Sometime Love is a Strange and Wicked Game
Update 470. Manchester Special. #BeMorePorcupine
For the second film in the British Heroes season, I’m sticking with Bob Hoskins.
George ( Bob Hoskins), a working-class gangster recently released after seven years in prison, is given a job in London by his former boss, Denny Mortwell (Michael Caine), as the driver and bodyguard for an ‘up market’ prostitute named Simone (Cathy Tyson). Mortwell also wants George to gather information on one of Simone's wealthy customers for blackmail purposes. Simone, who has worked hard to develop high-class manners and an elite clientele, initially dislikes the uncouth and outspoken George, and he regards her as putting on airs. But as George and Simone find out more about each other, they form a friendship, and George begins to fall in love with her. George agrees, at the risk of his own life, to help Simone find her teenage friend Cathy, who has disappeared, and who Simone fears is being abused by her violent former pimp, Anderson.
George increasingly finds himself torn between his feelings for Simone, his obligations to Mortwell, and his relationship with his teenage daughter, Jeannie. And if you want to know more, you’ll just have to watch it. 😎
Thanks as ever to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Manchester City Council
Women’s Rights Network in their latest newsletter ( 09 November) report:
MANchester City Council Challenged by Women
In February 2022 Manchester City Council (MCC) passed a resolution declaring “Trans men are men, trans women are women, non-binary people are non-binary and trans rights are human rights”. The motion was passed apparently unanimously at a full Council meeting without any Equality Impact Assessment or questions on the implications for female-only services.
Women of WRN Manchester and Labour Women’s Declaration (LWD) rallied and embarked on a courageous push-back against MCC in defence of single sex spaces, harnessing and deploying the legal prowess of Akua Reindorf, KC.
The subsequent Legal Advice is detailed and measured, but clear in its conclusions, included in which are:
• If MCC operationalises the Resolution in areas of separate or single-sex services (which it currently is) it is acting unlawfully.
• MCC is likely to be placing itself in legal jeopardy if it insists on adopting a case-by-case approach to its separate or single-sex services.
• It is not lawful for MCC to operate separate or single sex services on a self-ID basis.
Read more about how WRN Manchester and LWD worked to challenge the legality of effectively removing all single sex services from the council – without notifying any service-users and claiming the result is “inclusion and equality”. Now there is solid legal advice and a way towards formal challenges.
I hope to look at Akua Reindorf’s advice in more detail in due course.
EDI Jester deals with this here:
There is a link to the advice itself at the end of this WRN Post:
Irish Hate Crime Act
Before we start:
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.'
I reported on Senator Keogan, during a debate in the Seanad in Ireland, reading out a long list of different ‘genders’ to show what a nonsense this all is.
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/my-left-foot?utm_source=publication-search
Patrick Christy on GB News trains his guns on the Irish Bill whilst referring to the Senator’s speech and reminding us all of the central importance of free speech.
Australia - The Influence of the Trump Victory
Could lessons from the Trump victory be learnt elsewhere in the world? Thanks as ever to Feminist Legal Clinic via The Australian.
Trans rights may become Australian federal election flashpoint after Trump win (08 November)
The Right Of Transgender Athletes To Compete In Women’s Sport Could Become A Live Issue In Australia’s Upcoming Federal Election After Playing A Critical Role In The Campaigns Of Donald Trump And Many Republican Candidates In US Congressional Races.
Transgender Rights Have Become A Political Flashpoint In Australia Over The Past Three Years, Most Recently With Moira Deeming Expelled From The Victorian Liberal Party And Coalition Frontbencher Jacinta Nampijinpa Price vowing to push back against the transgender movement and its impact on children.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has encouraged Senator Price and Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler to express their views on transgender issues, while Ms Deeming has claimed Victorian Liberals can’t win in the state unless they adopt Mr Dutton’s “strong leadership” advancing conservative values.
Former Liberal Party candidate Katherine Deves sparked a firestorm during the 2022 federal election campaign for her outspoken views on trans women participating in women’s sport, including comments for which she later apologised.
However, senior Labor figures believe Mr Dutton is more likely than any of his recent predecessors to exploit trans issues, with Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign against trans inclusion and gender-affirming medical treatment for children highlighting the potential for winning votes from across the political spectrum.
Republicans spent more than $80m in the last three months alone on advertising campaigns hammering Democrat politicians — mostly in Senate races — over their support for transgender rights.
[Ed: Lets hope the Labor Party sees sense well before the Federal Election and distances itself from the destructive trans juggernaut before it is too late.]
US v Skrmetti
Good update on the upcoming US Supreme Court case from Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans:
See You In Court!
Our Take on U.S. v. Skrmetti
Nov 7
Last week, the PITT editors announced that we had agreed to sign an amicus brief in support of the state of Tennessee’s ban on the use of puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries for trans-identified minors. We’ve read Tennessee’s bill that legislates the ban (SB1) and many of the briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, to better understand the case. At it’s core, this is a case of Petitioners claiming that there is a class of children- transgender kids- who require extreme, irreversible body modifications to survive, and Respondents who know that’s a dangerous absurdity to believe.
…
The importance of this case cannot be overstated. The ruling will not only set precedent for the challenges to bans in other states, but potentially establish a new “protected class”, historically reserved for immutable characteristics, which would elevate “gender identity” to the same status as sex. What should be glaringly obvious is that “gender identity” and sex cannot be equally protected. One must be subservient to the other, as we’ve seen play out in sex-segregated space such as sports, bathrooms, locker rooms, sororities, and shelters. If “gender identity” is recognized as a protected class then sex-based rights disappear entirely. Equally troubling is the threat that parents who don’t agree to transition their gender-confused children would be deemed abusive- even in “red” states- for denying their child access to “life-saving, medically necessary” treatments, giving the state cause to take control of parenting.
