Cool Hand Luke
Update 429 Australia Special #BeMorePorcupine
Lord Justice Sedley in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions [1999] EWHC Admin 733:
'Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having. What Speakers' Corner (where the law applies as fully as anywhere else) demonstrates is the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear.
From the condemnation of Socrates to the persecution of modern writers and journalists, our world has seen too many examples of state control of unofficial ideas.'
This update is an Australia Special since there are lots of reports from there. Don’t worry, Kiwis, the next update will be a New Zealand Special 😎
Us Terfs need our heroes. Hence the Heroes Season. Thanks to one of the wonderful readers mentioned below for the latest in the Season, Cool Hand Luke.
In early 1950s Florida, decorated World War II veteran Lucas "Luke" Jackson (Paul Newman) drunkenly beheads several parking meters. He is sentenced to two years on a chain gang in a prison camp run by the Captain (Strother Martin) and Walking Boss Godfrey (Morgan Woodward), a quiet rifleman nicknamed "the man with no eyes" because he always wears mirrored sunglasses. There, even minor violations are punished by "a night in the box", a small wooden booth in the prison yard with limited air and space.
Luke refuses to observe the established order. Spoiler alert: the clip below is near the end of the film.
Thanks as ever to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Tickle v Giggle
We have been following this very important judgment since it was handed down.
Edie Wyatt on her substack Culture & State provides a useful discussion including about how the Australian Sex Discrimination Act came to be amended ( and see ‘Open Letter to Julia Gillard’ below). Edie feels that the SDA needs political change rather than being solved through the courts albeit she fully backs Sall Grover.
Women beaten with their own rights.
Tickle V Giggle Federal Court Decision
Aug 28, 2024
A decision in the Federal Court last Friday confirmed a shocking reality that many of us already knew; it is now illegal for women to publicly make a single sex space in Australia, under the current operation of the Sex Discrimination Act (1984) (SDA). The SDA is no longer fit for purpose, or rather, its purpose is now to threaten women into submission.
The destruction of the sex category in which women hold civil rights is not “unintentional consequences” of gender identity protections. The legislation that Justice Bromwich ruled on in the Federal Court in the Tickle V Giggle case is the SDA operating exactly as it is intended to operate by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), who have been strategically removing the ovaries from the SDA for decades.
Justice Bromwich in the Federal Court ruled that Sall Grover and Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd had engaged in indirect discrimination, by removing, the obvious male, Roxanne Tickle from the social media App that Grover had created for female people.
All the arguments mounted by Grover’s legal team failed, except for the argument that Grover could not have “directly” or intentionally discriminated on the basis of gender identity, because gender identity can’t be discerned on sight, because gender identity is invisible. Gender identity is essentially a legally protected sexed soul built from stereotypes.
Significantly, Bromwich declared “that in its contemporary ordinary meaning, sex is changeable”. Bromwich based this on a few cases in the last 30 years, where a legal fiction had been applied to trans identified people for compassionate reasons.
Noone thought to gather all the cases and legislation where women and girls are dealt with by the law as humans with a specific reproductive path. The Sex Discrimination Act, under which Sall Grover and her business were sued, was once such a piece of legislation.
The SDA originally recognised that the female body had a reproductive path that placed women and girls at a structural disadvantage in society. In the 40 years since its inception, the SDA has been the victim, like so many women and girls, of unbridled molestation.
The full piece is here:
https://msediewyatt.substack.com/p/women-beaten-with-their-own-rights?r=7ogxh&triedRedirect=true
Free Speech
On The Academy of Ideas site, Baroness Claire Fox addresses free speech and other issues and looks forward to the Battle of Ideas event.
A barren rose garden: what does Keir Starmer's speech mean for democracy?
Unlike our prime minister, we promise to 'go there' at the Battle of Ideas festival - join us to discuss the big and difficult issues of our time.
Aug 28, 2024
In the Downing Street garden, Prime Minister Keir Starmer made what has been described as a ‘deliberately gloomy’ speech laying out future plans for the government. His defensive tone, asserting that ‘things are worse than we ever imagined’, and that ‘change would not happen overnight’ seems to have united the political spectrum in annoyance. The Guardian quotes the Unite union as describing the prime minister’s first major speech as a ‘bleak vision’, while Conservative peer Lord Frost described it as a ‘scary mix of authoritarianism and vacuousness’. Starmer may have been surrounded by roses, but he certainly didn’t emerge smelling of them.
