My Old Man's A Dustman Part 2
Update 544.Free Speech In Canada Special. #BeMore Porcupine.
Here is Part 2, dear readers.
I used to go to the Glastonbury Festival when I was younger. One of the best performances I ever saw was on the Acoustic Stage in 1999 by Lonnie Donegan, then in his late 60s!! His first song brought the house down. This was the song…
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
Stand By Glinner
Graham Linehan writes on his substack:
Why I have to ask for help again
Years on and I am still being sued by trans activist David Paisley
Mar 12
Hello everyone,
It’s not easy to ask for help a second time, but be that as it may, here I be.
As many of you know, I have spent the last five years speaking out against gender ideology and its harmful consequences - on women’s rights, on gay rights, and on vulnerable children. I have done this at great personal cost, losing my career and financial stability, yet I have never regretted standing up for what I believe is right.
Unfortunately, there are those who want to silence me by any means necessary. One of them, David Paisley, is still pursuing legal action against me, and the costs of defending myself continue to mount.
When I first asked for your help, I was overwhelmed by the generosity and support from people who value free speech, who believe in standing up to bullies, and who refuse to let ideologues rewrite reality. That support enabled me to secure a strong legal team and mount a proper defence. I was also fortunate to find that this experienced team were willing to act on substantially reduced rates to make this more affordable.
But legal battles like this are designed to be drawn-out, expensive, and punishing. The process is the punishment, as we all know. Paisley’s claim has not gone away, and neither has my need for funds to fight it.
Where Things Stand
Paisley is suing me for libel, harassment, and even for allegedly "misusing" his private information - simply because I publicly stated that he reported a woman to the police. He wants me to pay damages, cover his legal costs (which were already £70,000 before his lawyers even wrote to me!), and remove all mention of him from my site and social media.
His claim is mainly based on a few comments made by people on my Substack, which his lawyers have argued I am responsible for.
The reality is that this is not just about me. I know of many other individuals who have been sued by trans activists in an attempt to prevent them from expressing their (entirely legitimate) views.
If people like Paisley succeed in using the courts to intimidate and silence critics, it sets a dangerous precedent. Activists will see that they don’t need to win arguments - they just need to outspend their opponents and drag them through the legal system until they give up.
I won’t give up.
Why I Need Your Help Again
Once a legal process is underway, the only thing that will stop it is someone throwing in the towel or a trial. It looks like Paisley or his solicitors are determined to take this the whole way.
While my lawyers continue to fight this case at a reduced rate, the costs are still substantial. The funds raised so far have gone towards essential legal work, but unfortunately I need to raise more to see this through to the end.
If you supported me last time, I cannot tell you how grateful I am. If you’re able to contribute again, or if you weren’t in a position to donate before but can now, I would be enormously thankful.
No matter the amount, every donation helps me fight not just for myself, but for the principle that no one should be dragged through the courts simply for speaking the truth.
The Target
I am setting a new fundraising goal of £100,000, with a stretch target of £150,000, to cover the further legal costs.
If you believe in free speech, in standing up to ideological bullies, and in making sure that people cannot use the courts to silence their critics, I hope you’ll consider donating.
With sincere gratitude,
Graham Linehan
Canada - Free Speech
Back to my favourite quote!
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.'
Meghan Murphy talks on her podcast to Lisa Bildy, executive director of the new Canadian Free Speech Union. Lisa goes back to the time of Covid and the famous Canadian truckers and the problems of free speech and freedom of expression and association that occurred then. She refers to the paused Online Harms Bill - paused since the Canadian parliament is currently prorogued. She says that people are failing to appreciate the central importance of free speech. She refers to the really regressive situation in Germany. Rather worryingly for us here in the UK, she refers to the situation here as “frightening”. She says: “Since when did we get to a point where we cannot be offended” - see the Sedley quote above! Our opponents have lots of incentives to file complaints against us. Meghan quotes the case of the woman arrested outside an abortion clinic in Scotland for praying silently. Lisa refers to us being treated like “intellectual serfs.”
https://www.meghanmurphy.ca/p/the-free-speech-union-is-coming-to?publication_id=666229&r=1v403b
UK - Getting The Law Wrong - Again, again, again…
The first piece deals with how on earth a major organisation ( here the NHS, surprise, surprise) can manage to keep getting the law wrong.
