What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
I can't understand anyone wanting to perform LFTs beyond what is required or recommended by the government. It is just an unpleasant thing to do, especially if you have to take throat samples.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
If this was an attempt to troll by throwing out a casual reference to an issue that excites two rival tribes of the angriest people on the internet and doing an innocent face then please do it somewhere else. If you're going to do that kind of trolling here, the only permitted subject is AV.
I am thinking about doing one of Sunday's pieces on the Tory leadership election rules and the fact the Tories use a form of quasi-AV to elect their leader.
Multiple rounds of voting, the candidate with the least votes get eliminated, and we only have a winner when someone gets 50% plus of the votes.
You call it "AV". I call it "Keep Another IDS off the Ballot".
I'm not sure what Labour would call it, but whatever it is, they want it - to Keep Another Corbyn off the Ballot....
IDS won the Tory leadership under the party's AV system once Portillo and Davis and Ancram were knocked out and he was the only alternative left to Ken Clarke
How was a party that chose IDS over Ken Clarke ever let back into Downing Street?
They sorted themselves out, we chose Cameron over David Davis, and the other lot let Gordon Brown into Downing Street.
Then you f*cked up royally by letting the current clown in, just sayin.
They f*cked up royally by letting Theresa May in which led to even Jeremy Corbyn polling 10% poll leads.
"The current clown" took the Tories from 10% behind Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party to win an eighty seat majority, got a revised Trade Deal that abolished the backstop and was so good it is now being iterated into an even better deal; then got the vaccines first in the world.
The trouble with Boris is that when he's good he's very, very good and when he's bad he's terrible, and there's precious little in between. For my money, he has done a great job in implementing the result of the 2016 referendum, which destroyed his last two predecessors and paralysed politics for three years, in the stunning triumph of our vaccine programme, in seeing off Jeremy Corbyn and in avoiding the worst barbarities of continental or Chinese lockdowns during this epidemic.
But the extended crises of the last five years could be coming to a close. And, as is well known, the mundane, routine stuff of every day economic and social policy with its tradeoffs and need to consider dozens of factors and come to usually fudged decisions is too detailed and tedious for his toddler-length attention span. He is intellectually lazy, so will always go with the big government, high spending solution. And his only defence, entirely true, is that Starmer would be even worse.
Also, is being PM really compatible with having a couple of babies in the house?
Hmm.
Everyone is better than Corbyn and everyone apart from Corbyn is better than Johnson.
Johnson's implementation of Brexit is so successful, he disowns it and blames Remainers and Theresa May for it.
Early energy on vaccines partially redeems an otherwise woeful epidemic response. Credit to him on that, I guess.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
If this was an attempt to troll by throwing out a casual reference to an issue that excites two rival tribes of the angriest people on the internet and doing an innocent face then please do it somewhere else. If you're going to do that kind of trolling here, the only permitted subject is AV.
I am thinking about doing one of Sunday's pieces on the Tory leadership election rules and the fact the Tories use a form of quasi-AV to elect their leader.
Multiple rounds of voting, the candidate with the least votes get eliminated, and we only have a winner when someone gets 50% plus of the votes.
You call it "AV". I call it "Keep Another IDS off the Ballot".
I'm not sure what Labour would call it, but whatever it is, they want it - to Keep Another Corbyn off the Ballot....
IDS won the Tory leadership under the party's AV system once Portillo and Davis and Ancram were knocked out and he was the only alternative left to Ken Clarke
How was a party that chose IDS over Ken Clarke ever let back into Downing Street?
They sorted themselves out, we chose Cameron over David Davis, and the other lot let Gordon Brown into Downing Street.
Then you f*cked up royally by letting the current clown in, just sayin.
They f*cked up royally by letting Theresa May in which led to even Jeremy Corbyn polling 10% poll leads.
"The current clown" took the Tories from 10% behind Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party to win an eighty seat majority, got a revised Trade Deal that abolished the backstop and was so good it is now being iterated into an even better deal; then got the vaccines first in the world.
Have you and YakiDa ever been seen in the same room? He posts the same pro-Boris guff as you now do.
Who's YakiDa?
HYUFD, the Plaid Cymru voting I'm the only gay Tory in the village arbiter of Tory pureness.
To vote for any other party in any circumstance is to be Cast Out as a non-Tory. Unless it is Yaki himself voting for Welsh Nationalism in which case its fine.
"Women can't commit rape" - erh, what? As in legally they can't?
If you've transitioned to being a woman, this person would like you to not use female toilets - but where are they supposed to go then? Outside?
I believe rape is legally penetration by a penis without consent. So while a woman [sexually] can commit sexual assault, they can't legally rape people. Its an oddity, but that is the law AFAIK.
The toilets issue has always struck me as an odd one to get wound up about. If someone with a penis doesn't want to use the male toilets, why don't they use the disabled one instead? That's generally a private cubicle. Seems like a reasonable compromise, the female toilets are kept a safe place for anyone sexually female while an individual who doesn't feel comfortable going into the male toilets can use a private cubicle instead.
Whats the likely cause of the discrepancy ? People keeling over a few months after a bout of covid due to weakened circulatory and pulmonary systems ?
I think we're making up for last winter when a lot of low-hanging fruit avoided death due to flu not circulating.
the antiva xers will say excess deaths are the results of vaccine damage...and it will only get worse
It does seem to be the case that we were polishing off oldies with midazolam overdoses at a rate of knots in the first wave. Bear in mind that I came across this story while searching for Piers Corbyn's mate john o'looney, but it seems fairly well sourced (and, yes, in the land of the internet, The Sun counts as well sourced)
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
The problem is that it's highly contentious for the reasons @edmundintokyo talked about - mainly because both parties talk at cross purposes and never seem to understand that
1) both sides do actually have valid points but 2) what they are asking for is impossible because their desired fix creates the problem the other side is worried about (and is a problem that the other side just doesn't seem able to grasp or see) 3) and no compromise is possible because it's very much a binary result that the other side cannot accept.
We've covered the same issue here multiple times when talking about rapists ending up in Scottish Women's prisons because self identifying as a women is their "right". As it never ends well it's best to try and avoid the topic.
I am LGBTQIwhatever and my 20 year-old non-binary offspring has had a couple of trans boyfriends. So I do care about trans issues. But you can't override every other issue with trans rights - be sensitive to their rights and also the rights of women.
The problem with Ms Rowling is that she took a clear and previously uncontroversial stance in favour of protecting women's rights in their ongoing struggle against real misogyny. Fatal error. "YOU'RE TRANSPHOBIC" they howl even though she had made it clear she isn't.
People like my whatever-the-gender-neutral-alternative-to-son's ex BFs and my old mate who is trans male to female and *genuine* should be absolutely supported. That is not the same as dodgy Dave the deviant suddenly self-identifying as female demanding access to a women's refuge.
That people on both sides of the debate cannot understand the difference is baffling to me. So I largely stay out of it.
The problem comes down to self identification.
For pro trans people its a magic fix that solves all problems For womens rights it creates a whole new set of issues that the pro trans people just don't seem to understand.
As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible.
The other issue is that you simply can't put a complete argument in 280 characters so anything you post on this topic on twitter will result in 1 tweet being taken out of context and used against you for every more.
At least on here you can post something long enough that it's impossible to use part of your argument completely out of context
I'm not sure anyone claimed it was a "magic fix", which is perhaps your interpretation ?
Alastair's issue is that he assumes everyone involved is doing it for Good intentions (and even then he is showing the problems).
The issue is that we already know multiple people (not many but more than zero) are going to use it for evil intent so his Principle 3 is just wrong.
And given that his entire idea is based on and built upon an invalid principle the rest of the argument falls apart.
Basically I once again return to my original point - the problem isn't fixable because both people have perfectly valid points over a very binary issue. And the issue comes done to the fact that not everyone has good intentions regardless of how much you wish it wasn't true.
"Women can't commit rape" - erh, what? As in legally they can't?
If you've transitioned to being a woman, this person would like you to not use female toilets - but where are they supposed to go then? Outside?
I believe rape is legally penetration by a penis without consent. So while a woman [sexually] can commit sexual assault, they can't legally rape people. Its an oddity, but that is the law AFAIK.
The toilets issue has always struck me as an odd one to get wound up about. If someone with a penis doesn't want to use the male toilets, why don't they use the disabled one instead? That's generally a private cubicle. Seems like a reasonable compromise, the female toilets are kept a safe place for anyone sexually female while an individual who doesn't feel comfortable going into the male toilets can use a private cubicle instead.
No, that was only ever the case de facto, in the bad old days when we ridiculously thought that women could not have penises. They could always be guilty of rape as accessories.
And then Kellie-Jay Keen calls a person who transitioned to being a woman, a man. I get sort of the idea of what she's saying but this just seems to encourage being nasty against somebody for no reason?
Having watched some of that clip its pretty clear she is at the extreme end of the pro-women's rights argument. Frankly the media seems to enjoy bringing in the two sets of extremist spokespeople to piss on the fire and upset people.
The same people that said Delta was nothing to worry about, are those that are saying Omicron is nothing to worry about.
So is anyone who said Delta was nothing to worry about, going to stick their head up and say this is different
Who said Delta is nothing to worry about?
I don't recall you calling for a lockdown when Delta was around, we didn't need one was what you and several others said. I remember arguing with you about it
That's not the same thing, is it?
My point is you were wrong then and so I am interested in people that did call for a lockdown then who don't think there is anything to worry about now.
What I am hearing now is the same people that initially said "nothing to worry about" then said "lockdown isn't needed" then said "lockdown 2.0 isn't needed". It's the same people
You keep making these massive sweeping generalisations.
I have generally preferred not to make generalisations.
And with that, good night.
But the French elite are so paranoid about Brexit, so allergic to it and fearful of it, they set a low bar for its success. Britain surviving intact and not starving to death will probably seem quite successful to them. given their direful predictions of total British implosion.
Then the next time the EU does something widely unpopular, eurosceptics across the continent will start to look longingly at independent London.
This is the great French fear. By this guy's account it does stalk their nightmares.
The French are trying to restrict travel to essential only.
By blocking British residents of Belgium or the Netherlands who want to use EuroTunnel and transit France?
Are the blocking British? Or just anyone who isn't EU/Schengen?
Travel from the UK to France
URGENT UPDATE FOR BRITISH RESIDENTS IN EU
Following a French Government decision, on 28/12/2021, unless they hold French residency, British citizens are now considered 3rd country citizens and can no longer transit France by road to reach their country of residence in the EU.
Exactly. They aren't treating us differently. They're applying the 3rd country rules which our government demanded be imposed upon us.
What’s the warning
Be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
I don't understand the complaints. What did they think "3rd country" meant? This is what they demanded and they've succeeded in being treated thus.
Just wait until next week when the usual suspects try and blame the French for our lack of Border Control Posts, staff or computers.
Except the rights of British citizens with legal residency in the EU that pre-dates Brexit have their rights protected by treaty.
I think this is just Macron being a twat again, assuming the allegation is true.
Blocking the UK, when Belgium had had case rates twice as high as our peak at that point for weeks was the action of a kneejerking numpty.
It’s totally Macron being a twat.
But it’s the resounding silence from the Remoaners that amuses
Why should we comment? This is what Leavers wanted. To be outside the EU and to be treated like outsiders.
Well congrats!
Because it’s a breach of the Withdrawal Treaty in the same way that they got very excited about the administrative procedures on settled status.
It is - in the same way that other border closures were breaches of other treaties like Schengen. But its a pandemic - temporary breaches are permitted.
Again, we are being treated as we demanded - as a 3rd country. They had to arbitrate on which exceptions to their medically induced ban would exist and they have tret us like the rest of the world not Europe. At our request.
You and others complaining demonstrates English exceptionalism at its finest. That "treat us like a 3rd country" actually meant "we don't want to be European but you will do what we bally well say because we are English and that means we get to make all the rules".
I think Macron’s bring a bit silly but I don’t really care about it.
My comment is really about the hypocrisy of people who launch into the UK for a reasonable administrative procedure and find excuses when an EU country does something that is equally in breach of the treaty.
But they “have a good reason” which makes it all ok…
Bureaucratic desire for tidiness, I think. You have the other EU members category and you have the third country category with the UK moving from the first to the second category. They don't want to create a third anomalous category for the UK based on geography.
At the heart of the issue is whether, as some argue, “gender trumps biological sex” and what flows from that. Notably she is a lot more civil and polite than some of her critics, and has not yet doxed or threatened to murder any of them.
Exactly. We stopped using the word "sex" because fnarr fnarr so substituted gender. Which us something completely different. My insert-neutral-substitute-here offspring is biologically male and gender neutral. Their last two ex-boyfriends were biologically female and male gendered.
Its not difficult. Promote the rights of people to identify in whatever gender they want, protect the rights of people of one biological sex from being threatened and raped by the other.