Although alarmed, we are hopeful that a favorable ruling by the Court will put us one step closer to ending, once and for all, the most egregious medical scandal in modern times. We are thrilled for the attention this case brings to the issue. Those who have denied that children are having healthy body parts removed will have to acknowledge that it’s really happening, and that this “fringe issue” is actually the issue of the century.
They go on to discuss some of the briefs submitted by interveners on behalf of the Petitioners and on behalf of the Respondents.
Sex Testing for Athletes
Sex Matters in their latest newsletter Memo (08 November) report:
Academics debate sex testing for athletes
Earlier this year the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports published an editorial by a group of scientists, including Sex Matters board member Emma Hilton and advisory group members Jon Pike and Cathy Devine, calling for fair and safe eligibility criteria for women’s sport. It proposed a simple cheek-swab test to prove genetic eligibility for female competitors.
Another group, which includes trans-identifying male goalkeeper Blair Hamilton and president of the Humanist Society Adam Rutherford, has claimed that the proposed testing regime “is not justified, ethical, or viable”. This group cites a supposed lack of high-quality scientific data regarding the performance advantage of athletes with XY differences of sex development. It claims that using a cheek-swab test to confirm that an athlete is female would be “invasive and potentially humiliating”; and that a “worldwide army of counselling expertise” would be needed to deal with the “devastation of young athletes’ personal identity and self-esteem”, if young people were found by testing to be genetically male.
The first group responded by pointing out that individuals with certain XY disorders of sexual development that result in them having testes, producing testosterone and responding to it are disproportionately represented in female sport and have male physical advantages. A once-in-a-lifetime test would provide permanent proof of eligibility, and is supported by 82% of female athletes.
New Zealand - The Midwifery Council
I have reported several times on the Midwifery Council’s attempts to erase female language from their draft amended Scope of Practice. See, for example, here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-skywalker?utm_source=publication-search
Katrina Biggs on her substack, A B’Old Woman continues the debate and refers to an interview by Patrick Brennan on Reality Check Radio with Sarah Henderson of Mana Wāhine Kōrero.
35 minutes of calm, but deadly, analysis of the NZ Midwifery Council’s ‘gone woman’ word experiment.
Nov 08, 2024
This is an interview well worth a listen. In it, Sarah Henderson, part of Māori women’s group Mana Wāhine Kōrero (Sovereign Women Speak), calmly eviscerates the entire process around the revision of the NZ Midwifery Council’s Scope of Practice.
The process to obliterate women from the Scope of Practice was a long four-year haul, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to achieve. Mana Wāhine Kōrero was also critical of how the Māori language was used in it. Kiwi English is commonly dotted with Māori words, it’s just how we do it here, but official documentation is not common chit-chat, and the language has to be right for the document to be respected.
Pushback against this revised Scope of Practice was hard. However, if there’s one thing we know about far-left woke ideology, which has infiltrated the Midwifery Council, it’s that adherents to it have turned their ears and eyes off to all positions but their own. The Midwifery Council was not open to making any changes, until they were finally, grudgingly, forced to make a few of a very perfunctory nature.
Sarah talks about the skullduggery involved from the very beginning in revising the Scope, which was deliberate by some, whilst others were unaware of it, but got groomed into acquiescing. We can be fairly certain that this same process will have also been played out in similar ways with other organisations, which have taken on an agenda promulgated by TQ+ lobby groups. The game plan used by them is well-honed and ruthless, under its cloak of smiles and soft, piteous, words.
Sarah’s analysis and observations are sharp, and, in my opinion, worth a listen until the very end.
SARAH HENDERSON: Writer And Member Of Mana Wāhine Kōrero: Update Regarding The Midwifery Council's Scope Of Practice, After Recommendations From The Regulations Review Committee. - Reality Check Radio
Stop Press
Sue Evans writes:
Update on PROTECT TEENAGERS FROM HARMFUL AND IRREVERSIBLE MEDICAL TREATMENT
Dear Backers,
Well team, this is exciting news and I'm starting this update with a big thank you for your support. On Friday my solicitors heard from the High Court that Mr Justice Foxton had given me and parent X permission to challenge the decision of the CQC to license GenderPlus Hormone Clinic. The judge was very concerned that the CQC may have licensed GenderPlus without having all the necessary information it needed to assure itself that providing cross sex hormone treatment to teenagers was a safe treatment. The judge was also concerned that by granting licensing to GenderPlus the CQC was acting irrationally.
We now know that, in the light of the Cass Review, there are hugely significant concerns about cross sex hormone treatment. The consequences are lifelong and the evidence to support this treatment is currently extremely poor.
Our case will now proceed to trial. We are so grateful for those who have supported us thus far. We need to raise funds to get this case across the line and finally protect vulnerable teenagers from experimental treatment that is not evidenced and may have profound lifelong irreversible consequences. The serious and troubling question regarding the ability of young patients to give 'informed consent' to this treatment remains.
Once again we thank you for your help in getting us this far. May I ask that you also please share with others, in your networks? We want to be able to take this all the way!
Thank you so much
Sue
Endpiece by Liz
Especially for Senator Keogan 😊
#BeMorePorcupine
#LetWomenSpeak
#Grassroots Army
Many thanks, Dusty. Will share now that I’m back on X. (Still don’t know why I got suspended)
Very interesting read about the Manchester City Council. I have been engaged with the Christchurch City Council NZ over the very same issue. They have been as obdurate as the MCC, in almost the exact same way (they must all read the same trans ideology playbook), and I’m now at a standstill over it. The only way forward is with legal intervention, so although NZ and UK laws may differ in some ways, it’s still most edifying to read how the legal challenge against the MCC has been presented. Thank you.