The second piece deals with how activist groups promulgate ( perhaps deliberately?) bad law.
C J Strachan on his substack deals with another NHS Trust producing a policy that gets the law wrong despite the ongoing Sandie Peggie case.
When will UK Employers start obeying the law?
With news that yet another NHS Trust has published what is almost certainly an unlawful bathroom policy, when will UK employers stop allowing activist employees to break the law?
Mar 11, 2025
Another week and another major public sector employer decides to publish a policy that will almost certainly get it into hot water and may be unlawful. You won’t be surprised to read that yet another NHS Trust has released an EDI (Equality Diversity and Inclusion) policy that allows biological men to use female lavatories and changing facilities.
Sex Matters and the Telegraph were sent copies of the culprit’s EDI Policy.
This time it is Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust - this is absolutely extraordinary - are the HR Team paying any attention to what is happening in Fife at the moment? Barrister Naomi Cunningham is leading the legal team fighting the persecution of Nurse Sandie Peggie by NHS Fife where the tribunal has now been postponed to July as it's overrun. This is unfortunate as not only does it delay justice for Sandie Peggie but it also means that the 600 odd plus NHS Trusts out there won't have been given a policy steer when the tribunal in Fife inevitably rules against the Trust.
He concludes:
And you see it is with the leadership of these employers where the ultimate responsibility lies. Sir Peter Schofield, Permanent Secretary of the Department of Work and Pensions was in charge when the DWP introduced radical and draconian EDI policies following George Floyd. Indeed, he was behind these policies demanding in a memo at the time that the DWP became an ‘Anti Racist’ organisation. These policies were unlawful, yet they were implemented with a Zero Tolerance approach where any dissent was ruthlessly stamped out. Anna Thomas, an executive at the DWP pointed out that the policies were both likely in breach of the Equality Act 2010 and the Civil Service Act. She was disciplined and eventually fired. She ended up winning the largest payout the Free Speech Union had secured at the time but she still lost her job and went through two years of poverty. The irony here of course is that she was actually doing her job. If you are employed and you read your employment contract carefully in there will be a clause that requires you to speak up if you think your employer is doing something wrong or unlawful. She was fired by the DWP because she had the courage to do her job. Meanwhile Sir Peter? Well don’t worry about Sir Peter, he was promoted Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath last summer!
So if you speak out at an organisation where activists have captured the leadership there are very real world consequences for doing so. The depressing thing is that this keeps happening. Here, Guy’s and Thomas’s are blithely ignoring events in Fife and soldiering on. The HR team and senior management keeping their heads down, obviously too terrified to challenge the demands of the EDI team and the LGBT Employee Advocacy Group.
When I asked the HR Director of NHS Fife why he had allowed the Sandie Peggie case to go as far as a Tribunal and why the Trust was, simultaneously, dragging her through a disciplinary process on the spurious claim that her refusing to work with the Trans Doctor in question, was jeopardising patient safety, (Dear Reader, if only you knew the sins committed that were justified by ‘patient safety’) he deleted his LinkedIn account. Shocking? Yes surprising? No, he probably has no say in the matter, he’s probably been sidelined totally. Why hasn’t he resigned? Because if he did, the Trust would go ahead anyway and he would lose his career, forever marked as a ‘troublemaker’.
How do we end this? Well, in America they don’t have an Equality Act. They run discrimination like we used to, multiple laws both State and federal. But the big difference is, if an employer behaved like the DWP did to Anna Thomas, the compensation would be in the tens of millions of dollars, not the £100k she received for having her career wrecked by vindictive activists who had the hapless Sir Peter under their spell. I hate to say it but the only way this will be resolved is if the consequences for large employers who do this to employees are increased tenfold in payouts. If this happened then the insurance companies that invariably fund these defences would call time on it and employers would no longer be able to afford indulging activists like this. We might even end up with those entrusted to lead and govern our institutions actually facing some personal cost for their failures.
But like so much in our once, great nation, I wouldn’t hold your breath that this happens any time soon.