Shouldn't people just leave trans people alone? As their rights are covered under the equality act. Whatever people think of debates on 'gender', calling trans people predators as Rowling and Duffield have been doing is not acceptable and is obviously going to cause unnecessary upset. It's really quite pathetic how the media is stoking this as well in this country compared with say Germany.
Don't get me started on Joanna Cherry or Kathleen Stock either.
Covid-19 keeps throwing up policy decisions requiring difficult judgements between competing objectives. Reducing covid isolation from 7 days to 5 is another one of these. There is often no “obvious single right answer” to these complex decisions, whatever some argue…1/19
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
The problem is that it's highly contentious for the reasons @edmundintokyo talked about - mainly because both parties talk at cross purposes and never seem to understand that
1) both sides do actually have valid points but 2) what they are asking for is impossible because their desired fix creates the problem the other side is worried about (and is a problem that the other side just doesn't seem able to grasp or see) 3) and no compromise is possible because it's very much a binary result that the other side cannot accept.
We've covered the same issue here multiple times when talking about rapists ending up in Scottish Women's prisons because self identifying as a women is their "right". As it never ends well it's best to try and avoid the topic.
I am LGBTQIwhatever and my 20 year-old non-binary offspring has had a couple of trans boyfriends. So I do care about trans issues. But you can't override every other issue with trans rights - be sensitive to their rights and also the rights of women.
The problem with Ms Rowling is that she took a clear and previously uncontroversial stance in favour of protecting women's rights in their ongoing struggle against real misogyny. Fatal error. "YOU'RE TRANSPHOBIC" they howl even though she had made it clear she isn't.
People like my whatever-the-gender-neutral-alternative-to-son's ex BFs and my old mate who is trans male to female and *genuine* should be absolutely supported. That is not the same as dodgy Dave the deviant suddenly self-identifying as female demanding access to a women's refuge.
That people on both sides of the debate cannot understand the difference is baffling to me. So I largely stay out of it.
The problem comes down to self identification.
For pro trans people its a magic fix that solves all problems For womens rights it creates a whole new set of issues that the pro trans people just don't seem to understand.
As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible.
The other issue is that you simply can't put a complete argument in 280 characters so anything you post on this topic on twitter will result in 1 tweet being taken out of context and used against you for every more.
At least on here you can post something long enough that it's impossible to use part of your argument completely out of context
I'm not sure anyone claimed it was a "magic fix", which is perhaps your interpretation ?
Looks like the sentencing hearing will be at a later date, presumably so that she and her lawyer can work out how many names she needs to give to authorities, in order to see her get out in a handful of years.
She’s going to know an awful lot of names, at least two living Presidents were associates of Epstein.
She'll need to give a lot more than names. They will want evidence.
Far be it for me to spread conspiracy :-)
But I find it hard to believe she will be allowed to bring down two American political dynasties and the British Royal Family.
Presumably she has made arrangements so that upon her unfortunate sudden demise, her story would still be aired. But you would have thought Epstein would have done the same and apparently not.
It’s going to be quite fascinating to see how this all plays out.
Maxwell is 60 years old, she won’t fancy living out the rest of her life behind bars, and clearly has a lot of records of people who were involved with Epstein.
There have been loads of conspiracy theories over the years about high-society pedophile rings - and while this isn’t quite that, it’s clear that many of the young ladies involved with Epstein and Maxwell were a little too young, and a lot of the people at the parties were in the top echelons of American (and British) society.
The question is, therefore, will release of the contents of her little black book be a mitigating factor or an aggravating factor, when it comes to sentencing. Or will she get “suicided” like Epstein, so that it can never be released.
Is there really any credibility in the suggestion that Epstein did not commit suicide? Genuine question.
I have not followed it that closely but I assumed the idea that he was bumped off to save embarassment was just a QAnon level conspiracy theory.
He was supposed to be on suicide watch, but the guards were asleep, the cameras not working, and the post-mortem suggested his injuries could be from strangulation rather than hanging.
Now, it could all be co-incidence, he saw an opportunity and went for it in a clumsy way. But the conspiracy theorists are indeed having a field day with the story. There were definitely an awful lot of people happy to see him dead.
Thanks. I assume Maxwell will be watched extremely carefully - a second suicide/'suicide' would set the twittersphere alight.
She’s not going to commit suicide… she’s going to catch covid and die from that instead
At the heart of the issue is whether, as some argue, “gender trumps biological sex” and what flows from that. Notably she is a lot more civil and polite than some of her critics, and has not yet doxed or threatened to murder any of them.
Exactly. We stopped using the word "sex" because fnarr fnarr so substituted gender. Which us something completely different. My insert-neutral-substitute-here offspring is biologically male and gender neutral. Their last two ex-boyfriends were biologically female and male gendered.
Its not difficult. Promote the rights of people to identify in whatever gender they want, protect the rights of people of one biological sex from being threatened and raped by the other.
Shouldn't people just leave trans people alone? As their rights are covered under the equality act. Whatever people think of debates on 'gender', calling trans people predators as Rowling and Duffield have been doing is not acceptable and is obviously going to cause unnecessary upset. It's really quite pathetic how the media is stoking this as well in this country compared with say Germany.
Don't get me started on Joanna Cherry or Kathleen Stock either.
I would be very careful about saying Rowling called trans people predators.
The issue is that there are predators who like to (ab)use trans people clothing and trans supporters are ignoring the issue because they seemingly can't grasp / don't understand that some people have bad intentions.
Were the risk of misidentification slight it wouldn't be an issue but the risk of misidentification here is (theoretically) rape in what should be a safe space.
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
The problem is that it's highly contentious for the reasons @edmundintokyo talked about - mainly because both parties talk at cross purposes and never seem to understand that
1) both sides do actually have valid points but 2) what they are asking for is impossible because their desired fix creates the problem the other side is worried about (and is a problem that the other side just doesn't seem able to grasp or see) 3) and no compromise is possible because it's very much a binary result that the other side cannot accept.
We've covered the same issue here multiple times when talking about rapists ending up in Scottish Women's prisons because self identifying as a women is their "right". As it never ends well it's best to try and avoid the topic.
I am LGBTQIwhatever and my 20 year-old non-binary offspring has had a couple of trans boyfriends. So I do care about trans issues. But you can't override every other issue with trans rights - be sensitive to their rights and also the rights of women.
The problem with Ms Rowling is that she took a clear and previously uncontroversial stance in favour of protecting women's rights in their ongoing struggle against real misogyny. Fatal error. "YOU'RE TRANSPHOBIC" they howl even though she had made it clear she isn't.
People like my whatever-the-gender-neutral-alternative-to-son's ex BFs and my old mate who is trans male to female and *genuine* should be absolutely supported. That is not the same as dodgy Dave the deviant suddenly self-identifying as female demanding access to a women's refuge.
That people on both sides of the debate cannot understand the difference is baffling to me. So I largely stay out of it.
The problem comes down to self identification.
For pro trans people its a magic fix that solves all problems For womens rights it creates a whole new set of issues that the pro trans people just don't seem to understand.
As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible.
The other issue is that you simply can't put a complete argument in 280 characters so anything you post on this topic on twitter will result in 1 tweet being taken out of context and used against you for every more.
At least on here you can post something long enough that it's impossible to use part of your argument completely out of context
I'm not sure anyone claimed it was a "magic fix", which is perhaps your interpretation ?
Alastair's issue is that he assumes everyone involved is doing it for Good intentions (and even then he is showing the problems).
The issue is that we already know multiple people (not many but more than zero) are going to use it for evil intent so his Principle 3 is just wrong.
And given that his entire idea is based on and built upon an invalid principle the rest of the argument falls apart.
Basically I once again return to my original point - the problem isn't fixable because both people have perfectly valid points over a very binary issue. And the issue comes done to the fact that not everyone has good intentions regardless of how much you wish it wasn't true.
It is a numbers game, and the problem is this: stats are hard to come by but say one in 40,000 men are m to f trans whereas say 1 in 40 men, certainly more than 1 in 400, are opportunistic shits one way or another. So if you have a self declared m to f wanting to go to a women's prison or take part in a womens weightlifting contest, it is in the order of 100/1 to 1000/1 on that you are looking at an opportunistic heterosexual cis male shit.
Looks like the sentencing hearing will be at a later date, presumably so that she and her lawyer can work out how many names she needs to give to authorities, in order to see her get out in a handful of years.
She’s going to know an awful lot of names, at least two living Presidents were associates of Epstein.
She'll need to give a lot more than names. They will want evidence.
Far be it for me to spread conspiracy :-)
But I find it hard to believe she will be allowed to bring down two American political dynasties and the British Royal Family.
Presumably she has made arrangements so that upon her unfortunate sudden demise, her story would still be aired. But you would have thought Epstein would have done the same and apparently not.
It’s going to be quite fascinating to see how this all plays out.
Maxwell is 60 years old, she won’t fancy living out the rest of her life behind bars, and clearly has a lot of records of people who were involved with Epstein.
There have been loads of conspiracy theories over the years about high-society pedophile rings - and while this isn’t quite that, it’s clear that many of the young ladies involved with Epstein and Maxwell were a little too young, and a lot of the people at the parties were in the top echelons of American (and British) society.
The question is, therefore, will release of the contents of her little black book be a mitigating factor or an aggravating factor, when it comes to sentencing. Or will she get “suicided” like Epstein, so that it can never be released.
Is there really any credibility in the suggestion that Epstein did not commit suicide? Genuine question.
I have not followed it that closely but I assumed the idea that he was bumped off to save embarassment was just a QAnon level conspiracy theory.
If you believe the conspiracy theorists, the Queen, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Donald Trump would all be on a videocall this morning deciding Ghislaine's fate. Ludicrous of course
Of course it’s ludicrous
Who needs a video call when you are part of the HIVEmind (TM)
I can't understand anyone wanting to perform LFTs beyond what is required or recommended by the government. It is just an unpleasant thing to do, especially if you have to take throat samples.
Newer LFT kits are nose only, so far easier. (Some wonder if there is a decline in accuracy but we can let the test tube rattlers worry about that.)
At the heart of the issue is whether, as some argue, “gender trumps biological sex” and what flows from that. Notably she is a lot more civil and polite than some of her critics, and has not yet doxed or threatened to murder any of them.
Exactly. We stopped using the word "sex" because fnarr fnarr so substituted gender. Which us something completely different. My insert-neutral-substitute-here offspring is biologically male and gender neutral. Their last two ex-boyfriends were biologically female and male gendered.
Its not difficult. Promote the rights of people to identify in whatever gender they want, protect the rights of people of one biological sex from being threatened and raped by the other.
calling trans people predators as Rowling and Duffield have been doing
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
You have this strange view that everyone is “shouting you down”.
You made a point. @edmundintokyo responded on a gentle but somewhat acerbic style as is his wont. You can respond or not as you see fit.
And you can sod off and stop wading into my comments at every turn, have a lovely day Charles
I get it. You don’t like debate and you don’t like criticism. Well, I’m sorry, that’s not how this site works. If you want to play in the sandbox you operate by the rules of the game.
Covid-19 keeps throwing up policy decisions requiring difficult judgements between competing objectives. Reducing covid isolation from 7 days to 5 is another one of these. There is often no “obvious single right answer” to these complex decisions, whatever some argue…1/19
I wonder when Chris Hopson is going to get told off for going against the agenda of more lockdowns and more isolation. He's been a beacon of honesty among all the lies and damned statistics.
Covid-19 keeps throwing up policy decisions requiring difficult judgements between competing objectives. Reducing covid isolation from 7 days to 5 is another one of these. There is often no “obvious single right answer” to these complex decisions, whatever some argue…1/19
Governments aim to keep infection rates manageable. They don't in general aim to prevent all infection. I suspect a motivation for longer isolation, which they don't admit to, is that they keep potentially infectious people out of circulation. If they allowed shorter isolation periods they would need to find other NPIs to compensate.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
"Biological sex"... so Buck Angel should be using female spaces because he was female at birth?
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
Good news - my LFTs have arrived. No Royal Mail emails, so a pleasant surprise.
Not so good news - I realised that I forgot to put the bin out last night, and now I've missed the collection. Funny how what was the highlight of my week during shielding is now something that slips my mind.
Have you double checked that you haven't been rescheduled to mid January anyway? No collections here this week
No - business as usual. All of the neighbours' bins are lined up and empty.
What does HYUFD stand for? I don't mean politically, I mean the initials. Don't worry if it's a name, I don't need to know that. But it "feels" like a short phrase. Anyone know?
I asked him once. He did not say. All I know is he’s a fellow friendly horse!
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
Well the Maxwell verdict has taken the heat off Bojo for 24 hours, but his Covid plans are in disarray (just like his hair, his finances, and his relations with Princess Nut Nut.
With 200,000 omicron cases per day, and household members, and workers in key jobs, supposed to be doing daily lateral flow tests, we need several million lateral flow kits every day, and these are simply not going to be available any time soon. PCR tests are also not available in the numbers required, so the whole testing system is in a total state of collapse.
