Putin wins again.

Russia’s most prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny collapsed and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a long jail term, the Russian prison service said.

Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, rose to prominence more than a decade ago with blogs on what he said was vast corruption and opulence among the “crooks and thieves” of Russia’s elite.

The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said in a statement that Navalny felt unwell after a walk at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) north east of Moscow into the Arctic Circle.

Putin is thinking it certainly took him long enough to “feel unwell” up there in the freezer. He was supposed to croak long before this.

Western officials paid tribute to his courage as a fighter for freedom. Some, without citing evidence, bluntly accused the Kremlin.

Without citing evidence? We already have the evidence: it’s been public all along. Navalny was kidnapped and shipped off to the Arctic because he resisted Putin.

The Telegraph:

[John Lewis is a department store chain.]

John Lewis has launched a magazine for staff which advises parents on how to find breast binders for trans children. The partnership, which also owns Waitrose, faced boycott calls on Wednesday after it issued a new publication to more than 70,000 staff members.

The Identity magazine, produced by the “LGTQIA+ network”, warned parents their support “can determine their child’s mental wellbeing” before quoting figures from controversial charity Stonewall, which suggested that the number of trans children attempting suicide is “double the national average”.

The magazine recommends support from the charity Mermaids, which is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission amid safeguarding concerns, and praises private clinic Gender GP for prescribing cross-sex hormones.

This is bosses forcing this dangerous but childish bullshit on employees.

The Identity magazine starts with an introduction from the editor in which he suggests the debates over LGBTQ rights are “playing pointless politics with people’s lives”.

Women don’t have lives? Feminists don’t have lives? Kids who find puberty difficult don’t have lives? Resisting trans ideology is very far from “pointless.”

The magazine feature goes on to quote a parent, Anne, saying that social media influencers “helped” by sharing “tips on how to safely use clothing and equipment to achieve a person’s desired gender identity, for example, chest binders”.

Safely. Safely!!

A study by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health has previously found that 97 per cent of adults who use breast binders experienced health impacts from binding, including pain, rib fractures, changes to the spine, headaches, respiratory and skin infections and muscle wasting.

But hey, a department store chain says binders are awesome, so get your daughter in one before another sunset.

The magazine also includes advice on using preferred pronouns “because it’s right to do so” and a glossary of trans terms and dates for events.

The magazine says some of the events which will be recognised in 2024 include International Trans Day of Visibility, Asexuality Day, Agender Pride Day, Pansexual and Panromantic Visibility Day, Non-binary Awareness Week and International Non-binary People’s Day

Asexuality day. How do you celebrate it? Just…do nothing?

A John Lewis Partnership spokesman said: “We want the Partnership to be a place where people can work or shop with confidence, irrespective of their backgrounds.”

Provided they’re 100% down with trans ideology, that is. Everyone else, pfffffff, they can go to Marks.

Remember Helen Clarke? Of Oxford Brookes University and Approved Opinions on Trans Isshooz?

She’s not very forthcoming about how she knows what she claims to know.

Because it’s scurrilous bloviating about stubborn women who won’t get on the trans train, that’s why.

H/t NightCrow

Girls cheated out of their own sport again:

The KIPP Academy girls basketball game on February 8 against the Collegiate Charter School of Lowell ended at halftime. The question is, why? Collegiate Charter left after 16 minutes of play with KIPP leading, 31-14. The game goes into the books as a 10-0 forfeit win for KIPP.

According to multiple sources, KIPP has a male player on its girls basketball roster, despite the school offering a boys program. The player is reported to be more than 6 feet tall with facial hair. KIPP officials refused to confirm the player’s gender identification. 

The facial hair bit seems irrelevant at first, but then you realize it’s a pretty good reason to think the player is not a girl.

If the player identifies as female, participation on the girls team would seem to be supported by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, the governing body for high school athletics in the Commonwealth. According to the MIAA Handbook, Section 43.3.1: “A student shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the student’s bona fide gender identity.”

Oh please. Who decides whether the faith is good or not? And why does good faith excuse all anyway? Even if the student in some sense believes he has a female idenniny, he’s still a boy playing against girls.

The MIAA does make it clear, however, that this rule is not to be enacted for the purpose of gaining a competitive advantage, as noted in the MIAA Handbook, Section 43.3.2:

“When a school district submits a roster to the MIAA, it is verifying that it has determined that the students listed on a gender-specific sports team are eligible to participate either based on the gender listed on their official birth certificate or based on their bona fide gender identity and that no students are included on the roster solely for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage in competitive athletics.

Oh well that’s fine then, because of course they’re going to say up front that this male student is included on the roster solely for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage in competitive athletics.

Collegiate Charter left not because they were losing but because they didn’t want any more injuries.

[Athletic Director] Pelczar said [Coach] Ortins had his own reasons for leaving.

“So, he felt that his girls were getting injured, basically, all game,” Pelczar said. “He has a playoff game on Monday, so he didn’t want to have any more of his girls go down.”

Ah, I see. It wasn’t a problem that they were losing because the other team had a large boy playing, it was a problem only because the girls were being injured and they have a playoff game next week.

That all seems very fair and reasonable.

Let’s learn more about the Garrick. Its own account of itself is interesting.

The Garrick Club is instituted for the general patronage of drama; for the purpose of combining the use of a Club, on economic principles, with the advantages of a literary society; for bringing together supporters of drama; and for the formation of a theatrical library, with works on costume.

