Nine to Five Part 1
Update 362 Go Woke Go Broke Special
I am splitting this update into two to make it more digestible, dear readers.
Continuing with gay icons, No 30 in the Leading Female Season is Dolly Parton in Nine to Five. Three women eventually decide to seek revenge against their sexist egotistical boss.
I am sure that it is just a coincidence that we are concentrating below on the departure of Humza Yousaf 😎
Dolly Parton is Doralee Rhodes.
Jane Fonda is Judy Bernly.
Lily Tomlin is Violet Newstead.
Dabney Coleman is the boss, Franklin Hart Jnr.
Thanks as ever to two wonderful readers for suggesting some of the pieces below.
Scotland
Sorry, I was just dancing a jig…I’ll get on with it!
Now that the Scottish Greens stood on the edge of the cliff but decided not to finally fling themselves off ( more’s the shame!), we can get on with the discussion as to who is going to be the next Scottish National Party leader.
Jack Maidment in The Telegraph ( Scottish Government wins no confidence vote 01 May) reports:
John Swinney, the former first minister of Scotland, is pictured yesterday at Holyrood trying to get the gender plank out of his eye - Jeff J Mitchell /Getty Images Europe© Provided by The Telegraph
MSPs have voted against a motion of no confidence in the Scottish Government as all eyes now turn to who will replace Humza Yousaf as leader of the SNP.
A motion of no confidence in the whole SNP administration, tabled by Labour, was defeated at Holyrood this afternoon by 70 votes to 58.
The motion was always doomed to defeat because the SNP and the Scottish Greens were opposed to it.
The full article is here:
Millie Cooke in GB News ( SNP favourite to replace Humza Yousaf backed transgender self-ID at 16 30 April) reports:
John Swinney, the favourite to take over from Humza Yousaf as leader of the SNP, backed a policy to allow gender self-identification at 16 years old.
The former deputy first minister voted in favour of Nicola Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The legislation would have allowed children as young as 16 to apply to change their gender in law without medical evidence.
A leadership race was triggered after Yousaf announced his resignation yesterday with Swinney a frontrunner for the job.
Kates Forbes, a former SNP finance secretary, is also expected to stand.
The full article is here:
Ben Butcher and Ollie Corfe in The Telegraph ( How the SNP broke Scotland 30 April) report:
Humza Yousaf © Provided by The Telegraph
Humza Yousaf’s resignation is another step in the Scottish National Party’s collapse across the country.
It is now, for the first time in years, behind Labour in the polls. And support for Scottish independence, despite a general dislike of Westminster, continues to lag behind unionism.
The SNP’s firebrand nationalism has left behind a high-tax, low-growth economy with crumbling public services. Here, we find out how its policies have punished middle-class taxpayers, and left Scotland languishing behind the rest of the UK.
The full article is here:
Wonderful and entertaining dissection of the SNP by Malcolm Clark on his substack.
Has the SNP's Clown Car Run Out of Road?
Holyrood was supposed to symbolise a new future for Scotland. With Humza Yousaf's resignation it has instead become a warning of what happens when an independence movement is utterly corrupted.
APR 30, 2024
There has been a heartwarming outbreak of performative empathy for poor Humza Yousaf, who has resigned as Scotland’s First Minister. Inshallah.
Here’s Pete Wishart, an SNP MP who’s almost as poisonous as Yousaf himself, wearing his heart on his twitter sleeve. Bless.
Such convincing sincerity.
Wishart, who was no-one’s idea of dignified during the Independence Referendum, as he spat acid at opponents, said much the same about Nicola Sturgeon when she resigned and Peter Murrell, the party’s CEO, before he was arrested. On corruption charges.
If that was not uplifting enough there was this touching tribute from no one’s idea of an empathetic individual, John Nicolson MP. According to the Waddling Walrus of Perthshire, the First Minister is a fine public servant in the “country’s best traditions”.
I suppose Scotland does have a long tradition of casual misogyny, like that of Yousaf’s, but …is it really a fine one?
There’s probably no point in asking Nicolson. He is to misogyny what those giant muck-spreading machines used by farmers in his constituency are to manure. Too familiar with the material to judge objectively.