Where we go from here is anyone's guess.
We stop this middle class obsession of doing a LFT every day and start doing the level of testing other western countries do.
It is government policy rather than a middle-class obsession that we take an LFT test before going out or having friends round, or twice a week if we have no friends, and daily if we are isolating after a close contact with a plague carrier.
Its a government policy which has spawned a middle class obsession.
But the government policy does seem something from the 'track and trace' era of controlling covid rather than accepting its here and living with it.
And also a government policy which wanted to make use of the vast number of LFTs they had bought - that they're now desperately buying up ever more LFTs to feed the middle class obsession that has resulted is amusing in a collective madness sort of way.
I think you're aiming at the wrong target. It's not just a government policy. In his pre-Christmas press conference, the PM explicitly told everybody that they should enjoy Christmas, but that before they go and socialise they should always take an LFT test. Both he and other ministers have repeated this mantra over the last week in reference to NY as well. Hardly a middle class obsession. It's not surprising that demand for and use of LFTs is off the scale. If you think that's wrong, blame the PM.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
Just some advice Charles, you don't have to reply
All the best.
I have the right to reply as I see fit. As, of course do you.
We have had many cruises across the four corners of the world and used to think the odd outbreak of norovirus was a problem but never imagined covid would cause such mayhem in the cruise industry
We are so grateful we have travelled so much prior to covid with our last cruise in September 2019 from Southampton to Newfoundland, Canada, New England and New York returning to Southampton absolutely fabulous
Every cruise line has been affected by the current surge in Covid-19 cases due to the omicron variant. The lion’s share of the 86 cruise ships under watch belong to the largest three cruise operators: Carnival operates 32, Royal Caribbean operates 25 and Norwegian Cruise Line operates 15. All four ships operated by Disney Cruise Line are also on yellow, according to the CDC website.
Despite tight industrywide protocols — including pre-departure Covid testing as well as vaccine mandates — it is not uncommon for ship passengers or crew to test positive for the illness.
Cruise ships are allowed to relax mask use onboard if at least 95% of passengers and 95% of crew are fully vaccinated or in specific areas accessible only to fully vaccinated passengers. “However, CDC continues to advise cruise ship operators to require masks indoors and in crowded outdoor areas regardless of vaccination status due to the increased transmissibility of variants of concern,” said Reed.
The guardian link to the samaritans along with other news outlets. But what could the samaritans do to help someone in his position? A policeman just out of jail and facing another trial for alleged ABH - possibly a much longer sentence; and the prospect that it will never end, as more and more claims emerge. I don't want to excuse violence by police officers, but they are engaged in difficult work and have to make very difficult judgements under pressure, these are young people on a relatively low salary. Who would honestly go in to policing?
The public lust for punishment and vengeance, opportunistically encouraged by the government, seems to be so strong that it overrides any prospect of rehabilitation for lots of people convicted of criminal offences, particularly violent or sexual offences. But where does this ultimately lead us? Should we just encourage euthanasia of the damned? Amongst many other things, this is something that terrifies me about this country.
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
The problem is that it's highly contentious for the reasons @edmundintokyo talked about - mainly because both parties talk at cross purposes and never seem to understand that
1) both sides do actually have valid points but 2) what they are asking for is impossible because their desired fix creates the problem the other side is worried about (and is a problem that the other side just doesn't seem able to grasp or see) 3) and no compromise is possible because it's very much a binary result that the other side cannot accept.
We've covered the same issue here multiple times when talking about rapists ending up in Scottish Women's prisons because self identifying as a women is their "right". As it never ends well it's best to try and avoid the topic.
I am LGBTQIwhatever and my 20 year-old non-binary offspring has had a couple of trans boyfriends. So I do care about trans issues. But you can't override every other issue with trans rights - be sensitive to their rights and also the rights of women.
The problem with Ms Rowling is that she took a clear and previously uncontroversial stance in favour of protecting women's rights in their ongoing struggle against real misogyny. Fatal error. "YOU'RE TRANSPHOBIC" they howl even though she had made it clear she isn't.
People like my whatever-the-gender-neutral-alternative-to-son's ex BFs and my old mate who is trans male to female and *genuine* should be absolutely supported. That is not the same as dodgy Dave the deviant suddenly self-identifying as female demanding access to a women's refuge.
That people on both sides of the debate cannot understand the difference is baffling to me. So I largely stay out of it.
The problem comes down to self identification.
For pro trans people its a magic fix that solves all problems For womens rights it creates a whole new set of issues that the pro trans people just don't seem to understand.
As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible.
The other issue is that you simply can't put a complete argument in 280 characters so anything you post on this topic on twitter will result in 1 tweet being taken out of context and used against you for every more.
At least on here you can post something long enough that it's impossible to use part of your argument completely out of context
As @eek said “ As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible”, so clearly we were right to leave the EU
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
"Biological sex"... so Buck Angel should be using female spaces because he was female at birth?
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
No, of course not.
The issue is the edge cases, for example the woman who, as a man, committed rape, and is now requesting she be transferred to a women’s prison, despite the fact she has functioning male genitalia. That was an actual case, and resulted in two women prisoners being sexually assaulted.
I know zero about cricket, but even I have heard the ECB have big issues with racism and the English team are hopeless.
I suspect those two things are linked in some way.
As you say you don't know anything about cricket. England team is the premier one day team in the world and lots of diversity within that team.
I think the only place with racism issues was Yorkshire and that's because YCCC seems to follow the Yorkshire approach that if you haven't lived in Yorkshire since at least Viking times (and have the family tree to back it up) you aren't a true Yorkshireman.
The same people that said Delta was nothing to worry about, are those that are saying Omicron is nothing to worry about.
So is anyone who said Delta was nothing to worry about, going to stick their head up and say this is different
Who said Delta is nothing to worry about?
I don't recall you calling for a lockdown when Delta was around, we didn't need one was what you and several others said. I remember arguing with you about it
That's not the same thing, is it?
My point is you were wrong then and so I am interested in people that did call for a lockdown then who don't think there is anything to worry about now.
What I am hearing now is the same people that initially said "nothing to worry about" then said "lockdown isn't needed" then said "lockdown 2.0 isn't needed". It's the same people
You keep making these massive sweeping generalisations.
I have generally preferred not to make generalisations.
And with that, good night.
But the French elite are so paranoid about Brexit, so allergic to it and fearful of it, they set a low bar for its success. Britain surviving intact and not starving to death will probably seem quite successful to them. given their direful predictions of total British implosion.
Then the next time the EU does something widely unpopular, eurosceptics across the continent will start to look longingly at independent London.
This is the great French fear. By this guy's account it does stalk their nightmares.
The French are trying to restrict travel to essential only.
By blocking British residents of Belgium or the Netherlands who want to use EuroTunnel and transit France?
Are the blocking British? Or just anyone who isn't EU/Schengen?
Travel from the UK to France
URGENT UPDATE FOR BRITISH RESIDENTS IN EU
Following a French Government decision, on 28/12/2021, unless they hold French residency, British citizens are now considered 3rd country citizens and can no longer transit France by road to reach their country of residence in the EU.
Exactly. They aren't treating us differently. They're applying the 3rd country rules which our government demanded be imposed upon us.
What’s the warning
Be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
I don't understand the complaints. What did they think "3rd country" meant? This is what they demanded and they've succeeded in being treated thus.
Just wait until next week when the usual suspects try and blame the French for our lack of Border Control Posts, staff or computers.
Except the rights of British citizens with legal residency in the EU that pre-dates Brexit have their rights protected by treaty.
I think this is just Macron being a twat again, assuming the allegation is true.
Blocking the UK, when Belgium had had case rates twice as high as our peak at that point for weeks was the action of a kneejerking numpty.
It’s totally Macron being a twat.
But it’s the resounding silence from the Remoaners that amuses
Why should we comment? This is what Leavers wanted. To be outside the EU and to be treated like outsiders.
Well congrats!
Because it’s a breach of the Withdrawal Treaty in the same way that they got very excited about the administrative procedures on settled status.
It is - in the same way that other border closures were breaches of other treaties like Schengen. But its a pandemic - temporary breaches are permitted.
Again, we are being treated as we demanded - as a 3rd country. They had to arbitrate on which exceptions to their medically induced ban would exist and they have tret us like the rest of the world not Europe. At our request.
You and others complaining demonstrates English exceptionalism at its finest. That "treat us like a 3rd country" actually meant "we don't want to be European but you will do what we bally well say because we are English and that means we get to make all the rules".
I think Macron’s bring a bit silly but I don’t really care about it.
My comment is really about the hypocrisy of people who launch into the UK for a reasonable administrative procedure and find excuses when an EU country does something that is equally in breach of the treaty.
But they “have a good reason” which makes it all ok…
Pretty much English exceptionalism in a neat summary post, thanks. "Reasonable Administrative Procedure" indeed.
Sure. We gave people up to 5 years extra to qualify for residency so no one need miss out
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
The problem is that it's highly contentious for the reasons @edmundintokyo talked about - mainly because both parties talk at cross purposes and never seem to understand that
1) both sides do actually have valid points but 2) what they are asking for is impossible because their desired fix creates the problem the other side is worried about (and is a problem that the other side just doesn't seem able to grasp or see) 3) and no compromise is possible because it's very much a binary result that the other side cannot accept.
We've covered the same issue here multiple times when talking about rapists ending up in Scottish Women's prisons because self identifying as a women is their "right". As it never ends well it's best to try and avoid the topic.
I am LGBTQIwhatever and my 20 year-old non-binary offspring has had a couple of trans boyfriends. So I do care about trans issues. But you can't override every other issue with trans rights - be sensitive to their rights and also the rights of women.
The problem with Ms Rowling is that she took a clear and previously uncontroversial stance in favour of protecting women's rights in their ongoing struggle against real misogyny. Fatal error. "YOU'RE TRANSPHOBIC" they howl even though she had made it clear she isn't.
People like my whatever-the-gender-neutral-alternative-to-son's ex BFs and my old mate who is trans male to female and *genuine* should be absolutely supported. That is not the same as dodgy Dave the deviant suddenly self-identifying as female demanding access to a women's refuge.
That people on both sides of the debate cannot understand the difference is baffling to me. So I largely stay out of it.
The problem comes down to self identification.
For pro trans people its a magic fix that solves all problems For womens rights it creates a whole new set of issues that the pro trans people just don't seem to understand.
As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible.
The other issue is that you simply can't put a complete argument in 280 characters so anything you post on this topic on twitter will result in 1 tweet being taken out of context and used against you for every more.
At least on here you can post something long enough that it's impossible to use part of your argument completely out of context
As @eek said “ As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible”, so clearly we were right to leave the EU
😜
That's actually a more coherent Brexit Policy than any our Government has come up with since June 2016.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
If this was an attempt to troll by throwing out a casual reference to an issue that excites two rival tribes of the angriest people on the internet and doing an innocent face then please do it somewhere else. If you're going to do that kind of trolling here, the only permitted subject is AV.
I am thinking about doing one of Sunday's pieces on the Tory leadership election rules and the fact the Tories use a form of quasi-AV to elect their leader.
Multiple rounds of voting, the candidate with the least votes get eliminated, and we only have a winner when someone gets 50% plus of the votes.
You call it "AV". I call it "Keep Another IDS off the Ballot".
I'm not sure what Labour would call it, but whatever it is, they want it - to Keep Another Corbyn off the Ballot....
IDS won the Tory leadership under the party's AV system once Portillo and Davis and Ancram were knocked out and he was the only alternative left to Ken Clarke
How was a party that chose IDS over Ken Clarke ever let back into Downing Street?
They sorted themselves out, we chose Cameron over David Davis, and the other lot let Gordon Brown into Downing Street.
Then you f*cked up royally by letting the current clown in, just sayin.
They f*cked up royally by letting Theresa May in which led to even Jeremy Corbyn polling 10% poll leads.
"The current clown" took the Tories from 10% behind Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party to win an eighty seat majority, got a revised Trade Deal that abolished the backstop and was so good it is now being iterated into an even better deal; then got the vaccines first in the world.
The trouble with Boris is that when he's good he's very, very good and when he's bad he's terrible, and there's precious little in between. For my money, he has done a great job in implementing the result of the 2016 referendum, which destroyed his last two predecessors and paralysed politics for three years, in the stunning triumph of our vaccine programme, in seeing off Jeremy Corbyn and in avoiding the worst barbarities of continental or Chinese lockdowns during this epidemic.
But the extended crises of the last five years could be coming to a close. And, as is well known, the mundane, routine stuff of every day economic and social policy with its tradeoffs and need to consider dozens of factors and come to usually fudged decisions is too detailed and tedious for his toddler-length attention span. He is intellectually lazy, so will always go with the big government, high spending solution. And his only defence, entirely true, is that Starmer would be even worse.