Indeed, it wasn’t so much the content of Starmer’s speech that seems to have touched a nerve, but the lack of it. Labour’s electoral tactic of ‘promise nothing, disappoint no one’ seems to have carried over into government policy. Starmer’s statement that ‘frankly - things will get worse before they get better’ sounds almost frightening when considered alongside the fact that very little of his speech gave any detail as to what kind of economic policy the government might be favouring come the next Budget. Likewise, Starmer’s assessment of the riots - caused by ‘the snake oil of populism’ sold by the Conservative government, in his view - reveals a worrying lack of political assessment. The country is indeed facing a series of crises, but if this speech was supposed to make us all feel better about who is in charge, it hasn’t worked.
Perhaps most concerning is what Starmer didn’t mention - immigration, the issue many see as number one on the public list of political problems to solve. Likewise, Labour’s controversial plans relating to free speech, from criminalising misogyny to the crackdown on online discussion post-riots, failed to get a mention. This kind of tone-deaf approach to a nation’s priorities is telling. For voters of all political persuasions and none, political representation seems to be failing. The fact that the recent General Election provided a huge parliamentary mandate with limited popular enthusiasm is a good example of the weird, disillusioned tone of much of today’s political landscape.
At the Battle of Ideas festival this year, we’re going to talk about these things - even if our prime minister won’t. Below is one of our Keynote sessions - a strand of discussions at the festival that take an overarching view of political trends to ask the big questions of our time. Is there a war on the past? Is populism being quarantined? And, in this one, what’s the state of democracy?
Here at the Academy of Ideas, we think you’ve got to be in it to change it - and so we invite you to join us at the Battle of Ideas festival on 19 & 20 October, at Church House, Westminster, to try to make sense of the world and the challenges we face as a society. We’ve been working hard to get our programme together, which is nearly complete - have a read of what we’ve got planned here.
Time is running out for early-bird tickets, so get yours now for big discounts, or join our volunteers team for free access to the festival. See you there.
Elections, riots and distrust: what’s the state of democracy?
Saturday 19 October, 10:15—11:45, Assembly Hall, Church House, Keynote Controversies
The Free Speech Union are launching a legal challenge to Bridget Phillipson’s pausing and potential repeal of the Freedom of Speech Act. My latest report on this was here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-big-country?utm_source=publication-search
You can find the FSU Crowdfunder here:
https://x.com/SpeechUnion/status/1829081567819698459
BMA Witch Hunt
I’m quoting the Guardian - wonders will never cease!!
Denis Campbell in The Guardian ( ‘Witch-hunt’: BMA tries to identify who leaked planned opposition to Cass review 29 August) reports:
The British Medical Association is the only medical organisation in the UK that has not accepted the findings of Dr Hilary Cass. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
The British Medical Association (BMA) has been accused of undertaking a “witch-hunt” to try to identify which senior figure leaked that it was set to oppose the landmark Cass review on transgender healthcare.
It has warned its ruling council’s 69 members that whoever tipped off the media about its stance should own up or face their non-cooperation being seen as “an act of dishonesty”. Critics said its action is “disgraceful”, “Orwellian” and “witch-hunt-like”.
The BMA has been heavily criticised by key medical figures since it voted on 17 July to in effect reject Dr Hilary Cass’s report. It is the only medical organisation in the UK to not accept and find fault with her findings, which were accepted by the last government and its Labour successor.
The union has been in turmoil ever since. Its dismissal of the report as “unsubstantiated” has led to a serious split, resignations and huge tension within the body that represents about 195,000 doctors – a large majority of the UK medical profession.
The New Statesman revealed on 16 July that the BMA’s council was going to discuss a motion recommending that the union “disavow” the Cass review when it met the next day. That disclosure led to the motion being reworded, with the new version no longer using the word “disavow” and instead committing the BMA to “publicly critique” the findings.
Rachel Podolak, the union’s joint chief executive, has added to what some leading BMA figures have said is “a climate of fear” within it over the “toxic” subject of Cass by telling council members that an investigation into the leak had been launched and that the culprit should reveal themselves.