The full piece is here:
https://malcolmrichardclark.substack.com/p/has-the-snps-clown-car-run-out-of
And here is Sky News Australia doing their analysis:
And let’s get the view from Ireland or, more importantly, from wonderful John McGuirk on Gript News:
THE WOKE, AND BROKE, CAUSE OF SCOTTISH NATIONALISM (30 April)
Somewhere along the line, it all went wrong for the Scottish National Party.
The SNP exists, it must be remembered, for one reason and one reason alone: To fulfil, some eight hundred years after his death by hanging, drawing, and quartering, the dream of William Wallace. To establish (or perhaps re-establish) a completely Independent Scotland that has not existed in any form since the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603 and the union of the crowns under James I & VI.
For a moment there, in the early twenty-teens, the dream was tantalizingly close: The Scots had a referendum on the matter in 2014, and though the vote against independence was decisive, it was not exactly overwhelming. With the advent of Brexit (a policy Scotland voted against) there were great hopes that a second referendum would come in short order, and that the act of union would be finally, and permanently, sundered.
That moment, it is fair to say, has entirely passed. If opinion polls are to be believed, the SNP will lose its dominant position in Scots politics at the UK General Election to come later this year or early next year, with the entirely unionist Labour Party re-asserting its ancient dominance instead. Yesterday, the SNP lost its second leader in a little over a year, and the SNP administration in Scotland looks to be teetering perilously on the edge of oblivion. Independence looks as far away as it has looked in maybe two or three decades.
Why?
Two reasons, I’d suggest: The first and most proximate is that the SNP forgot why it exists. It is the face of Scottish Nationalism, and its actions are supposed to reflect what an Independent Scotland would actually be like to live in. Over the past year, we’ve gotten a fair approximation of that:
An independent Scotland would be the land of the Scottish hate speech bill, a law so egregiously absurd that it has swiftly become the laughing stock of the western world. It would be the land of the Scottish Gender recognition act – a law that sees grown, hairy testicled men declaring themselves women for the purposes of incarceration in prisons immediately after their convictions, and being treated as women by the Scottish Government. In short, the SNP painted a vision through their governance of an Independent Scotland that would be one of the wokest and most left wing in the world.
The Scots, it turns out, aren’t that keen. As salesmen for what life in an Independent Scotland would be like, the SNP have done a better job of warning against it than any Englishman could.
The second reason is probably really two reasons, but we’ll lump them together under the umbrella of wider UK realities. First, it’s hard to under-sell the extent to which anti-Englishness in Scotland is really “Anti Toryism”. Read many of the arguments for Scottish Independence and you’ll read – often from the SNP themselves – claims that only an Independent Scotland could be rid of hated Tory rule. Now, with the UK Labour Party ascendant in the polls and likely to rule at Westminster within the year, that argument has lost some of its legs.
The other wider UK reality is, of course, Northern Ireland and Brexit: Far from making Scottish Independence more likely, Brexit has made it immeasurably more complicated. What could have been, while in the EU, a borderless border between England and Scotland is now the prospect of a hard border of the European Union if – as they declare – the SNP wishes to re-join the club in Brussels. Ironically, the Irish Government may have done more in the aftermath of Brexit to harm the cause of Scottish Independence than anyone else, by emphasizing just how painful and miserable such a border might be. The English have no reason to offer the Scots any hope on that front, either.
The SNP, meanwhile, risks fracturing along its various dividing lines: Losing “woke” votes to the Scottish Greens, hard line independence votes to Alex Salmond’s “Alba” rump, and losing centre left “soft nationalist anti Tory” votes to the resurgent Scottish Labour Party. It also faces the prospect, in due course, of losing power in the Scottish Parliament. All of this is without mentioning the ongoing criminal probe into embezzlement of party funds, which has already brought down one leader, and may yet lead to criminal charges for that same leader.
I’m not sure there’s a lesson here, really, other than that in Ireland, post Brexit, Scottish Independence was widely regarded as a matter of “when” not “if”, and the fact of it was talked about as a racing certainty. That such talk was garnished with more than a dollop of anti-English schadenfreude is certain, but there’s a lesson in that too: Don’t believe in things just because you want them to be true.
The great irony is that in the past few years, the Scottish Nationalists have done more to strengthen the act of union than to weaken it. Or, to put it perhaps in a more vernacular phrase: They went woke. Now, they’re broke.
OK I know you’ve been waiting for it:
Cass Review
Great to see the ripples from Cass going around the world!
Katrina Biggs on her excellent substack A B’Old Woman writes
NZ's trans lobby is fighting a rearguard action - by Graham Adams.
