I am now back from doing my mate Fingers’ garden in deepest Hampshire and also having a night on the tiles last night, so I am somewhat behind!!!
Thanks as ever to my paid subscribers and to those who buy me a coffee. These updates do take up an enormous amount of work, so please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Onwards with the Dusty,Nicola, Moodie and Rex Film Series 😀 Please keep the suggestions for films coming in but please check the list first which I am updating as we go along. Please send suggestions in the comments here at this link:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/empire-of-light-dustys-film-series
Mississippi Burning is a 1988 American film directed by Alan Parker.
Mississippi Burning was recommended by reader, Patricia who also provided her own review of the film. So here is Patricia’s review:
A thriller - based on the 1964 investigation by the FBI into the deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi - 3 civil rights workers working for voter registration for Afro-Americans in the face of white hostility. The civil rights activists were murdered, this film pursues the events, & interrogates the attitudes & context of racial tension & crime in the American South.
Stellar cast.
Frances McDormand - heart-rending
William Dafoe - rule led investigator
Gene Hackman is AMAZING -that unforgettable moment when their sting plan is working & the Klansmen gather - & Hackman says: "Looks like the rattlesnakes are startin' to commit suicide"!!
In the clip:
Gene Hackman is FBI Agent Rupert Anderson.
Willem Dafoe is FBI Agent Alan Ward.
Kevin Dunn is FBI Agent Bird.
Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
Clinical Trial - No Appeal!
Extremely disappointing news from James Esses:
🚨Puberty Blockers Trial Update🚨
It is with a heavy heart that I announce that we will not be appealing in our failed judicial review to stop the puberty blockers trial.
We looked at every possible angle for appeal but do not believe the merits are there, given how extremely high thresholds involved.
Make no mistake, the High Court judgment does not negate the irreversible harm that will be caused to children who take part in this trial.
Thank you to everyone who supported us during this campaign and I’m sorry to not bring better news.
I will continue to do whatever I can to stop this trial taking place and will be working with colleagues on alternative strategies over the coming weeks.
https://x.com/JamesEsses/status/2084585425700593667
Dusty - No doubt we will now have to re-group and consider the way forward. Reader Amanda had spent four hours reading the judgment and, before today, had concluded there was no ground of appeal. Well done James, Keira Bell and the Bayswater Support Group for their great effort here. All thoughts gratefully received.
UK - Local Councils Defy The Supreme Court
Thanks to Fingers for providing me with this cutting from today’s Times written by Geraldine Scott.
Defiant councils pledge to ignore new rules on single-sex spaces
Left-wing councils have launched a co-ordinated effort to defy rules on single-sex spaces with some refusing to make staff run services on the basis of biological sex.
Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat authorities said they would resist implementing the Equality and Human Right’s (EHRC) code, which came into force yesterday, as women pushed for legal action to force public bodies to comply with the law.
The leaders of six London boroughs - Lambeth, Hackney, Haringey, Lewisham, Southwark and Waltham Forest - made joint commitment to keep their services “inclusive” and warned the rules “will feel like an attack” on transgender and non-binary residents.
Dusty - We are all obliged by law to, for example, pay our Council Tax but, apparently, some of the Councils who we pay that tax to feel they can simply ignore the law and act in defiance of the law!! I know it is said that the Equality and Human Rights Commission do not have sufficient funding to take individual cases in their own name but, rather than individual Terfy groups having to take these cases, I think that they should be given the funding by the Government. In any event, these Councils don’t have a leg to stand on so the cases would be sure fire winners with costs paid to the EHRC by the Councils in due course. So let’s take them to court.
All thoughts gratefully received.
Scotland - Wings Fights On!
Wonderful Wings Over Scotland has been pursued, via spurious complaints to the police, by larping male former police officer and serial harasser, Lynsay Watson, whose harassment we have covered in many previous pieces. Wings brings us up to date:
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-plague/
But maybe Mr Watson is finally going to get his comeuppance:
We have read the @WingsScotland account. Watson aka Alex Horwood is a dangerous serial fantasist. A man who cannot get over being fired from @leicspolice for deception.
In November, we will be at the High Court to expose the lunatic, and the ease with which the police act as his useful idiots.
Miller versus @LincsPolice and the @ukhomeoffice will be box office. Details to follow.