Also, is being PM really compatible with having a couple of babies in the house?
Good news - my LFTs have arrived. No Royal Mail emails, so a pleasant surprise.
Not so good news - I realised that I forgot to put the bin out last night, and now I've missed the collection. Funny how what was the highlight of my week during shielding is now something that slips my mind.
Have you double checked that you haven't been rescheduled to mid January anyway? No collections here this week
No - business as usual. All of the neighbours' bins are lined up and empty.
Your sporadic updates on your bin situation are a breath of fresh air amid all the gloom and doom on here, thank you.
What does HYUFD stand for? I don't mean politically, I mean the initials. Don't worry if it's a name, I don't need to know that. But it "feels" like a short phrase. Anyone know?
I asked him once. He did not say. All I know is he’s a fellow friendly horse!
ISTR he said it was some randomly generated password he had one time or something like that. Really nothing more behind it. But it won't be long before he's on shift to confirm or deny.
"Women can't commit rape" - erh, what? As in legally they can't?
If you've transitioned to being a woman, this person would like you to not use female toilets - but where are they supposed to go then? Outside?
I believe rape is legally penetration by a penis without consent. So while a woman [sexually] can commit sexual assault, they can't legally rape people. Its an oddity, but that is the law AFAIK.
The toilets issue has always struck me as an odd one to get wound up about. If someone with a penis doesn't want to use the male toilets, why don't they use the disabled one instead? That's generally a private cubicle. Seems like a reasonable compromise, the female toilets are kept a safe place for anyone sexually female while an individual who doesn't feel comfortable going into the male toilets can use a private cubicle instead.
Agree about toilets. "disabled" is an already somewhat excluding term. Calling them '"private" or "alternative" deals with both problems.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
"Biological sex"... so Buck Angel should be using female spaces because he was female at birth?
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
No, of course not.
The issue is the edge cases, for example the woman who, as a man, committed rape, and is now requesting she be transferred to a women’s prison, despite the fact she has functioning male genitalia. That was an actual case, and resulted in two women prisoners being sexually assaulted.
The other issue is that those edge cases may not be a tiny minority of cases. Its easily, possible, as @IshmaelZ highlighted below, that there could be more men of bad faith than actual transwomen.
We have had many cruises across the four corners of the world and used to think the odd outbreak of norovirus was a problem but never imagined covid would cause such mayhem in the cruise industry
We are so grateful we have travelled so much prior to covid with our last cruise in September 2019 from Southampton to Newfoundland, Canada, New England and New York returning to Southampton absolutely fabulous
Every cruise line has been affected by the current surge in Covid-19 cases due to the omicron variant. The lion’s share of the 86 cruise ships under watch belong to the largest three cruise operators: Carnival operates 32, Royal Caribbean operates 25 and Norwegian Cruise Line operates 15. All four ships operated by Disney Cruise Line are also on yellow, according to the CDC website.
Despite tight industrywide protocols — including pre-departure Covid testing as well as vaccine mandates — it is not uncommon for ship passengers or crew to test positive for the illness.
Cruise ships are allowed to relax mask use onboard if at least 95% of passengers and 95% of crew are fully vaccinated or in specific areas accessible only to fully vaccinated passengers. “However, CDC continues to advise cruise ship operators to require masks indoors and in crowded outdoor areas regardless of vaccination status due to the increased transmissibility of variants of concern,” said Reed.
Why 95% and not 100? I realise these may be medical exemptions. Do they outline their reasoning?
I am not a lawyer but I would like to pick brains on here regarding the Ghislaine Maxwell case. My questions are:
People on here have talked about her revealing names as part of a plea bargain, but as the Maxwell family saying they are challenging the verdict, wouldn't revealing names be tantamount to accepting the guilty verdict?
What are the chances of the Maxwells repeatedly challenging on points of law until the verdict is overturned?
Where is the Maxwell family getting the money from for this extensive and expensive legal defence?
I would genuinely welcome any thoughts on these matters.
I know zero about cricket, but even I have heard the ECB have big issues with racism and the English team are hopeless.
I suspect those two things are linked in some way.
As you say you don't know anything about cricket. England team is the premier one day team in the world and lots of diversity within that team.
I think the only place with racism issues was Yorkshire and that's because YCCC seems to follow the Yorkshire approach that if you haven't lived in Yorkshire since at least Viking times (and have the family tree to back it up) you aren't a true Yorkshireman.
There is an wider issue with a lack of particularly black kids coming through. But that is less to do with racism and more to do with little school cricket, probably not helped by the cricket going to sky, but the biggest thing, the shear drag of other sports.
Football, particularly since the expansion of academy program, hoovers up masses of talent and places restrictions on what the kids can do and of course the money is huge. But also seeing other sports like rugby looking wider and again the money can be really good.
Its the reason West Indies have become piss poor at cricket, other sports just have a much bigger upside.
Gone are the days where if you show talent you tinker at different sports in the winter and summer. My mates kid is in a top tier football academy, its a year round thing.
Cricket is piss poor money for a standard county player. You have to get through that, establish yourself as a really good one day player, then you can earn.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
The issue is always the edge cases and specifically with self identification. Women’s refuges are a big concern for me - these are for women who are scared, for good reason, of men and (right or not) identify “men” with physical characteristics.
To allow trans men access to these facilities solely on the basis of self identification may undermine the peace of mind and recovery of damaged women.
Of course there are trans men who face abuse and need protection and support but these need not be in the same facilities.
The same people that said Delta was nothing to worry about, are those that are saying Omicron is nothing to worry about.
So is anyone who said Delta was nothing to worry about, going to stick their head up and say this is different
Who said Delta is nothing to worry about?
I don't recall you calling for a lockdown when Delta was around, we didn't need one was what you and several others said. I remember arguing with you about it
That's not the same thing, is it?
My point is you were wrong then and so I am interested in people that did call for a lockdown then who don't think there is anything to worry about now.
What I am hearing now is the same people that initially said "nothing to worry about" then said "lockdown isn't needed" then said "lockdown 2.0 isn't needed". It's the same people
You keep making these massive sweeping generalisations.
I have generally preferred not to make generalisations.
And with that, good night.
But the French elite are so paranoid about Brexit, so allergic to it and fearful of it, they set a low bar for its success. Britain surviving intact and not starving to death will probably seem quite successful to them. given their direful predictions of total British implosion.
Then the next time the EU does something widely unpopular, eurosceptics across the continent will start to look longingly at independent London.
This is the great French fear. By this guy's account it does stalk their nightmares.
The French are trying to restrict travel to essential only.
By blocking British residents of Belgium or the Netherlands who want to use EuroTunnel and transit France?
Are the blocking British? Or just anyone who isn't EU/Schengen?
Travel from the UK to France
URGENT UPDATE FOR BRITISH RESIDENTS IN EU
Following a French Government decision, on 28/12/2021, unless they hold French residency, British citizens are now considered 3rd country citizens and can no longer transit France by road to reach their country of residence in the EU.
Exactly. They aren't treating us differently. They're applying the 3rd country rules which our government demanded be imposed upon us.
What’s the warning
Be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
I don't understand the complaints. What did they think "3rd country" meant? This is what they demanded and they've succeeded in being treated thus.
Just wait until next week when the usual suspects try and blame the French for our lack of Border Control Posts, staff or computers.
Except the rights of British citizens with legal residency in the EU that pre-dates Brexit have their rights protected by treaty.
I think this is just Macron being a twat again, assuming the allegation is true.
Blocking the UK, when Belgium had had case rates twice as high as our peak at that point for weeks was the action of a kneejerking numpty.
It’s totally Macron being a twat.
But it’s the resounding silence from the Remoaners that amuses
Why should we comment? This is what Leavers wanted. To be outside the EU and to be treated like outsiders.
Well congrats!
Because it’s a breach of the Withdrawal Treaty in the same way that they got very excited about the administrative procedures on settled status.
It is - in the same way that other border closures were breaches of other treaties like Schengen. But its a pandemic - temporary breaches are permitted.
Again, we are being treated as we demanded - as a 3rd country. They had to arbitrate on which exceptions to their medically induced ban would exist and they have tret us like the rest of the world not Europe. At our request.
You and others complaining demonstrates English exceptionalism at its finest. That "treat us like a 3rd country" actually meant "we don't want to be European but you will do what we bally well say because we are English and that means we get to make all the rules".
Yes, there were plenty on here saying "ban all travel". Now the French are trying it (which personally I think is a waste of time) the same posters are trying to make a point of it.
Its totally a waste of time - they already have Omicron so they're as fucked as their neighbours.
But - and its a very bit but - it is an established principle that countries have the absolute right in an emergency to change processes even if written into treaty. This was the point being made last March "THEY CAN'T CLOSE THEIR BORDERS COS SCHENGEN" and yet they did close their borders and we didn't.
How a nation chooses to draw up its pandemic emergency powers is up to that nation. Some of our red list country bans have made no sense at all, yet here we are shouting at the French for doing the same. Instead of an arbitrary red list they have done an arbitrary EU list. We aren't EU, we demanded not to be EU and be tret like ROW and now we're Outraged that we're seen as not EU and as ROW.
What the frack is wrong with some people? This is what you wanted!
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
Well the Maxwell verdict has taken the heat off Bojo for 24 hours, but his Covid plans are in disarray (just like his hair, his finances, and his relations with Princess Nut Nut.
With 200,000 omicron cases per day, and household members, and workers in key jobs, supposed to be doing daily lateral flow tests, we need several million lateral flow kits every day, and these are simply not going to be available any time soon. PCR tests are also not available in the numbers required, so the whole testing system is in a total state of collapse.
Where we go from here is anyone's guess.
We stop this middle class obsession of doing a LFT every day and start doing the level of testing other western countries do.
It is government policy rather than a middle-class obsession that we take an LFT test before going out or having friends round, or twice a week if we have no friends, and daily if we are isolating after a close contact with a plague carrier.
Its a government policy which has spawned a middle class obsession.
But the government policy does seem something from the 'track and trace' era of controlling covid rather than accepting its here and living with it.
And also a government policy which wanted to make use of the vast number of LFTs they had bought - that they're now desperately buying up ever more LFTs to feed the middle class obsession that has resulted is amusing in a collective madness sort of way.
I think you're aiming at the wrong target. It's not just a government policy. In his pre-Christmas press conference, the PM explicitly told everybody that they should enjoy Christmas, but that before they go and socialise they should always take an LFT test. Both he and other ministers have repeated this mantra over the last week in reference to NY as well. Hardly a middle class obsession. It's not surprising that demand for and use of LFTs is off the scale. If you think that's wrong, blame the PM.
We've had reports here that local councils are asking parents to take a LFT every day.
Which is the sort of obsessional madness I'm referring to.
I will say I doubt anyone at any level of government or public organisation has bothered to calculate the number of LFTs required if everyone took as many tests as they have been requested to.
As to it being a middle class idiocy I suspect, somewhat like mask wearing, those taking LFTs on a regular basis are heavily skewed towards the middle class.
Much better day today on the energy markets, this nice strong wind is providing 43% of our electrical power and gas just 11.75%. Plus with the warmer weather gas usage will be substantially down as well.
On LFTs, there will be none around next week either as the bulk of schools will be going back and they've been ordered to test everyone twice in the first week over and above the home testing regime.
This is because the DfE, DoH and local health boards are total fucking morons on the intellectual level of Piers Corbyn although slightly less unpleasant.
It also means if you need an LFT to test for the virus, you won't be able to get one.
Therefore, expect the whole system to collapse entirely as being more useless than Amanda Spielman within the next fortnight.
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
There's a certain class of liberal that loathes this nation and everything about it.
I know zero about cricket, but even I have heard the ECB have big issues with racism and the English team are hopeless.
I suspect those two things are linked in some way.
Not really.
Both are more specific.
One being loutishness at a few cricket clubs the other being a complete unwillingness to prepare properly for tours of Australia specifically and test cricket generally.
I know zero about cricket, but even I have heard the ECB have big issues with racism and the English team are hopeless.
I suspect those two things are linked in some way.
As you say you don't know anything about cricket. England team is the premier one day team in the world and lots of diversity within that team.
I think the only place with racism issues was Yorkshire and that's because YCCC seems to follow the Yorkshire approach that if you haven't lived in Yorkshire since at least Viking times (and have the family tree to back it up) you aren't a true Yorkshireman.
There is an wider issue with a lack of particularly black kids coming through. But that is less to do with racism and more to do with little school cricket, probably not helped by the cricket going to sky, but the biggest thing, the shear drag of other sports.
Football, particularly since the expansion of academy program, hoovers up masses of talent and places restrictions on what the kids can do and of course the money is huge. But also seeing other sports like rugby looking wider and again the money can be really good.
Its the reason West Indies have become piss poor at cricket, other sports just have a much bigger upside.
Gone are the days where if you show talent you tinker at different sports in the winter and summer. My mates kid is in a top tier football academy, its a year round thing.