MAY 01, 2024
Graham Adams has published a good article around the Cass Report’s impact in New Zealand. Trans lobby groups have (almost desperately) tried to deny that the report is of any value here, because apparently kids in NZ are too different to kids in the UK. Of course, five minutes later those same groups would have no problem citing “international best practice”, if it suited them to follow that.
Graham’s article can be read here -
NZ’s trans lobby is fighting a rearguard action | The Platform
A scant handful of journos in New Zealand have had the courage to stick their necks out on the topic of trans/gender ideology under their own names. Two of those who have consistently done so are and Graham Adams and Yvonne van Dongen. Graham and Yvonne’s ‘seditious’ articles criticising specifics of trans/gender ideology are unfearingly published by independent online media platform, The Platform, who will tread where the NZ mainstream media fears to go. Having said that, I acknowledge that Stuff, which is normally woke right up to its eyeballs, made me nearly fall off my chair by publishing the opinion piece of entrepreneur and columnist Damien Grant, who recently dipped his toes into the fray. I await Stuff’s abject apology to the ‘LGBTQIA+ community’ for the ‘genocide’ it will cause.
Previously, journo Rachel Smalley had also gone against her TodayFM wokester colleagues, and said a thing or two about trans/gender ideology which earned her no love from them. Notably, she was the first and only journo to interview an organiser of the March 2023 ‘Let Women Speak’ rally, Di Landy from Mana Wāhine Kōrero, in anything like a professional and unbiased manner prior to the event. TodayFM went off the air shortly after that brief interview, but luckily I recorded it, and for those who choose to listen to it (it’s only a few minutes long), you will hear Di Landy say in no uncertain terms that Mana Wāhine Kōrero have nothing to do with Nazis, and utterly condemns them.
Trans-flag wavers, however, who have a dire scarcity of original and coherent thought amongst the lot of them, continue to parrot “Nazi” association accusations when women get together to speak about our concerns around trans/gender ideology. They did this once again recently in Melbourne. I believe I’m justified in saying what I do above about trans-flag wavers, when none of them paused long enough to wonder why a Māori woman would even get close enough to a Nazi to spit on them.
Although Dr Charlotte Paul is not a journo, she does rate a mention, too, as one who has gone public with concerns about puberty blockers. However, as she herself admits, it’s no longer a career-ending move for her. She has written feature articles in The Listener and North and South magazines, and speaks here to Sean Plunket on The Platform. I also recognise those others who write either anonymously, or not for a living, for what they’ve contributed in critiquing aspects of trans/gender ideology.
Tantalisingly, I hear that Yvonne van Dongen has another article in the pipeline. It’s bound to be a goodie, as always.
https://aboldwoman.substack.com/p/nzs-trans-lobby-is-fighting-a-rearguard?r=7ogxh&triedRedirect=true
Rachel Meade
I previously reported on Rachel’s successful judgment against Westminster City Council and Social Work England here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/viva-zapata?utm_source=publication-search
Rachel has just been awarded £58000 damages against both respondents. This includes an aggravated damages award against both respondents but, additionally and rather amazingly, an exemplary damages award against the second respondent.
EDI Jester deals with this here:
Excellent summary from Rachel’s solicitors, Cole Khan here:
Gender GP
Gender GP are a ( notorious) private provider of so called ‘gender affirming care’ to children and young people.
Thanks to Dennis Kavanagh for bringing our attention to this very important judgment. We need more cases like this one!
https://twitter.com/Jebadoo2/status/1785654800882835943
National Health Service
So the NHS has discovered that there are only two sexes - phew, well done!
Here is Maya Forstater of Sex Matters interviewed by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV.
And here is Sharron Davies taking Tom Harwood of GB News off at the knees.
https://twitter.com/FFS_WhatNow/status/1785682816543449475
I am afraid that there is yet another consultation with a deadline of 25 June. I will be keeping an eye open for responses from gender critical organisations.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/nhs-constitution-10-year-review
Rosie Duffield and Keir Starmer
More reverse ferret from Sir Keir Starmer but still no apology to Rosie Duffield and Labour would need to row much, much further back , in my opinion, in order to get Terf votes. All comments gratefully received.