In a message posted on the council’s message board the day after the motion was passed, Podolak scolded whoever had leaked details of the two Cass-related motions and made clear that, because the confidentiality of council proceedings had been breached, “we are investigating further”.
She asked anyone who had shared information about the move to dissociate the BMA from the Cass report to contact her so that she could decide what purposes that had been done for.
Then, in language which some council members found threatening, she added: “Legal advice received confirms that failure to admit breach of confidentiality may be regarded as a denial, which in turn could be viewed as an act of dishonesty if/when responsibility is established.”
Dr Clare Gerada, an ex-BMA council member and ex-chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “I think the BMA are blaming the messenger, not themselves.” She questioned why it had adopted such a controversial position on such a sensitive subject without asking members for their views first. She is among an array of leading doctors who have signed a letter voicing serious concern at the BMA’s stance.
The full article is here:
The Good Laugh…sorry…Law Project
We last reported on the latest outrageous nonsense from Jolyon Maugham and the GLP here:
Here is an update on GLP from Fox News:
“Revenge is sweet”
OK, it is actually the amazing work by Wonkypolicywonk on Labour Pains:
Good Law Project: things fall apart
Next week, when MPs return to Westminster to begin work on the ambitious legislative programme set out in the King’s Speech on 17 July, the new Labour Government will be well into the second half of its first 100 days in office. And last week, as the half-way point of that 100 days was passed, Jolyon Maugham’s bestie Carol Vorderman gave Keir Starmer only “five to six” marks out of 10. Yet we still await the (Not Very) Good Law Project’s first new crowdfunded legal challenge of the Starmer era.
Under the Sunak-led Tories, the GLP launched new crowdfunders at a rate of more than one a month: 21 of them in the 18 months from 1 January 2023 to the General Election on 4 July, contributing to an overall total of 73 since 2017. In July and August last year the GLP launched four new crowdfunded legal challenges. But since Keir Starmer entered Downing Street two months ago, this industrial scale grifting has ground to a halt.
In fact, since 4 July, the GLP have closed four crowdfunders (all launched in 2024), and as a result they currently have only three open crowdfunders, all of them moribund. In August last year the GLP grifted thousands of donations totalling £82,744 via 11 different crowdfunders. So far this month, they’ve raked in just five donations totalling a mere £45, including two simultaneous £1 donations that were most likely made by a criminal testing out stolen credit/debit cards.
Jolyon’s cunning plan: how it started
This hiatus in the GLP’s use of the law to create a better, fairer and greener future for the UK was, at least initially, a tad surprising, given that that they claim to have been “thinking hard about our work under a new government” and “making fresh plans for this moment of change”. In a blog posted the morning after the General Election, and emailed to the more than 300,000 people on the GLP’s mailing list, Jolyon shared his insight that:
‘Labour will be better than the Tories were – but we need a higher bar than that. We will campaign to improve standards in public life. And we will support the Covid Corruption Commissioner, making sure they benefit from our enormous database of evidence.
‘After an election which shamefully sidelined the climate crisis, we will keep fighting for a fairer, greener future and put reaching net zero front and centre. And we’ll carry on fighting the cases that no-one else will. We’re proud of our record on trans rights, and will expand our work defending women from violence and coercion.
‘But we’ve also been making fresh plans for this moment of change. It’s clear this morning that the far right is on the rise. The lies they tell are already in our sights.
‘Labour’s investment plans depend on securing significant support from private companies – but will they put our interests before their shareholders? We’ll be watching out for corporate abuse.
And it’s time to talk honestly about the harm Brexit is causing – and what it will take to make it right. This is what the country needs and we plan to ensure it is what Labour does.’
Jolyon’s cunning plan: how it’s going
Unfortunately for Jolyon and the GLP, things didn’t get off to a great start when, just one week later, it emerged in the High Court that new health secretary Wes Streeting would not only contest the GLP’s legal challenge, launched in June, to the outgoing Tory government’s temporary ban on the prescribing of puberty blockers to under 18s by private sector providers, but plans to make the ban permanent.