Cricket is piss poor money for a standard county player. You have to get through that, establish yourself as a really good one day player, then you can earn.
The Caribbean has switched to Basketball rather than cricket. It requires less space, less equipment, and if you are good enough it pays as well as football does.
Cricket until IPL couldn't compete and it still can't locally.
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
There's a certain class of liberal that loathes this nation and everything about it.
The same people that said Delta was nothing to worry about, are those that are saying Omicron is nothing to worry about.
So is anyone who said Delta was nothing to worry about, going to stick their head up and say this is different
Who said Delta is nothing to worry about?
I don't recall you calling for a lockdown when Delta was around, we didn't need one was what you and several others said. I remember arguing with you about it
That's not the same thing, is it?
My point is you were wrong then and so I am interested in people that did call for a lockdown then who don't think there is anything to worry about now.
What I am hearing now is the same people that initially said "nothing to worry about" then said "lockdown isn't needed" then said "lockdown 2.0 isn't needed". It's the same people
You keep making these massive sweeping generalisations.
I have generally preferred not to make generalisations.
And with that, good night.
But the French elite are so paranoid about Brexit, so allergic to it and fearful of it, they set a low bar for its success. Britain surviving intact and not starving to death will probably seem quite successful to them. given their direful predictions of total British implosion.
Then the next time the EU does something widely unpopular, eurosceptics across the continent will start to look longingly at independent London.
This is the great French fear. By this guy's account it does stalk their nightmares.
The French are trying to restrict travel to essential only.
By blocking British residents of Belgium or the Netherlands who want to use EuroTunnel and transit France?
Are the blocking British? Or just anyone who isn't EU/Schengen?
Travel from the UK to France
URGENT UPDATE FOR BRITISH RESIDENTS IN EU
Following a French Government decision, on 28/12/2021, unless they hold French residency, British citizens are now considered 3rd country citizens and can no longer transit France by road to reach their country of residence in the EU.
Exactly. They aren't treating us differently. They're applying the 3rd country rules which our government demanded be imposed upon us.
What’s the warning
Be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
I don't understand the complaints. What did they think "3rd country" meant? This is what they demanded and they've succeeded in being treated thus.
Just wait until next week when the usual suspects try and blame the French for our lack of Border Control Posts, staff or computers.
Except the rights of British citizens with legal residency in the EU that pre-dates Brexit have their rights protected by treaty.
I think this is just Macron being a twat again, assuming the allegation is true.
Blocking the UK, when Belgium had had case rates twice as high as our peak at that point for weeks was the action of a kneejerking numpty.
It’s totally Macron being a twat.
But it’s the resounding silence from the Remoaners that amuses
Why should we comment? This is what Leavers wanted. To be outside the EU and to be treated like outsiders.
Well congrats!
Because it’s a breach of the Withdrawal Treaty in the same way that they got very excited about the administrative procedures on settled status.
It is - in the same way that other border closures were breaches of other treaties like Schengen. But its a pandemic - temporary breaches are permitted.
Again, we are being treated as we demanded - as a 3rd country. They had to arbitrate on which exceptions to their medically induced ban would exist and they have tret us like the rest of the world not Europe. At our request.
You and others complaining demonstrates English exceptionalism at its finest. That "treat us like a 3rd country" actually meant "we don't want to be European but you will do what we bally well say because we are English and that means we get to make all the rules".
Yes, there were plenty on here saying "ban all travel". Now the French are trying it (which personally I think is a waste of time) the same posters are trying to make a point of it.
Its totally a waste of time - they already have Omicron so they're as fucked as their neighbours.
But - and its a very bit but - it is an established principle that countries have the absolute right in an emergency to change processes even if written into treaty. This was the point being made last March "THEY CAN'T CLOSE THEIR BORDERS COS SCHENGEN" and yet they did close their borders and we didn't.
How a nation chooses to draw up its pandemic emergency powers is up to that nation. Some of our red list country bans have made no sense at all, yet here we are shouting at the French for doing the same. Instead of an arbitrary red list they have done an arbitrary EU list. We aren't EU, we demanded not to be EU and be tret like ROW and now we're Outraged that we're seen as not EU and as ROW.
What the frack is wrong with some people? This is what you wanted!
Closing to transit is unusual
I suspect the fear is that the person will be able to transit into XYZ at the border so leaves France with the problem.
It also strikes me as typical French point scoring.
I know zero about cricket, but even I have heard the ECB have big issues with racism and the English team are hopeless.
I suspect those two things are linked in some way.
As you say you don't know anything about cricket. England team is the premier one day team in the world and lots of diversity within that team.
I think the only place with racism issues was Yorkshire and that's because YCCC seems to follow the Yorkshire approach that if you haven't lived in Yorkshire since at least Viking times (and have the family tree to back it up) you aren't a true Yorkshireman.
There is an wider issue with a lack of particularly black kids coming through. But that is less to do with racism and more to do with little school cricket, probably not helped by the cricket going to sky, but the biggest thing, the shear drag of other sports.
Football, particularly since the expansion of academy program, hoovers up masses of talent and places restrictions on what the kids can do and of course the money is huge. But also seeing other sports like rugby looking wider and again the money can be really good.
Its the reason West Indies have become piss poor at cricket, other sports just have a much bigger upside.
Gone are the days where if you show talent you tinker at different sports in the winter and summer. My mates kid is in a top tier football academy, its a year round thing.
Cricket is piss poor money for a standard county player. You have to get through that, establish yourself as a really good one day player, then you can earn.
The Caribbean has switched to Basketball rather than cricket. It requires less space, less equipment, and if you are good enough it pays as well as football does.
Cricket until IPL couldn't compete and it still can't locally.
Also of course things like athletics.....Jamaica alone is better than the might of the USA at sprint events.
In the UK, my understanding is participation wise basketball is also increasingly popular.
Cricket is also one of those games that is incredibly time consuming and of course all the kit etc. And in an urban environment, you can't really play it in the UK without going to a club.
The same people that said Delta was nothing to worry about, are those that are saying Omicron is nothing to worry about.
So is anyone who said Delta was nothing to worry about, going to stick their head up and say this is different
Who said Delta is nothing to worry about?
I don't recall you calling for a lockdown when Delta was around, we didn't need one was what you and several others said. I remember arguing with you about it
That's not the same thing, is it?
My point is you were wrong then and so I am interested in people that did call for a lockdown then who don't think there is anything to worry about now.
What I am hearing now is the same people that initially said "nothing to worry about" then said "lockdown isn't needed" then said "lockdown 2.0 isn't needed". It's the same people
You keep making these massive sweeping generalisations.
I have generally preferred not to make generalisations.
And with that, good night.
But the French elite are so paranoid about Brexit, so allergic to it and fearful of it, they set a low bar for its success. Britain surviving intact and not starving to death will probably seem quite successful to them. given their direful predictions of total British implosion.
Then the next time the EU does something widely unpopular, eurosceptics across the continent will start to look longingly at independent London.
This is the great French fear. By this guy's account it does stalk their nightmares.
The French are trying to restrict travel to essential only.
By blocking British residents of Belgium or the Netherlands who want to use EuroTunnel and transit France?
Are the blocking British? Or just anyone who isn't EU/Schengen?
Travel from the UK to France
URGENT UPDATE FOR BRITISH RESIDENTS IN EU
Following a French Government decision, on 28/12/2021, unless they hold French residency, British citizens are now considered 3rd country citizens and can no longer transit France by road to reach their country of residence in the EU.
Exactly. They aren't treating us differently. They're applying the 3rd country rules which our government demanded be imposed upon us.
What’s the warning
Be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
I don't understand the complaints. What did they think "3rd country" meant? This is what they demanded and they've succeeded in being treated thus.
Just wait until next week when the usual suspects try and blame the French for our lack of Border Control Posts, staff or computers.
Except the rights of British citizens with legal residency in the EU that pre-dates Brexit have their rights protected by treaty.
I think this is just Macron being a twat again, assuming the allegation is true.
Blocking the UK, when Belgium had had case rates twice as high as our peak at that point for weeks was the action of a kneejerking numpty.
It’s totally Macron being a twat.
But it’s the resounding silence from the Remoaners that amuses
Why should we comment? This is what Leavers wanted. To be outside the EU and to be treated like outsiders.
Well congrats!
Because it’s a breach of the Withdrawal Treaty in the same way that they got very excited about the administrative procedures on settled status.
It is - in the same way that other border closures were breaches of other treaties like Schengen. But its a pandemic - temporary breaches are permitted.
Again, we are being treated as we demanded - as a 3rd country. They had to arbitrate on which exceptions to their medically induced ban would exist and they have tret us like the rest of the world not Europe. At our request.
You and others complaining demonstrates English exceptionalism at its finest. That "treat us like a 3rd country" actually meant "we don't want to be European but you will do what we bally well say because we are English and that means we get to make all the rules".
I think Macron’s bring a bit silly but I don’t really care about it.
My comment is really about the hypocrisy of people who launch into the UK for a reasonable administrative procedure and find excuses when an EU country does something that is equally in breach of the treaty.
But they “have a good reason” which makes it all ok…
Bureaucratic desire for tidiness, I think. You have the other EU members category and you have the third country category with the UK moving from the first to the second category. They don't want to create a third anomalous category for the UK based on geography.
And that’s ok for France… and a very good description of what the UK did
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
as 100% correct as well. People can imagine what they want but fact is there are only men and women and you are born one or the other. You can lead your life how you like but it should not enable you to tramp over other people's rights. SNP are in for a severe kicking on this self ID fcukwittery, aligning themselves with the evil Greens will not stem the tide either.
I am not a lawyer but I would like to pick brains on here regarding the Ghislaine Maxwell case. My questions are:
People on here have talked about her revealing names as part of a plea bargain, but as the Maxwell family saying they are challenging the verdict, wouldn't revealing names be tantamount to accepting the guilty verdict?
What are the chances of the Maxwells repeatedly challenging on points of law until the verdict is overturned?
Where is the Maxwell family getting the money from for this extensive and expensive legal defence?
I would genuinely welcome any thoughts on these matters.
Too late for a plea bargain which as the name suggests involves pleading guilty and is a deal with the prosecution who, at least in English law, are now out of the picture. Sentencing is for the judge. The suggestion that she can spill beans at this stage to reduce her sentence verges on conspiracy theory, but some conspiracy theories are true.
Can't see an appeal succeeding certainly not on all counts. No idea about finances, she may have some Epstein money left and has a rich husband
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
There's a certain class of liberal that loathes this nation and everything about it.
Can you name any in particular?
Almost anyone on Twitter that Scott retweets here.
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
There's a certain class of liberal that loathes this nation and everything about it.
There’s also a certain class of conservative that loves this nation but hates almost everyone in it.
We have had many cruises across the four corners of the world and used to think the odd outbreak of norovirus was a problem but never imagined covid would cause such mayhem in the cruise industry
We are so grateful we have travelled so much prior to covid with our last cruise in September 2019 from Southampton to Newfoundland, Canada, New England and New York returning to Southampton absolutely fabulous
Every cruise line has been affected by the current surge in Covid-19 cases due to the omicron variant. The lion’s share of the 86 cruise ships under watch belong to the largest three cruise operators: Carnival operates 32, Royal Caribbean operates 25 and Norwegian Cruise Line operates 15. All four ships operated by Disney Cruise Line are also on yellow, according to the CDC website.
Despite tight industrywide protocols — including pre-departure Covid testing as well as vaccine mandates — it is not uncommon for ship passengers or crew to test positive for the illness.
Cruise ships are allowed to relax mask use onboard if at least 95% of passengers and 95% of crew are fully vaccinated or in specific areas accessible only to fully vaccinated passengers. “However, CDC continues to advise cruise ship operators to require masks indoors and in crowded outdoor areas regardless of vaccination status due to the increased transmissibility of variants of concern,” said Reed.
Why 95% and not 100? I realise these may be medical exemptions. Do they outline their reasoning?
Tbf. The Western Standard is not an unbiased source. To say the least!* It is a 24/7 hardcore anti-Trudeau site. You may as well link to skwawkbox.
* Although it did some surprisingly good, balanced polling reports during the election.
It does look like the lowest vaccination rates are in Western Canada, which is the most conservative part of Canada too and the part which most dislikes Trudeau and his Liberal government.
So similar to the US where the lowest vaccination rates are in the Trumpite, anti President Biden, conservative South
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
There's a certain class of liberal that loathes this nation and everything about it.
There’s also a certain class of conservative that loves this nation but hates almost everyone in it.
True. I think it's idealisation on both sides, the conservatives idealise the UK and what it was and are unable to let go of that image. Liberals idealise other nations that they think are better than the UK and it makes them despise what the UK is because it doesn't live up to their image of what nations should be.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
That is just bollox Bev, pardon the pun. Giving men the rights to be in women's places where they have to undress etc is just totally wrong given that 90% of them still have their block and tackle and some are real bad un's. You cannot trample the majority's rights on the whim of a very small minority who want extra rights at the expense of the majority.
