hilarious, precisely because they have to be written in dry, pretentious language, and the occasional overt criticism therefore stands out and packs a punch. 'It is not clear from z how X can genuinely assert y' may look bland, but amidst such a judgement is tantamount to the author going 'Dude's a liar, and a bad one'.
On of the more detailed accounts of torture in interrogation I have seen from the French resistance was in the book The White Rabbit, involving repeated near-drowning and beatings. Certainly also accounts from other resistance movements eg Norway. Suspect that there are many more.
There's controversy over Vera Atkins' accounts, in particular.
Wartime accounts from the Far East are horrific. But we hear far more from treatment of Westerners compared to treatment of native people.
https://twitter.com/LukeSmithF1/status/1411243598075604992
Same with his record as Mayor - he took the credit for the fall in crime, which was already underway under his predecessor, because of decisions the latter took, and which occurred in many other American cities at the same time. He's a competent official, but a genius at publicity.
It’s why “name rank and number” is drilled into you - it’s a response that become automatic and consistent and doesn’t require thought
"Emmanuel Macron IMPEACHMENT: French leader could be ousted with bombshell Article 68 plot".
I have my eye on Nicholas Dupont-Aignan. He sticks around, and he tries various things. (He's an énarque too.)
Some of his moves are not so intelligently conceived, but one day one of them (especially if he buys some decent advice) might work, and all of a sudden we'll find he's in the peloton (in 2017 he didn't get into it but he was the leading non-member) and then he's in the Elysée. Interesting from a betting POV. He had the skill to make himself very popular in Yerres too.
(Macron is unlikely to get impeached quite just yet, and if he ever does it probably won't be over lockdown, but after an impeachment conviction it would be Senate President Gérard Larcher - like NDA a big fan of General de Gaulle - who took over.)
James Kirkup sums it up in his Spectator article -
"the High Court ruling has confirmed beyond doubt something that a great many women have been trying to say for several years, often meeting with aggressive rejection and accusations of bigotry. The court confirmed that in some circumstances, accommodating the interests of male-born transwomen means imposing costs and burdens on women.
And that raises a question that society as a whole still needs to answer: why should women pay and suffer to serve the interests of people who were born male."
Agree with every word. Save that in most cases the transwomen are still male ie they still have male genitalia and, second, the burdens he talks about are the burden of being sexually assaulted. The judicial review was brought by a female prisoner who was sexually attacked in prison by a male transwoman who had been locked up for sexual attacks.
Just because being drowned is less painful than being slow sliced doesn’t mean you should hope for one over the other.