Genevieve Holl-Allen in The Telegraph (Rosie Duffield right to say only women have a cervix, says Starmer 30 April) reports:
Rosie Duffield - Jeff Gilbert© Provided by The Telegraph
Rosie Duffield was right to say that only women have a cervix, Sir Keir Starmer has said, in a sign of a shift in his stance on gender.
The Labour leader said that his views on gender issues “start with biology” and that his party’s MP for Canterbury was “biologically” correct by stating only women can have a cervix.
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
But asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Tuesday whether Ms Duffield’s statement was right or wrong, Sir Keir said: “Biologically, she of course is right about that.”
Sir Keir, however, would not apologise to Ms Duffield, instead saying that the pair “discuss a number of issues” and “get on very well”.
Responding to comments online asking how Sir Keir and Ms Duffield “get on very well” given their reportedly distant relationship, the Canterbury MP jokingly suggested: “Telepathy?”
Sir Keir spoke about his views on gender issues on ITV's Good Morning Britain - Shutterstock© Provided by The Telegraph
Ms Duffield, a prominent feminist campaigner who believes a person’s sex cannot be changed, has regularly complained about her experiences in the party and has likened it to being in an abusive relationship.
She has previously been heckled by male colleagues on her benches while speaking about trans issues in the Commons, which prompted her to accuse Labour of having a “woman problem”.
The full article is here:
No, these are not two members of the SNP but Keir Starmer and Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner taking part in the annual Pride Parade in the streets of Soho in London on July 2 2022. Sorry, I don’t want to be rude! Oh damn it, w***ers!
David Hughes in The Evening Standard ( JK Rowling accuses Keir Starmer of having ‘brass neck’ over transgender issue 30 April) reports:
JK Rowling © PA Wire
JK Rowling has hit out at Sir Keir Starmer after the Labour leader called for an end to “toxic” debates about transgender issues.
Harry Potter author Rowling has backed Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who has been an outspoken defender of women’s rights and female-only spaces.
Sir Keir, who had previously criticised Ms Duffield for saying “only women have a cervix”, accepted that “biologically, she of course is right about that”.
The Labour leader said his views on gender issues “start with biology” as he backed blocking trans women from female-only hospital wards and prisons.
The Labour leader was speaking as the Government proposed changes to England’s NHS constitution to give patients the right to request to be treated on single-sex wards, with transgender people placed in rooms on their own.
Sir Keir told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “There’s a distinction between sex and gender. The Labour Party has championed women’s rights for a very long time.”
Asked if he would now apologise to the Canterbury MP, Sir Keir said: “I don’t want this to go back into this toxic place where everybody is divided.”
But he said: “Rosie Duffield and I get on very well, we discuss a number of issues.
“She’s a much-respected member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and I want to have a discussion with her and anybody else about how we go forward in a positive way.”
Ms Duffield has been highly critical of the way the Labour Party and its leadership has treated her over her views.
Responding to Sir Keir’s interview, Rowling said: “Male politicians who chose to pander to activists issuing violent threats against their own female MPs enabled and emboldened the toxic culture (Sir Keir) now claims to deplore.
“When you’re part of the cause, you’ve got some brass neck putting yourself forward as a cure.”
The full article is here:
Endpiece
In case you missed it, here is a wonderful video from Andrew Doyle about his meeting with the oldest land animal in the world!!
The Scottish greens are a basket case, promoting hare-brained policies that the Scots don’t want. And the SNP are worse for implementing them, from bottle deposit schemes to self ID. I don’t think we’ll be seeing Scottish independence any time soon. The Labour Party are just as bad with their cringing cowardice over trans policies & their stubborn refusal to apologise to Rosie Duffield. Glad to see the NHS’ acceptance of biological reality: sex is real. Do they know that water is wet & the pope’s Catholic? Several people are on Gender GP’s case, I’m pleased to see. Mixed news from New Zealand tho good to know some GC voices are getting through. Delighted for Rachel Meade; she’s been through a tough two years.
Thanks for this, Dusty. Will share as usual.
Some good pieces of news. At long last we seem to be making progress, although Gender GP should be prosecuted for child abuse.
Keir Starmer isn’t just reverse ferreting, he’s downright lying. Rosie Duffield, only this week, has denied ever speaking to him.The more I see of that man, the more I despise him.
And after the hilarious Queen’s Speech, another belly laugh in the form of the dignified, thoughtful, gracious and consensual!!!! Humza Yousaf. 🤣😂😆
Thanks Dusty.