What does HYUFD stand for? I don't mean politically, I mean the initials. Don't worry if it's a name, I don't need to know that. But it "feels" like a short phrase. Anyone know?
Hell Yes! Unveiled for debate
(A reference to EdM’s comment on one of the debates)
Or a random name chosen, for reasons unknown, on a different website at the dawn of the internet age.
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
You have this strange view that everyone is “shouting you down”.
You made a point. @edmundintokyo responded on a gentle but somewhat acerbic style as is his wont. You can respond or not as you see fit.
And you can sod off and stop wading into my comments at every turn, have a lovely day Charles
I get it. You don’t like debate and you don’t like criticism. Well, I’m sorry, that’s not how this site works. If you want to play in the sandbox you operate by the rules of the game.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
Just some advice Charles, you don't have to reply
All the best.
I have the right to reply as I see fit. As, of course do you.
Of course you do mate, I also have a right to call you boring - as I am sure you think the same for me. Take care.
So there you are, a bunch of relevant countries showing the tests done and positive results. Note where South Africa and the UK are. There is as far as I know no country with a population like ours doing anything like as much testing as we are.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
"Biological sex"... so Buck Angel should be using female spaces because he was female at birth?
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
No, of course not.
The issue is the edge cases, for example the woman who, as a man, committed rape, and is now requesting she be transferred to a women’s prison, despite the fact she has functioning male genitalia. That was an actual case, and resulted in two women prisoners being sexually assaulted.
The other issue is that those edge cases may not be a tiny minority of cases. Its easily, possible, as @IshmaelZ highlighted below, that there could be more men of bad faith than actual transwomen.
Then the issue is to apply the law. If I was in a Ladies changing room and I started flashing my privates at other women and making lewd suggestions, then I would be thrown out and possibly arrested. Being a woman would not save me from prosecution.
On a side note... a high profile legal case has just concluded were a woman was convicted of sexual matters related to other women. Being a woman is no guarantee of good behaviour, nor is it a get-out-of-jail-free card.
What does HYUFD stand for? I don't mean politically, I mean the initials. Don't worry if it's a name, I don't need to know that. But it "feels" like a short phrase. Anyone know?
Hell Yes! Unveiled for debate
(A reference to EdM’s comment on one of the debates)
Or a random name chosen, for reasons unknown, on a different website at the dawn of the internet age.
It was a genuine question on JK Rowling to be honest, I haven't paid much attention to it.
The issue seems to stem from whether there are multiple genders, from what I have read on Reddit
If you managed to spend the last year on the internet without coming into contact with this particular controversy then just carry on doing what you've been doing, your social media streams are perfectly calibrated.
Why are you shouting me down for asking a legitimate question? This has only come up because of the Harry Potter documentary that was just on. I wasn't aware that JK Rowling had been "cancelled"
The problem is that it's highly contentious for the reasons @edmundintokyo talked about - mainly because both parties talk at cross purposes and never seem to understand that
1) both sides do actually have valid points but 2) what they are asking for is impossible because their desired fix creates the problem the other side is worried about (and is a problem that the other side just doesn't seem able to grasp or see) 3) and no compromise is possible because it's very much a binary result that the other side cannot accept.
We've covered the same issue here multiple times when talking about rapists ending up in Scottish Women's prisons because self identifying as a women is their "right". As it never ends well it's best to try and avoid the topic.
I am LGBTQIwhatever and my 20 year-old non-binary offspring has had a couple of trans boyfriends. So I do care about trans issues. But you can't override every other issue with trans rights - be sensitive to their rights and also the rights of women.
The problem with Ms Rowling is that she took a clear and previously uncontroversial stance in favour of protecting women's rights in their ongoing struggle against real misogyny. Fatal error. "YOU'RE TRANSPHOBIC" they howl even though she had made it clear she isn't.
People like my whatever-the-gender-neutral-alternative-to-son's ex BFs and my old mate who is trans male to female and *genuine* should be absolutely supported. That is not the same as dodgy Dave the deviant suddenly self-identifying as female demanding access to a women's refuge.
That people on both sides of the debate cannot understand the difference is baffling to me. So I largely stay out of it.
The problem comes down to self identification.
For pro trans people its a magic fix that solves all problems For womens rights it creates a whole new set of issues that the pro trans people just don't seem to understand.
As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible.
The other issue is that you simply can't put a complete argument in 280 characters so anything you post on this topic on twitter will result in 1 tweet being taken out of context and used against you for every more.
At least on here you can post something long enough that it's impossible to use part of your argument completely out of context
As @eek said “ As I said the problem just isn't fixable so I try and keep as far away from it as possible”, so clearly we were right to leave the EU
😜
That's actually a more coherent Brexit Policy than any our Government has come up with since June 2016.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
"Biological sex"... so Buck Angel should be using female spaces because he was female at birth?
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
No, of course not.
The issue is the edge cases, for example the woman who, as a man, committed rape, and is now requesting she be transferred to a women’s prison, despite the fact she has functioning male genitalia. That was an actual case, and resulted in two women prisoners being sexually assaulted.
The other issue is that those edge cases may not be a tiny minority of cases. Its easily, possible, as @IshmaelZ highlighted below, that there could be more men of bad faith than actual transwomen.
Yes, as Mr Meeks notes in his piece, in prisons and elite sports, there isn’t necessarily the good faith that we might see in other areas of life.
SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces immunological memory able to cross-recognize variants from Alpha to Omicron https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.28.474333v1 ...We address whether T cell responses induced by different vaccine platforms (mRNA-1273, BNT162b2, Ad26.COV2.S, NVX-CoV2373) cross-recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants. Preservation of at least 83% and 85% for CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses was found, respectively, regardless of vaccine platform or variants analyzed. By contrast, highly significant decreases were observed for memory B cell and neutralizing antibody recognition of variants. Bioinformatic analyses showed full conservation of 91% and 94% of class II and class I spike epitopes. For Omicron, 72% of class II and 86% of class I epitopes were fully conserved, and 84% and 85% of CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses were preserved. In-depth epitope repertoire analysis showed a median of 11 and 10 spike epitopes recognized by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from vaccinees. Functional preservation of the majority of the T cell responses may play an important role as a second-level defense against diverse variants...
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
There's a certain class of liberal that loathes this nation and everything about it.
Can you name any in particular?
Almost anyone on Twitter that Scott retweets here.
We can add "particular" to the list of words you don't understand.
I understand the word, I just want to reply however I choose and not play your game. There are certain particular people he retweets frequently.
If you want a specific name then https://twitter.com/EmmaKennedy seems a prime example that he's constantly retweeting here that meets the description.
So there you are, a bunch of relevant countries showing the tests done and positive results. Note where South Africa and the UK are. There is as far as I know no country with a population like ours doing anything like as much testing as we are.
There is loads to criticise the government over their handling of covid, but testing and vaccinations are huge successes. You can't have infinite capacity for testing. But we have huge capacity, quick turn arounds and excellent data. People laughed Boris out the room when he said he envisioned us all taking regular tests for personal screening.
A more valid criticism is why only now is the government / NHS increasing hospital capacity for potential COVID patients. It is clear covid would already put more demand on the system before Omicron and even since Omicron, its been a month
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
"Biological sex"... so Buck Angel should be using female spaces because he was female at birth?
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
No, of course not.
The issue is the edge cases, for example the woman who, as a man, committed rape, and is now requesting she be transferred to a women’s prison, despite the fact she has functioning male genitalia. That was an actual case, and resulted in two women prisoners being sexually assaulted.
The other issue is that those edge cases may not be a tiny minority of cases. Its easily, possible, as @IshmaelZ highlighted below, that there could be more men of bad faith than actual transwomen.
Then the issue is to apply the law. If I was in a Ladies changing room and I started flashing my privates at other women and making lewd suggestions, then I would be thrown out and possibly arrested. Being a woman would not save me from prosecution.
On a side note... a high profile legal case has just concluded were a woman was convicted of sexual matters related to other women. Being a woman is no guarantee of good behaviour, nor is it a get-out-of-jail-free card.
It did however allow me to get into the Ladies changing room and so facilitated something that would not otherwise have been possible.
So again you simply can't see the problem. You are starting from the principle that people are working in good faith while the issue is that a lot of the people are the exact opposite.
And yes you are right that the man would be arrested but that doesn't help the woman he abused / raped through the opportunity you gave him.
SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces immunological memory able to cross-recognize variants from Alpha to Omicron https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.28.474333v1 ...We address whether T cell responses induced by different vaccine platforms (mRNA-1273, BNT162b2, Ad26.COV2.S, NVX-CoV2373) cross-recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants. Preservation of at least 83% and 85% for CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses was found, respectively, regardless of vaccine platform or variants analyzed. By contrast, highly significant decreases were observed for memory B cell and neutralizing antibody recognition of variants. Bioinformatic analyses showed full conservation of 91% and 94% of class II and class I spike epitopes. For Omicron, 72% of class II and 86% of class I epitopes were fully conserved, and 84% and 85% of CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses were preserved. In-depth epitope repertoire analysis showed a median of 11 and 10 spike epitopes recognized by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from vaccinees. Functional preservation of the majority of the T cell responses may play an important role as a second-level defense against diverse variants...
No, they must be wrong Nigel, I've been assured on here that memory cell immunity is irrelevant and the models that use nAb concentration are the absolute truth and that prior infection makes no difference to severity of future infections.
These scientists with their actual evidence can't be right, the models say they are wrong.
More seriously - this is very good news and shows that COVID is just the same as other viruses and pathogens, our immunity carries over across all variants. So even if the next variant evades nAbs like Omicron our memory cell based immunity will still ensure case severity is very low.
The same people that said Delta was nothing to worry about, are those that are saying Omicron is nothing to worry about.
So is anyone who said Delta was nothing to worry about, going to stick their head up and say this is different
Who said Delta is nothing to worry about?
I don't recall you calling for a lockdown when Delta was around, we didn't need one was what you and several others said. I remember arguing with you about it
That's not the same thing, is it?
My point is you were wrong then and so I am interested in people that did call for a lockdown then who don't think there is anything to worry about now.
What I am hearing now is the same people that initially said "nothing to worry about" then said "lockdown isn't needed" then said "lockdown 2.0 isn't needed". It's the same people
You keep making these massive sweeping generalisations.
I have generally preferred not to make generalisations.
And with that, good night.
But the French elite are so paranoid about Brexit, so allergic to it and fearful of it, they set a low bar for its success. Britain surviving intact and not starving to death will probably seem quite successful to them. given their direful predictions of total British implosion.
Then the next time the EU does something widely unpopular, eurosceptics across the continent will start to look longingly at independent London.
This is the great French fear. By this guy's account it does stalk their nightmares.
The French are trying to restrict travel to essential only.
By blocking British residents of Belgium or the Netherlands who want to use EuroTunnel and transit France?
Are the blocking British? Or just anyone who isn't EU/Schengen?
Travel from the UK to France
URGENT UPDATE FOR BRITISH RESIDENTS IN EU
Following a French Government decision, on 28/12/2021, unless they hold French residency, British citizens are now considered 3rd country citizens and can no longer transit France by road to reach their country of residence in the EU.
Exactly. They aren't treating us differently. They're applying the 3rd country rules which our government demanded be imposed upon us.
What’s the warning
Be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
I don't understand the complaints. What did they think "3rd country" meant? This is what they demanded and they've succeeded in being treated thus.
Just wait until next week when the usual suspects try and blame the French for our lack of Border Control Posts, staff or computers.
Except the rights of British citizens with legal residency in the EU that pre-dates Brexit have their rights protected by treaty.
I think this is just Macron being a twat again, assuming the allegation is true.
Blocking the UK, when Belgium had had case rates twice as high as our peak at that point for weeks was the action of a kneejerking numpty.
It’s totally Macron being a twat.
But it’s the resounding silence from the Remoaners that amuses
Why should we comment? This is what Leavers wanted. To be outside the EU and to be treated like outsiders.
Well congrats!
Because it’s a breach of the Withdrawal Treaty in the same way that they got very excited about the administrative procedures on settled status.
It is - in the same way that other border closures were breaches of other treaties like Schengen. But its a pandemic - temporary breaches are permitted.
Again, we are being treated as we demanded - as a 3rd country. They had to arbitrate on which exceptions to their medically induced ban would exist and they have tret us like the rest of the world not Europe. At our request.
You and others complaining demonstrates English exceptionalism at its finest. That "treat us like a 3rd country" actually meant "we don't want to be European but you will do what we bally well say because we are English and that means we get to make all the rules".
Yes, there were plenty on here saying "ban all travel". Now the French are trying it (which personally I think is a waste of time) the same posters are trying to make a point of it.
Its totally a waste of time - they already have Omicron so they're as fucked as their neighbours.