……
https://x.com/WeAreFairCop/status/2084697284323758561
Northern Ireland - Helen Joyce Fights Back!
We have been following the Féile an Phobail festival cancelling an event by Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland. Helen Joyce then had an interview on BBC Radio Ulster alongside Woo Woo Belfast Telegraph columnist, Allison Morris.
Helen has now written to the Belfast Telegraph but they have declined to publish her piece:
The article BelTel rejected
I wrote a response to Allison Morris’s awful op-ed. The paper ghosted me for days, then rejected it
Aug 04, 2026
Left to right: Fiona McAnena of Sex Matters, Sorcha nic Lochlainn of The Countess, Danielle Loughrey of Gaels For Fair Play, Marianne Driessen of Athena Forum and Nora Calder of WRN NI. At the podium is journalist Catherine McGinty, who moderated the event
I spent last Thursday writing a response piece to Allison Morris’s ignorant and nasty op-ed in the Belfast Telegraph. I had been told that if I filed 600 words, the paper would “consider” publishing it, and though I thought this was an insulting response from an outlet to a woman who had been traduced by one of their columnists as outrageously as I had been on BBC Radio Ulster Talkback, I decided to do it because the women of Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland had asked me to.
Needless to say the Belfast Telegraph ultimately declined to print Helen’s piece…but here it is anyway:
On July 27th Allison Morris wrote about Féile an Phobail cancelling a panel organised by Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland because it “campaigns against rights for the Transgender community”. Morris slurred the grassroots group as “aligned with right wing, misogynist political agitators”, and falsely claimed they were “heavily funded”. Fiona McAnena, my colleague at human rights charity Sex Matters, was among the speakers.
On July 28th, when Morris and I appeared on BBC Radio Talkback, Morris doubled down. She claimed JK Rowling funded WRN’s legal action against Féile, that “you couldn’t get a sheet of paper” between me and WRN and the “far right”, and that our supporters were “the same people that were cheering on attacks on migrants”.
In fact, WRN NI self-funded its legal action. It subsists on tiny donations and volunteers’ time, while Féile receives £800,000 annually from the taxpayer. As for our “far right” position, it’s simply that humans come in two sexes, and acknowledging this matters for women’s rights.
This position is held by almost everyone: both sexes, all ages, all politics, every faith and none. Polling last year found that 72% of Northern Irish voters supported the UK Supreme Court ruling that trans identification doesn’t change a person’s legal sex, including majorities of Unionist and Sinn Fein voters.
And anyone can play guilt by association. I could point out that Morris’s position on this issue is shared by those waving banners at London Trans+ Pride on July 25th calling for Rowling to be murdered and women like me to be gassed. It’s shared by the trans-identifying man convicted in 2024 for telling me that he would love to rip my eyes out, chop my hands off and carve my face up. But I wouldn’t stoop so low.
Morris observes that most violence against women is in the home. But that’s because the home is where bad men have easiest access to women, and women are least able to escape. Thinking this means it’s safe to let men into women-only public spaces is as silly as saying that because most traffic accidents involving pedestrians happen on local and regional roads, we can all go for strolls on motorways.
Of course keeping trans-identifying men out of women’s spaces won’t stop all violence against women. But it will stop some, and I think that’s worth it. This is the position Morris misrepresents, in a parody unworthy of a serious journalist, as women like me claiming that public toilets are “the most dangerous place on earth for women, with trans predators lurking in every cubicle”.
On Talkback, Morris insisted my position requires believing that “all trans women are deviants and sex offenders”. No: just that they are men, that some men harm women and that if you make it easier for men to enter spaces where women are vulnerable, some of those who take advantage will indeed be “deviants and sex offenders”.
As Morris herself said, sex offenders are “the most devious people on earth”, befriending single mothers online and becoming priests and football coaches to gain access to victims. Why she can’t see that some will claim to be women for the same reason is a mystery to me.
I know of hundreds of cases where men who claim to be women have entered women-only spaces, from toilets and changing rooms to mental health support groups and prisons, and harmed women by exposing themselves, watching those women undress and in the worst cases, assaulting and raping women.
Morris writes that she is “baffled” by our position. I suggest she takes the time-honoured journalistic approach of sitting down with WRN NI, asking good-faith questions and listening to the answers.
………………………..