This caused the evidently blindsided Jolyon to embark on an unhinged, 10-day, multi-post tirade on X/Twitter against both Wes Streeting and the Government’s adviser on suicide prevention, Professor Louis Appleby, who on 19 July published a report comprehensively debunking Jolyon’s un-evidenced claims about suicides of trans-identifying young people. And on 29 July the GLP’s already desperately poor ‘record on trans rights’ deteriorated further when the High Court robustly dismissed their legal challenge to the puberty blockers ban.
By that time, Jolyon had announced (on 21 July) that he was “off walking in the mountains for a fortnight and am deleting twitter ’til I get back”. As I write, this two-week break from X/Twitter is still ongoing, and is now in its sixth week.
The full piece is here:
https://labourpainsblog.com/2024/08/27/good-law-project-things-fall-apart/
Reverend Randall
My latest report on Rev Randall’s case is here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/farewell-my-lovely-062?utm_source=publication-search
Here is the inflammatory sermon ( ahem) that got him into hot water.
Best of luck with the ongoing case, Rev Randall!
Red Cross Goes Woo Woo
James Saunders in GB News ( British Red Cross urges staff to use 'inclusive' language and avoid terms like 'biological female' and 'maiden name' 27 August) reports:
The British Red Cross has been slammed for a "woke" new "inclusive language guide" advising employees to stop using traditional English-language terms.
The centuries-old charity - which boasts the King as a patron - has told staff to use more "acceptable" terms, and is understood to have circulated a 12-page dossier detailing the new "suggestions".
Descriptions such as "born a man or woman" and "biological male or female" have been clamped down on - attracting ire from those on the right who have accused the charity of "political extremism".
Elsewhere in the guide, staff planning on "solely referring to women" have been told they could instead say "women, girls and people who menstruate" or "people who have periods" instead.
The 12-page pamphlet, unearthed by the Daily Mail, is also understood to have told staff that "people who are not women" can have periods and even get pregnant.
"Ladies and gentlemen" and "maiden name" have also been damned by the dossier, with employees told the terms are "not inclusive".
The full article is here:
An Open Letter to Julia Gillard
Thanks as ever to Feminist Legal Clinic who are based in Sydney.
An Open Letter to Julia Gillard – by Campaign Club – WNN (28 August)
Dear Julia.
First of all, I hate telling this story. I can’t believe it was a story I ever even had to utter.
I was hit-on by a transvestite in my rape-crisis centre. Thanks to you.
. . .
“Safe Women” – like yourself – have no idea of the physical and metaphysical advantages of “Women’s Business”; which is private, and not for public record.
TO THIS DAY… I cannot find a psychologist who knows that humans can’t change sex.
I am abused for even asking.
. . .
I can’t use any of my services because men in dresses take over and constantly talk about their penises.
When I speak up for myself and other women, I am the one who has to leave.
Before #MeToo, I always shared my stories in the hope that everyone could learn from them, and we could all grow as a society.
But then I learned that autogynephiles were masturbating to rape stories, and fantasising about being rape victims.
. . .
So while you think “most people” won’t end up in jail, or playing elite sports, I’d like to remind you that ONE WOMAN’S RIGHTS matter more than one man’s sick desires.
Women are being raped in prison, by men. People like you let them in there, and don’t even record the data.
. . .
Fix your mistake of removing the definition of SEX from the SEX Discrimination Act.
Source: An Open Letter to Julia Gillard – by Campaign Club – WNN
‘Trans Surgery’ in Australia
On Gender Clinic News Bernard Lane reports on the mendacity of Melbourne Children’s Hospital. Well done Moira Deeming MP for plugging away!
Out in the open
Yes, Australia's best-known children's hospital gender clinic does indeed refer distressed minors for trans surgery ... but says there is no data available
Aug 27, 2024
For the first time, it has been officially admitted that an Australian children’s hospital is referring patients to the private sector for transgender surgery such as removal of a girl’s healthy breasts.
The public gender clinic of the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Melbourne, which takes gender-distressed patients up to age 16, “may refer adolescents to a private specialist clinician to consider the appropriateness and need for surgery,” Mary-Anne Thomas, Minister for Health in the state of Victoria, said.
Ms Thomas, who declares herself a proud feminist with “a passion for public policy”, was answering the latest in a string of formal questions on notice about the RCH gender clinic from Independent Liberal Party parliamentarian Moira Deeming.