The full piece is here:
Michael Foran on his substack, Knowing Ius deals with a Scottish ‘trans rights’ group getting the law wrong.
Scottish Trans and Equality Network Misstate the Law
Mar 12, 2025
In a briefing paper published today, Scottish Trans, a project operating The Equality Network, has made several claims about the law which are false or misleading.
“A policy that does not allow trans people to access single-sex spaces in line with their lived sex will be unlawful if it is not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”
This is misleading. It does not adequately distinguish between services to the public, which are covered by Schedule 3 of the Equality Act 2010, and the provision of single sex facilities in employment, which are covered by the Workplace (Health, Safety, and Welfare) Regulations 1992. There is an important legal difference between these two contexts.
In the employment context, the 1992 regulations are clear that communal sanitary, washing, or changing facilities will not be sufficient or suitable if they are not provided separately for men and women. There is a strong legal argument to be made that these facilities, because they engage the rights of women to bodily privacy, must be interpreted to mean biological men and women in all contexts. The only other legally sound interpretation of these regulations is that they permit trans people with GRCs to access facilities aligned with the sex on their GRC. There is no plausible legal argument that the 1992 Regulations must permit access on a self-ID basis. Indeed, doing so would be a clear breach of the regulations and any guidance suggesting otherwise is incomplete, misleading, or false.
In the context of public services covered by the Equality Act, the test is whether the establishment and maintenance of single-sex services is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. This is correct, but it should be stressed that this applies as much to the exclusion of “men” from a female-only service as it does to the exclusion of “trans women” and it will matter that, in law, most trans women are men for all legal purposes. Some will have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and that will be relevant as well.
The full piece is here:
The States - How Did The Gender Borg Eat The Democrats!?
In one of his amazing, extensive and forensic examinations, Malcolm Clark on his substack, The Secret Gender Files shows how the Democrats fell under the spell of the ‘trans rights activists’ based largely on a completely false narrative about violence to ‘transgender people’, how this was promoted via the screening of two very dubious films and how a leaf was taken from the book of the ‘gay lobby’ who had also, at one stage, relied on a false narrative about violence and homophobia in one particular case. Recommended!
Obama and the Trans Victim Sob Story.
The myth that trans people are disproportionate victims of violence played a critical role in the capture of the Democrats and reached its climax at a remarkable Obama White House film-screening.
Mar 11, 2025
Last week not one Democrat in the US Senate voted in favour of protecting the safety and dignity of women and girls in sport. 45 out of the 47 Democrats in the House actively voted against Trump’s Bill. The other two abstained.
This despite a large majority of voters agreeing that male athletes should not be allowed to compete against females. Last month an IPSOS poll for the New York Times found the Bill reflected the views of 79% of voters including 67% of Democrats.
Yet just three weeks after the poll leading Democrats lined up to cast votes that suggested they had not received the memo. Or binned it. When Elizabeth Warren cast her vote she even made a performative thumbs down gesture. As if to signal her revulsion at the very idea of single sex spaces.
Et tu….Pocahontas?
The full piece is here:
Endpiece
From Liz
#BeMorePorcupine
#EndGenderAffirmingCare
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#GrassrootsArmy
#FightForFreeSpeech
#ByeByeStonewall
#YouAreAGuy
#LarpersKeepOut
‘Gor blimey Dusty’ did you have a pair of gor blimey trousers and what are they anyway?
The toilets always put me off going to festivals and I’m pretty sure things have worse now 😳
Thanks as ever.
This unlawful stuff is everywhere. This is from a Health Board in Wales
The Health Board’s Supporting Transgender Staff Policy includes the following extract:
Use of Facilities
The use of changing, showering, toilet and any relevant facilities will be part of the discussion process with the trans employee, with a view to agreeing when the individual would like to begin using the facilities they are most comfortable with. Trans employees are entitled to use single sex facilities in accordance with their gender. Non-binary staff may wish to use either gendered, or gender-neutral facilities, or both. Under no circumstances should a trans employee be expected or asked to use disabled toilets, unless they wish to do so. Should a situation arise where a member of staff has concerns in relation to sharing facilities with a trans employee, the relevant manager will sensitively discuss their reasons with them, carefully balancing the issues to make a reasoned decision.