Category: Hell in a handcart
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Complicity
The Guardian has published a thoughtful article by playwright Jonathan Cash about the 1999 bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, which he was injured in. The bomb was planted by a far-right sympathiser, a man who believed that gay men should be put to death. If you’re going to read the whole piece,…
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SLAPP happy
One of the reasons that Jimmy Savile got away with his abuse for so long was the UK’s libel laws. Savile was highly litigious, and would send his very expensive lawyers after any publication that so much as considered reporting allegations about him. The fact that the allegations were true was irrelevant. Savile was rich,…
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Snakes in the Cass
The Cass review is a lengthy document and it’ll take time for detailed criticisms to emerge, but there’s already plenty of evidence to indicate that the worst fears of trans people and allies were correct. The review team included people vocally opposed to trans healthcare, applied different standards of evidence to trans-supportive and trans-antagonistic studies,…
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The endgame
In the US, the people who want to ban abortion will tell you that they don’t want to ban abortion; they just want to put some protections around some of it. This is a lie. Also in the US, the people who want to ban healthcare for all trans people – who, not coincidentally, are…
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No surprises
You’ll see a lot in the papers about the Cass review of NHS care for gender-questioning kids today, as the report is finally released. What you won’t see are any suggestions that it’s a political project, not a medical one. Its job was to undermine healthcare for trans people, and that’s exactly what it’s delivered.…
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What’s coming
AR Moxon has published another incisive piece about one thing that’s actual about another thing: The Thing That’s Coming. Cargo ship Dali lost power and from there it was only a matter of time before it destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge. We hadn’t maintained the bridge for collisions of this type, we’re learning. You’d…
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The wedge
Today’s Observer reports: A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up policy briefings for politicians. The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder…
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Immiseration
I was talking to an acquaintance earlier who was saying that they’ve never seen Glaswegians look so miserable, that “everyone’s going around with their face tripping them”. This NY Review of Books piece by Gary Younge may help explain why. This is one of the bleakest sentences I’ve read for some time. After more than…
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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…
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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…