Mrs Deeming told GCN that news of vulnerable girls having their healthy breasts surgically removed would cause “outrage” among mainstream Australians, “especially when they have it explained to them that there is absolutely no evidentiary benefit for this.”
Melbourne psychiatrist and researcher Dr Alison Clayton, who has written on the experimental nature of mastectomy for gender-distressed girls, said it was “a poorly evidenced, invasive and irreversible intervention for a poorly understood condition—that is, gender dysphoria—in adolescent biological females.”
She said mastectomy would “have life-long impact on sexual functioning and precludes the later possibility of breastfeeding.”
“I told my then psychiatrist I wanted to break my nose with a hammer and that I wanted to cut off my breasts. One of these comments carried more weight. My body dysmorphic disorder never faded but my trans identity did.”—Melbourne detransitioner Mel Jefferies, who regrets her decision as a young woman to undergo a trans mastectomy, Twitter, 19 August 2024
Chest reconstruction
No Australian children’s hospital has taken the momentous step to provide “gender-affirming” surgery on-site for minors who say they are distressed by a feeling of conflict between their birth sex and an inner sense of a trans or non-binary “gender identity”.
The former RCH gender clinic director, Dr Michelle Telfer, a pioneer of the contentious gender-affirming treatment model in Australia, is on the record as saying that “chest reconstruction surgery [double mastectomy] is an integral part of the transition process for trans males [i.e., females]” and is likely to improve mental health.
Mrs Deeming said Victoria’s governing Labor Party could act to stop the harm now, because its leadership could cite England’s cautious Cass review of youth gender care and explain to voters that “the science has been updated.”
“The longer they wait, the worse, the more culpable everyone will know them to be,” she said.
The full piece is here:
https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/out-in-the-open?publication_id=627677&r=1v403b
Meanwhile here is Dr Miriam Grossman:
Doctors Protecting Children
Thanks again to Feminist Legal Clinic.
Doctors Protecting Children (28 August)
Doctors Protecting Children Declaration SIGN THE DECLARATION 75,000+ physicians and healthcare professionals represented by co-signing medical organizations5,200+ individual signatures60 countries represented by signatories391,000+ site visits55+ million views on social media 75,000+ physicians and healthcare professionals represented by co-signing medical organizations5,200+ individual signatures60 countries represented by signatories391,000+ site visits55+ million views
Source: Doctors Protecting Children
Australian Census
Thanks yet again to Feminist Legal Clinic.
Labor says sexuality questions dumped from census to avoid ‘divisive’ debates ( 29 August)
The acting prime minister, Richard Marles, says the government decided not to add questions on sexuality to the 2026 census to avoid “divisive” community debates.
Marles said the government had opted to take the existing set of questions to the next census rather than adding five new topics – including sexuality – as had been proposed, out of concern for social cohesion.
Until this week, the government had been expected to add questions on whether respondents had changed living locations in the previous 12 months and why, plus questions on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural identity, gender – including variations of sex characteristics – and sexual orientation.
The extra topics were the result of community consultations last year and were set to be part of a test program ahead of a final government decision. But the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) confirmed this week it received notice on Friday last week the extra topics would not be included.
[Ed: I suspect it is ‘gender identity’ rather than sexuality that is the divisive issue.]
Given that this is an Australia Special, I think we have to have Kangaroo Day of Visibility 😊
Endpieces by Dusty and Liz
Could Menno help me upstage Liz for a change!!😊
Well, it’s touch and go 😊
#BeMorePorcupine
#XX
#SaveWomensSport
Dear readers
This update is proving a bit sluggish in terms of viewing figures, so, if you enjoyed it, please spread it around if you can.
Next update tonight is a Kiwi Special 😊
Dusty
Jolyon Maugham and his cunning plans do seem to emulate Baldrick’s cunning plans.
Rev Randall….my word, what a hate preacher!
My dad was a POW for two years and the only thing that kept them alive were the Red Cross Parcels. The Germans didn’t feed them. He’d have been devastated that they’ve gone woke.
Great round up of pieces and videos, thanks Dusty. I never realised that Ms Tickle was such a feminine flower. 😂 “I’m a woman” spoken with such confidence and in such a girly voice. We’ve been wrong all along, let him oops! her onto the app Sall. Don’t be a transphobe.