Category: Hell in a handcart

  • How news lost its nerve

    There’s an interesting piece in Semafor about the ongoing cowardice crisis in journalism. It’s about the US but many of the problems it identifies are just as  prevalent in the UK. Of all the issues – fear of litigation in the form of SLAPP suits designed to silence legitimate criticism; fear of losing your job…

  • A shameful sham

    The news that NHS England is banning the prescription of puberty blockers to trans teens (but not cis teens) is surprising if you look at the results of the consultation into that very plan: the overwhelming majority of responses were against the ban, pointing out that it flew in the face of all available evidence…

  • The minister for the Heritage Foundation

    Like many incompetent, idiotic arseholes, former PM Liz Truss – who crashed the UK economy and was famously outperformed by a lettuce – has found new friends among the US far right and the right-wing press by parroting their bigotry. And to please them she’s introduced a private member’s bill that attempts to bring the…

  • Politicians are preaching hate

    From ILGA-Europe, which consists of LGBTQ+ organisations across all of Europe and Central Asia: A NEW REPORT SHOWS A STARK RISE IN ANTI-LGBTI, AND IN PARTICULAR, TRANSPHOBIC STATEMENTS FROM POLITICIANS ACROSS EUROPE. Published today by ILGA-Europe, the 13th Annual Review of the Human Rights Situation of LGBTI People in Europe and Central Asia alarmingly reports…

  • Reds in her head

    If you had any remaining doubts that trans people are the go-to bogeymen for the bigoted, the venal and the incompetent, look no further than disgraced former prime minister Liz Truss. Despite only being in office for 44 days before resigning, Truss managed to spook the markets, send borrowing rates into orbit and tanked the…

  • Deny and distract

    Grief is a horrendous thing, and it’s something we all process in different ways. And Brianna Ghey’s mum, Esther, is grieving something no parent should have to go through: the death of her child, a death whose brutality and ferocity are beyond most people’s understanding. With grief comes guilt, an endless parade of what-ifs and…

  • The job

    It’s been said so often that it’s a cliché, but the job of journalism is to report the truth. Its job is to investigate, to find facts, and to follow those facts to see where they lead. It is a process of discovering, of uncovering, of seeing and telling what’s really going on. In order…

  • Sunak

    Just three days after PM Rishi Sunak cried crocodile tears over the death of trans teen Brianna Ghey, he was back to making jokes about trans girls and women in parliament. While Ghey’s mother was in the gallery, and he knew she was there.

  • Vultures

    I wrote yesterday about newspapers profiting from spreading anti-trans hate: “Trans lives only matter to them if they can be monetised – and the cash is in calling us demons or crying crocodile tears over our coffins.” Here’s the Daily Mail today.

  • Crocodile tears

    Content warning: child murder, transphobia, slurs When primary school children were massacred in Dunblane in 1996, the UK responded with severe restrictions on gun ownership – and when twenty children and six adults were massacred in Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, most people expected the US to do the same. No sane person can…