But - and its a very bit but - it is an established principle that countries have the absolute right in an emergency to change processes even if written into treaty. This was the point being made last March "THEY CAN'T CLOSE THEIR BORDERS COS SCHENGEN" and yet they did close their borders and we didn't.
How a nation chooses to draw up its pandemic emergency powers is up to that nation. Some of our red list country bans have made no sense at all, yet here we are shouting at the French for doing the same. Instead of an arbitrary red list they have done an arbitrary EU list. We aren't EU, we demanded not to be EU and be tret like ROW and now we're Outraged that we're seen as not EU and as ROW.
What the frack is wrong with some people? This is what you wanted!
Closing to transit is unusual
I suspect the fear is that the person will be able to transit into XYZ at the border so leaves France with the problem.
It also strikes me as typical French point scoring.
It’s entirely driven by domestic politics. This effects very few people. (Fly if you need to go to your other home).
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
Just some advice Charles, you don't have to reply
All the best.
I have the right to reply as I see fit. As, of course do you.
Of course you do mate, I also have a right to call you boring - as I am sure you think the same for me. Take care.
I try not to insult people. You have been throwing abuse my way for months.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
Well done in confirming my point that most trans "supporters" don't have a first clue about what the actual issue is.
A lot of women need safe women only / man free spaces because of past issues / trauma they have experienced.
And by "women only / man free" its biological sex not gender that is the issue. Something the pro-trans outraged don't seem to get.
"Biological sex"... so Buck Angel should be using female spaces because he was female at birth?
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
No, of course not.
The issue is the edge cases, for example the woman who, as a man, committed rape, and is now requesting she be transferred to a women’s prison, despite the fact she has functioning male genitalia. That was an actual case, and resulted in two women prisoners being sexually assaulted.
There are areas where birth sex not gender might be deemed the appropriate governing factor - eg sex offender prisoners (your example) or elite sports - but the issue is more about the default position. Should the principle be exclusion of trans people from the spaces of their gender unless a compelling case for inclusion can be made? Or should it be inclusion unless a compelling case for exclusion can be made? I think it should be the latter. And the case for exclusion should be based on evidence and reason not prejudice.
The other big issue is about the process to achieve a legal change of gender. At present it is long and burdensome. Many get stuck in transit or drop out of it entirely and give up. Amongst trans people, therefore, are many who have not transitioned, who are identifying as their desired gender, are living as that, best they can, but haven’t had it officially recognized. The ‘feelings vs facts’ question posed by the gender critical side of the argument is not easily answered imo despite the loaded framing. Who is confident saying to a person born female who identifies and lives as a man but hasn’t managed to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate, “Sorry, facts is facts, you’re a woman”? Not me.
So the question is whether to streamline and demedicalize the process. I support this reform because it would improve the lives of this minority whilst everybody else would barely notice a difference if at all. Will making it easier to change gender cause lots of people to do it frivolously or for sinister reasons. I don’t think so. Why would it? It’s a profound thing to do regardless of how lengthy and bureaucratic (or not) the process is. We’re not talking large numbers of people here - why not help them when the cost of doing so is zero?
The May government were planning on making the change but it was ditched by this one and the whole thing has instead become a culture war battleground. I think it’s a shame. Several countries have this approach and they’re about to be joined by Germany. We should revisit and implement. Doubt it'll be anytime soon, it seems to have become politically impossible, but one day we should. When we do I reckon we’ll be looking back after a few years wondering what all the fuss was about.
The same people that said Delta was nothing to worry about, are those that are saying Omicron is nothing to worry about.
So is anyone who said Delta was nothing to worry about, going to stick their head up and say this is different
Who said Delta is nothing to worry about?
I don't recall you calling for a lockdown when Delta was around, we didn't need one was what you and several others said. I remember arguing with you about it
That's not the same thing, is it?
My point is you were wrong then and so I am interested in people that did call for a lockdown then who don't think there is anything to worry about now.
What I am hearing now is the same people that initially said "nothing to worry about" then said "lockdown isn't needed" then said "lockdown 2.0 isn't needed". It's the same people
You keep making these massive sweeping generalisations.
I have generally preferred not to make generalisations.
And with that, good night.
But the French elite are so paranoid about Brexit, so allergic to it and fearful of it, they set a low bar for its success. Britain surviving intact and not starving to death will probably seem quite successful to them. given their direful predictions of total British implosion.
Then the next time the EU does something widely unpopular, eurosceptics across the continent will start to look longingly at independent London.
This is the great French fear. By this guy's account it does stalk their nightmares.
The French are trying to restrict travel to essential only.
By blocking British residents of Belgium or the Netherlands who want to use EuroTunnel and transit France?
Are the blocking British? Or just anyone who isn't EU/Schengen?
Travel from the UK to France
URGENT UPDATE FOR BRITISH RESIDENTS IN EU
Following a French Government decision, on 28/12/2021, unless they hold French residency, British citizens are now considered 3rd country citizens and can no longer transit France by road to reach their country of residence in the EU.
Exactly. They aren't treating us differently. They're applying the 3rd country rules which our government demanded be imposed upon us.
What’s the warning
Be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
I don't understand the complaints. What did they think "3rd country" meant? This is what they demanded and they've succeeded in being treated thus.
Just wait until next week when the usual suspects try and blame the French for our lack of Border Control Posts, staff or computers.
Except the rights of British citizens with legal residency in the EU that pre-dates Brexit have their rights protected by treaty.
I think this is just Macron being a twat again, assuming the allegation is true.
Blocking the UK, when Belgium had had case rates twice as high as our peak at that point for weeks was the action of a kneejerking numpty.
It’s totally Macron being a twat.
But it’s the resounding silence from the Remoaners that amuses
Why should we comment? This is what Leavers wanted. To be outside the EU and to be treated like outsiders.
Well congrats!
Because it’s a breach of the Withdrawal Treaty in the same way that they got very excited about the administrative procedures on settled status.
It is - in the same way that other border closures were breaches of other treaties like Schengen. But its a pandemic - temporary breaches are permitted.
Again, we are being treated as we demanded - as a 3rd country. They had to arbitrate on which exceptions to their medically induced ban would exist and they have tret us like the rest of the world not Europe. At our request.
You and others complaining demonstrates English exceptionalism at its finest. That "treat us like a 3rd country" actually meant "we don't want to be European but you will do what we bally well say because we are English and that means we get to make all the rules".
Yes, there were plenty on here saying "ban all travel". Now the French are trying it (which personally I think is a waste of time) the same posters are trying to make a point of it.
Its totally a waste of time - they already have Omicron so they're as fucked as their neighbours.
But - and its a very bit but - it is an established principle that countries have the absolute right in an emergency to change processes even if written into treaty. This was the point being made last March "THEY CAN'T CLOSE THEIR BORDERS COS SCHENGEN" and yet they did close their borders and we didn't.
How a nation chooses to draw up its pandemic emergency powers is up to that nation. Some of our red list country bans have made no sense at all, yet here we are shouting at the French for doing the same. Instead of an arbitrary red list they have done an arbitrary EU list. We aren't EU, we demanded not to be EU and be tret like ROW and now we're Outraged that we're seen as not EU and as ROW.
What the frack is wrong with some people? This is what you wanted!
Closing to transit is unusual
I suspect the fear is that the person will be able to transit into XYZ at the border so leaves France with the problem.
It also strikes me as typical French point scoring.
It’s entirely driven by domestic politics. This effects very few people. (Fly if you need to go to your other home).
But the hypocrisy is deafening
Probably impacts a fair few people as a lot of people will be travelling by car to see all their families at this time of year.
As a point of political point scoring the timing couldn't be better / worse for impacting Brits.
There is loads to criticise the government over their handling of covid, but testing and vaccinations are huge successes. You can't have infinite capacity for testing. But we have huge capacity, quick turn arounds and excellent data. People laughed Boris out the room when he said he envisioned us all taking regular tests for personal screening.
A more valid criticism is why only now is the government / NHS increasing hospital capacity for potential COVID patients. It is clear covid would already put more demand on the system before Omicron and even since Omicron, its been a month
I'm not even arguing that UK testing is good enough, what bugs me is the belief that too many have that it is easy to do better, and that the UK is bad at testing. The only countries that conduct more tests have huge populations which they are testing less frequently, and the only countries that test more frequently have much smaller populations and do a lot less tests in total. The UK's testing operation is by any reasonable measure amongst the very best in the world, and it should be because it is costing us a fortune.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
Yes she did but that is not an acceptable position in the new Scotland. As one of the last serious taxpayers left in the country this is unfortunate.
Gay people used to face this same kind of "moral panic" cr*p. Giving trans people rights does not take rights away from women any more than taking giving gay people rights took them away from straight people.
That is just bollox Bev, pardon the pun. Giving men the rights to be in women's places where they have to undress etc is just totally wrong given that 90% of them still have their block and tackle and some are real bad un's. You cannot trample the majority's rights on the whim of a very small minority who want extra rights at the expense of the majority.
I think that focuses on the central point Malcolm. The problem with the Scottish legislation in particular is that it gives you the right to identify and be treated as a woman when merely being committed to the path before any drugs, surgery etc have been applied and when they are still biologically operative men.
I have no problem at all in such people wanting to dress, name themselves and live as a woman if that is their preference. Good luck to them. I do have a problem at the edge cases, such as prisons, if the person concerned has not gone past the stage of being able to penetrate anyone with their penis. A reasonably simple recalibration on this could take an awful lot of heat out of the debate.
I am not a lawyer but I would like to pick brains on here regarding the Ghislaine Maxwell case. My questions are:
People on here have talked about her revealing names as part of a plea bargain, but as the Maxwell family saying they are challenging the verdict, wouldn't revealing names be tantamount to accepting the guilty verdict?
What are the chances of the Maxwells repeatedly challenging on points of law until the verdict is overturned?
Where is the Maxwell family getting the money from for this extensive and expensive legal defence?
I would genuinely welcome any thoughts on these matters.
Too late for a plea bargain which as the name suggests involves pleading guilty and is a deal with the prosecution who, at least in English law, are now out of the picture. Sentencing is for the judge. The suggestion that she can spill beans at this stage to reduce her sentence verges on conspiracy theory, but some conspiracy theories are true.
Can't see an appeal succeeding certainly not on all counts. No idea about finances, she may have some Epstein money left and has a rich husband
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
Just some advice Charles, you don't have to reply
All the best.
I have the right to reply as I see fit. As, of course do you.
Of course you do mate, I also have a right to call you boring - as I am sure you think the same for me. Take care.
Maybe it's just me, but whenever someone uses the word "mate" it sounds very sarcastic in my opinion, as if they're pretending to be friendly but don't really mean it. That's why I tend not to use it.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
Just some advice Charles, you don't have to reply
All the best.
I have the right to reply as I see fit. As, of course do you.
Of course you do mate, I also have a right to call you boring - as I am sure you think the same for me. Take care.
I try not to insult people. You have been throwing abuse my way for months.
I know someone who is doing 5 tests a day just because someone they saw someone a week ago who now has Omicron. If that type of behaviour is being repeated then no wonder there are supply problems for tests.
Yesterday in SA they did 34,753 tests some of which had to be paid for by the person taking the test.
In the UK we did 1,476,216 tests all of which were free.
And our testing system is a "shambles"
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
When you laud the efforts of country X you don't silently attack country Y.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
It was in the context of "what has gone wrong with testing?" Saying SA does more PCR tests was only true as a fraction of the total testing, in reality the UK does over 20 times as many PCR tests per capita each day, and it is a smaller fraction of the total testing because we do a huge number of LFTs as well. It was a misleading statement, made by the sort of person who should know better.
There's a certain class of liberal that loathes this nation and everything about it.
Can you name any in particular?
Almost anyone on Twitter that Scott retweets here.
We can add "particular" to the list of words you don't understand.
I understand the word, I just want to reply however I choose and not play your game. There are certain particular people he retweets frequently.
If you want a specific name then https://twitter.com/EmmaKennedy seems a prime example that he's constantly retweeting here that meets the description.
She seems to be a fan of the BBC and the NHS. Next.
And that stops you from loathing this country? Oookay.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
Just some advice Charles, you don't have to reply
All the best.
I have the right to reply as I see fit. As, of course do you.
Of course you do mate, I also have a right to call you boring - as I am sure you think the same for me. Take care.
I try not to insult people. You have been throwing abuse my way for months.
You've insulted me many times, I am very happy to bury the hatchet here but you did say you were going to ignore my posting, so I am surprised that you keep responding.
What is going on with JK Rowling? This issue seems to have totally passed me by.
She says chicks with dicks aren't chicks.
That's what it boils down to.
Did she actually say that? I have zero interest in TERF wars, but my impression was that she said that trans rights couldn’t be at the expense of women’s rights
As far as I understand it, I think she meant that there are only two sexes.
I have no idea what she meant and I am not getting into a dull and sterile debate.
Just some advice Charles, you don't have to reply
All the best.