No trip to Belfast is complete without a picture at the Peace Wall.
https://www.thehelenjoyce.com/p/the-article-beltel-rejected
Glinner also picks up the issue:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/how-the-belfast-telegraph-handled
And WRN NI managed to find an alternative venue and the event went ahead:
Speaking up for respect, rights and reality in Northern Ireland
Aug 06, 2026
When Belfast’s publicly funded arts festival, Féile an Phobail, decided to cancel a panel organised by the community group Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland, it reckoned without the strength, resilience and fury of rebellious women.
Refused both a spot at on the festival programme at St Mary’s College on the Falls Road and a meeting space in the Stormont Parliament, and falsely slurred as being “aligned with right wing, misogynist political agitators”, the group bounced back and found its own venue at the last minute.
The fringe meeting not only went ahead and sold out, but it was one of the most talked-about events of the festival, breaking through to Radio Ulster and the BBC News, and drawing commentary from the head of the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland (ECNI), Geraldine McGahey, who called for respectful public debate and respect for legal protections against belief discrimination.
The event took place on 4th August 2026, in a room packed with local women and a few men, as well as Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce from the Sex Matters team, women from Scotland who travelled to show solidarity with the women of Northern Ireland, and other visitors including Róisín Michaux from Brussels. Catherine McGinty, a journalist with The Derry News, moderated the event.
The full piece is here:
https://www.sex-matters-news.org/p/speaking-up-for-respect-rights-and
The States - ‘My Gender Dolls’
We have previously reported on the ‘My Gender Dolls’ programme:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/michael-clayton?utm_source=publication-search
Maybe Minnesota are surpassing California in going off with the Woo, as reported by Lucy Leader on her substack, Bodies get in the way… :
https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/mygender-dolls-the-latest-atrocity
New Zealand - Some Stats
Some interesting statistics from Katrina Biggs on her substack, A B’Old Woman.
https://aboldwoman.substack.com/p/nearly-one-man-a-day-has-changed
‘Gender Surgery’ - A Crime?
On his substack, James Esses argues that (so called) gender surgery for adults should be seen as a crime. I totally agree:
https://www.jamesesses.co.uk/p/reclaiming-the-hippocratic-oath-the
Puberty as a Choice!
Garwhoungle on her substack, The ministry has fallen discusses the machinations of the ‘trans rights activists’ when it comes to puberty!!
The commodification of puberty
Gender activism is the ultimate neoliberal wet dream
Aug 06, 2026
Another daft (neoliberal-inspired) argument for puberty blockers
In exposing known harms and the paucity of evidence around puberty blockers, the Cass Review and other studies are making it harder for trans activists to claim that blockers are safe and reversible. It’s difficult now to uphold the argument that kids can consent to something when even adults around them don’t know what exactly the kids are “consenting” to. I mean activists still try. They discredit any evidence that counters their narrative as flawed, transphobic and against consensus. But they’re also leaning heavily into another of their thought-stopping one-liner gotchas. Natal puberty, say the activists, is irreversible and damaging and how can kids consent to that?”.
The full piece is here:
https://theministryhasfallen.substack.com/p/trans-neoliberalism-puberty-blockers
As ever, all thoughts gratefully received.
Endpiece
From Liz Parker
#BeMorePorcupine
#KeepTerfing
#BringDownAmnesty
#KeepFighting
#RepealTheGRA
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#FreeSpeechNotSilencedSpeech
#HoldTheLine
#StopTheBlockersTrial
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
"Morris observes that most violence against women is in the home. But that’s because the home is where bad men have easiest access to women, and women are least able to escape. Thinking this means it’s safe to let men into women-only public spaces is as silly as saying that because most traffic accidents involving pedestrians happen on local and regional roads, we can all go for strolls on motorways." Brilliant analogy. In fact, most domestic homicides are committed by men against their female exes who they stalk and hunt down at hidden addresses, including women's refuge. Giving men easier legal access to women in public spaces, including refuge, will make these women killers' job even easier, and women's efforts to escape them that much harder, if possible, especially with children. Imagine using high domestic violence rates as a defence for men to have access to women's and girls' spaces, etc. What a bloody rort!
Cheers dusty
I stink , I’ve been pickling beetroot and my kitchen looks like a crime scene , there are many potential victims ……….😂