I have the right to reply as I see fit. As, of course do you.
Of course you do mate, I also have a right to call you boring - as I am sure you think the same for me. Take care.
Maybe it's just me, but whenever someone uses the word "mate" it sounds very sarcastic in my opinion, as if they're pretending to be friendly but don't really mean it. That's why I tend not to use it.
So there you are, a bunch of relevant countries showing the tests done and positive results. Note where South Africa and the UK are. There is as far as I know no country with a population like ours doing anything like as much testing as we are.
Rather than moan about what is in fact an extremely efficient mass testing facility I think that we should be asking whether our huge commitment to this is a good use of scarce resources.
As a means of identifying those infected and requiring them to self isolate it just doesn't seem to have worked. Countries with much less testing seem to manage to control their R rate at least as well as the UK, better in many cases. As a means of identifying how much Covid is about it seems a bit voodoo pollish and it may be that a smaller more balanced sample would be at least as useful.
Comments
Everyone is better than Corbyn and everyone apart from Corbyn is better than Johnson.
Johnson's implementation of Brexit is so successful, he disowns it and blames Remainers and Theresa May for it.
Early energy on vaccines partially redeems an otherwise woeful epidemic response. Credit to him on that, I guess.
gayTory in the village arbiter of Tory pureness.To vote for any other party in any circumstance is to be Cast Out as a non-Tory. Unless it is Yaki himself voting for Welsh Nationalism in which case its fine.
The toilets issue has always struck me as an odd one to get wound up about. If someone with a penis doesn't want to use the male toilets, why don't they use the disabled one instead? That's generally a private cubicle. Seems like a reasonable compromise, the female toilets are kept a safe place for anyone sexually female while an individual who doesn't feel comfortable going into the male toilets can use a private cubicle instead.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12100515/care-homes-accused-sedatives-coronavirus-die-quickly/
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2128/rr-11
I am surprised people aren't a bit more fussed about this
The issue is that we already know multiple people (not many but more than zero) are going to use it for evil intent so his Principle 3 is just wrong.
And given that his entire idea is based on and built upon an invalid principle the rest of the argument falls apart.
Basically I once again return to my original point - the problem isn't fixable because both people have perfectly valid points over a very binary issue. And the issue comes done to the fact that not everyone has good intentions regardless of how much you wish it wasn't true.
Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Dec 30, 2021
6.1% of all deaths registered in the week ending 17 December mentioned #COVID19 on the death certificate in England and Wales (755 deaths).
This was a decrease in the number of deaths from the previous week (764 deaths, 6.4% of all deaths).
In England, 702 deaths involving #COVID19 were registered in the week ending 17 December (compared with 708 deaths registered the previous week).
In Wales, 51 deaths involving COVID-19 were registered in this week (compared with the 54 deaths registered the previous week).
Don't get me started on Joanna Cherry or Kathleen Stock either.
Covid-19 keeps throwing up policy decisions requiring difficult judgements between competing objectives. Reducing covid isolation from 7 days to 5 is another one of these. There is often no “obvious single right answer” to these complex decisions, whatever some argue…1/19
https://twitter.com/ChrisCEOHopson/status/1476479819105906688?s=20
I suspect those two things are linked in some way.
The issue is that there are predators who like to (ab)use trans people clothing and trans supporters are ignoring the issue because they seemingly can't grasp / don't understand that some people have bad intentions.
Were the risk of misidentification slight it wouldn't be an issue but the risk of misidentification here is (theoretically) rape in what should be a safe space.
Who needs a video call when you are part of the HIVEmind (TM)
https://unherd.com/2020/01/scotlands-gender-recognition-act-is-a-hostage-to-fortune/
And the late April Ashley MBE should be forced into the Gents?
Only an hour or so ago I heard on the radio a medic lauding the SA testing system because of how many PCR tests they do. Yet we in the UK do far more PCR tests than SA even if it is a smaller percentage of the total due to the vast number of LFTs. Some people just hate this country without any reason.
We are so grateful we have travelled so much prior to covid with our last cruise in September 2019 from Southampton to Newfoundland, Canada, New England and New York returning to Southampton absolutely fabulous
Every cruise line has been affected by the current surge in Covid-19 cases due to the omicron variant. The lion’s share of the 86 cruise ships under watch belong to the largest three cruise operators: Carnival operates 32, Royal Caribbean operates 25 and Norwegian Cruise Line operates 15. All four ships operated by Disney Cruise Line are also on yellow, according to the CDC website.
Despite tight industrywide protocols — including pre-departure Covid testing as well as vaccine mandates — it is not uncommon for ship passengers or crew to test positive for the illness.
Cruise ships are allowed to relax mask use onboard if at least 95% of passengers and 95% of crew are fully vaccinated or in specific areas accessible only to fully vaccinated passengers. “However, CDC continues to advise cruise ship operators to require masks indoors and in crowded outdoor areas regardless of vaccination status due to the increased transmissibility of variants of concern,” said Reed.
The guardian link to the samaritans along with other news outlets. But what could the samaritans do to help someone in his position? A policeman just out of jail and facing another trial for alleged ABH - possibly a much longer sentence; and the prospect that it will never end, as more and more claims emerge. I don't want to excuse violence by police officers, but they are engaged in difficult work and have to make very difficult judgements under pressure, these are young people on a relatively low salary. Who would honestly go in to policing?
The public lust for punishment and vengeance, opportunistically encouraged by the government, seems to be so strong that it overrides any prospect of rehabilitation for lots of people convicted of criminal offences, particularly violent or sexual offences. But where does this ultimately lead us? Should we just encourage euthanasia of the damned? Amongst many other things, this is something that terrifies me about this country.
So unless you've missed something in your reporting where the medic complained about the UK you seem to have leapt to a completely invalid conclusion.
😜
The issue is the edge cases, for example the woman who, as a man, committed rape, and is now requesting she be transferred to a women’s prison, despite the fact she has functioning male genitalia. That was an actual case, and resulted in two women prisoners being sexually assaulted.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison
Really nothing more behind it.
But it won't be long before he's on shift to confirm or deny.
https://westernstandardonline.com/2021/12/trudeau-calls-the-unvaccinated-racist-and-misogynistic-extremists/
People on here have talked about her revealing names as part of a plea bargain, but as the Maxwell family saying they are challenging the verdict, wouldn't revealing names be tantamount to accepting the guilty verdict?
What are the chances of the Maxwells repeatedly challenging on points of law until the verdict is overturned?
Where is the Maxwell family getting the money from for this extensive and expensive legal defence?
I would genuinely welcome any thoughts on these matters.
Football, particularly since the expansion of academy program, hoovers up masses of talent and places restrictions on what the kids can do and of course the money is huge. But also seeing other sports like rugby looking wider and again the money can be really good.
Its the reason West Indies have become piss poor at cricket, other sports just have a much bigger upside.
Gone are the days where if you show talent you tinker at different sports in the winter and summer. My mates kid is in a top tier football academy, its a year round thing.
Cricket is piss poor money for a standard county player. You have to get through that, establish yourself as a really good one day player, then you can earn.
To allow trans men access to these facilities solely on the basis of self identification may undermine the peace of mind and recovery of damaged women.
Of course there are trans men who face abuse and need protection and support but these need not be in the same facilities.
Which is the sort of obsessional madness I'm referring to.
I will say I doubt anyone at any level of government or public organisation has bothered to calculate the number of LFTs required if everyone took as many tests as they have been requested to.
As to it being a middle class idiocy I suspect, somewhat like mask wearing, those taking LFTs on a regular basis are heavily skewed towards the middle class.
On LFTs, there will be none around next week either as the bulk of schools will be going back and they've been ordered to test everyone twice in the first week over and above the home testing regime.
This is because the DfE, DoH and local health boards are total fucking morons on the intellectual level of Piers Corbyn although slightly less unpleasant.
It also means if you need an LFT to test for the virus, you won't be able to get one.
Therefore, expect the whole system to collapse entirely as being more useless than Amanda Spielman within the next fortnight.
This, from the man who thought blacking up was acceptable when he did it.
Both are more specific.
One being loutishness at a few cricket clubs the other being a complete unwillingness to prepare properly for tours of Australia specifically and test cricket generally.
Cricket until IPL couldn't compete and it still can't locally.
It also strikes me as typical French point scoring.
* Although it did some surprisingly good, balanced polling reports during the election.
In the UK, my understanding is participation wise basketball is also increasingly popular.
Cricket is also one of those games that is incredibly time consuming and of course all the kit etc. And in an urban environment, you can't really play it in the UK without going to a club.
Can't see an appeal succeeding certainly not on all counts. No idea about finances, she may have some Epstein money left and has a rich husband
So similar to the US where the lowest vaccination rates are in the Trumpite, anti President Biden, conservative South
(A reference to EdM’s comment on one of the debates)
Or a random name chosen, for reasons unknown, on a different website at the dawn of the internet age.
You choose
So there you are, a bunch of relevant countries showing the tests done and positive results. Note where South Africa and the UK are. There is as far as I know no country with a population like ours doing anything like as much testing as we are.
On a side note... a high profile legal case has just concluded were a woman was convicted of sexual matters related to other women. Being a woman is no guarantee of good behaviour, nor is it a get-out-of-jail-free card.
SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces immunological memory able to cross-recognize variants from Alpha to Omicron
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.28.474333v1
...We address whether T cell responses induced by different vaccine platforms (mRNA-1273, BNT162b2, Ad26.COV2.S, NVX-CoV2373) cross-recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants. Preservation of at least 83% and 85% for CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses was found, respectively, regardless of vaccine platform or variants analyzed. By contrast, highly significant decreases were observed for memory B cell and neutralizing antibody recognition of variants. Bioinformatic analyses showed full conservation of 91% and 94% of class II and class I spike epitopes. For Omicron, 72% of class II and 86% of class I epitopes were fully conserved, and 84% and 85% of CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses were preserved. In-depth epitope repertoire analysis showed a median of 11 and 10 spike epitopes recognized by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from vaccinees. Functional preservation of the majority of the T cell responses may play an important role as a second-level defense against diverse variants...
If you want a specific name then https://twitter.com/EmmaKennedy seems a prime example that he's constantly retweeting here that meets the description.
A more valid criticism is why only now is the government / NHS increasing hospital capacity for potential COVID patients. It is clear covid would already put more demand on the system before Omicron and even since Omicron, its been a month
So again you simply can't see the problem. You are starting from the principle that people are working in good faith while the issue is that a lot of the people are the exact opposite.
And yes you are right that the man would be arrested but that doesn't help the woman he abused / raped through the opportunity you gave him.
https://twitter.com/moleatthedoor/status/1475849571263729673?s=20
These scientists with their actual evidence can't be right, the models say they are wrong.
More seriously - this is very good news and shows that COVID is just the same as other viruses and pathogens, our immunity carries over across all variants. So even if the next variant evades nAbs like Omicron our memory cell based immunity will still ensure case severity is very low.
But the hypocrisy is deafening
The other big issue is about the process to achieve a legal change of gender. At present it is long and burdensome. Many get stuck in transit or drop out of it entirely and give up. Amongst trans people, therefore, are many who have not transitioned, who are identifying as their desired gender, are living as that, best they can, but haven’t had it officially recognized. The ‘feelings vs facts’ question posed by the gender critical side of the argument is not easily answered imo despite the loaded framing. Who is confident saying to a person born female who identifies and lives as a man but hasn’t managed to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate, “Sorry, facts is facts, you’re a woman”? Not me.
So the question is whether to streamline and demedicalize the process. I support this reform because it would improve the lives of this minority whilst everybody else would barely notice a difference if at all. Will making it easier to change gender cause lots of people to do it frivolously or for sinister reasons. I don’t think so. Why would it? It’s a profound thing to do regardless of how lengthy and bureaucratic (or not) the process is. We’re not talking large numbers of people here - why not help them when the cost of doing so is zero?
The May government were planning on making the change but it was ditched by this one and the whole thing has instead become a culture war battleground. I think it’s a shame. Several countries have this approach and they’re about to be joined by Germany. We should revisit and implement. Doubt it'll be anytime soon, it seems to have become politically impossible, but one day we should. When we do I reckon we’ll be looking back after a few years wondering what all the fuss was about.
As a point of political point scoring the timing couldn't be better / worse for impacting Brits.
I have no problem at all in such people wanting to dress, name themselves and live as a woman if that is their preference. Good luck to them. I do have a problem at the edge cases, such as prisons, if the person concerned has not gone past the stage of being able to penetrate anyone with their penis. A reasonably simple recalibration on this could take an awful lot of heat out of the debate.
As a means of identifying those infected and requiring them to self isolate it just doesn't seem to have worked. Countries with much less testing seem to manage to control their R rate at least as well as the UK, better in many cases. As a means of identifying how much Covid is about it seems a bit voodoo pollish and it may be that a smaller more balanced sample would be at least as useful.