…

The Garrick was founded in 1831 by a group of literary gentlemen under the patronage of the King’s brother, the egalitarian Duke of Sussex. They announced that the Club would be a place where ‘actors and men of refinement and education might meet on equal terms’, where ‘patrons of the drama and its professors were to be brought together’, and where ‘easy intercourse was to be promoted between artists and patrons’.

They couldn’t have made it a place where actors and women and men of refinement and education might meet on equal terms, because there were no public places where women and men could do that in 1831. Private houses, yes, but public places, no.

But it’s not 1831 any more.

The Club was named after the great eighteenth century actor David Garrick. Attracted by the combination of the traditions of the eighteenth century literary society with the advantages of a well-run dining and social club, the first members of the Garrick were a sophisticated and cosmopolitan group that included twenty-four peers of the realm as well as writers, actors, musicians and publishers.

Many of the great literary personalities of the nineteenth century were members of the Garrick, and the Club was the scene of a famous quarrel between perhaps the two greatest – Dickens and Thackeray. Edmund Yates, a friend of Dickens, published remarks on Thackeray that were offensive and could only have been heard in the Club. Yates was peevishly championed by Dickens and the disaffection between him and Thackeray lasted until just before the latter’s death. Other members of the Club in the nineteenth century included writers such as Trollope, Captain Marryat, Meredith, JM Barrie, Pinero and WS Gilbert, actors such as Macready, Charles Kemble, Charles Mathews, Irving, Tree and Forbes-Robertson, composers such as Elgar and Sullivan and artists such as Millais, Leighton and Rossetti.

Today the Club has around 1,300 members including many of the most distinguished actors and men of letters in England. The original assurance of the committee, “that it would be better that ten unobjectionable men should be excluded than one terrible bore should be admitted”, ensures that the lively atmosphere for which the Club was so well-known in the nineteenth century continues to invigorate members of the Club in the twenty-first century.

Lively but, excuse me for saying so, narrow. The Club absent-mindedly leaves out half of the potential membership on account of what’s between their legs, so they lack some pretty lively people. Mary Beard for instance: I should think she’d be excellent for the lively atmosphere. Maggie Smith? Natalie Haynes? Emma Thompson? Zadie Smith?

Amelia Gentleman in the Guardian three years ago:

Over 100 QCs have signed a petition calling on members of one of London’s last remaining gentlemen’s clubs, the Garrick, to vote for women to be admitted at the club’s annual general meeting next week.

The Garrick has a long association with the legal profession, and many senior lawyers are members. Female QCs who signed the petition expressed frustration that a club frequented by senior judges still refuses to accept female members.

So in that sense the Garrick isn’t really all that “private.” It’s useful for professional advancement, and that’s not exactly “private.”

“It is well known that The Garrick is a forum where senior members of the legal profession socialise with each other. Men are afforded an opportunity through their membership to form connections with senior legal practitioners to support their professional aspirations,” the petition states.

“This is an opportunity expressly denied to women and contributes to the gross underrepresentation of women at the top of the legal profession. We urge the Garrick’s members to consider whether they would remain members of a club that excluded based on race, religion, or sexuality.”

Before you shout some more about the Garrick’s absolute right to continue excluding women please note that the petition says “We urge the Garrick’s members to consider.” It’s not a violation of liberal principles to urge people to consider things.

Some QCs left messages beneath the petition describing their anger at colleagues’ membership of the club, and the unease they felt at having to attend dinners there as a guest. One senior female barrister, with 30 years experience, said that case dinners at the Garrick were “frequent”, and seemed to form part of invisible pattern of networking between male colleagues.

Another said the links between senior judges and the Garrick “have long played a part in creating a misogynistic atmosphere that makes it less likely that women will want to pursue careers to the highest level and, if they do, less likely that they will be successful. The Garrick’s insistence on all-male membership plays an important and corrosive role in confirming these gender distinctions”.

The former president of the supreme court Baroness Hale, who was the first woman among 12 supreme court judges (several of whom were then Garrick club members), criticised the club’s continued exclusion of women in 2011. “I regard it as quite shocking that so many of my colleagues belong to the Garrick, but they don’t see what all the fuss is about,” she told a law diversity forum. She said judges “should be committed to the principle of equality for all”.

Judges of all people.

In the Telegraph reporting on the Guardian news, the T reports that the G sports reporter Jonathan Liew is fashionably indifferent to the needs and concerns of women.

JK Rowling has branded the Guardian’s chief sports writer a “progressive misogynist” with “disdain for women’s sport” after he dismissed concerns that transgender women could compete in Parkrun’s female category.

Jonathan Liew, who has written for the newspaper since 2019, labelled concerns raised by womens’ groups a “sinister campaign” which had been amplified by “useful idiots in the media”.

Women have always been seen as “sinister” by men who hate us. You just never know when a woman might find a man asleep and seize the opportunity to cut his balls off.

Concerns over Parkrun emerged after a think tank report found that it records the self-identified gender of its participants, not their sex. The Policy Exchange research found that at least three Parkrun female records were held by biological men as a result of its policy of allowing entrants to self-identify their gender.

The report – backed by Olympic medallists Sharron Davies and Daley Thompson and tennis player Martina Navratilova – warned that female athletes risked being alienated unless grassroots sports could provide fair and safe play.

No, the issue is that Parkrun risks alienating female athletes. It’s not the women who are doing something risky here, it’s the people who are so astoundingly eager to ruin women’s sports in every area they can reach.

Originally a comment by maddog1129 on We see you, Jonathan.

All the noise and agitation comes from transwhatevers: biological males who wish that they had been born as females, who want to be accepted as such, and for everyone else to play along.

I’ll take some issue with the emphasized language. I don’t believe for one minute that many, if any, really “wish that they had been born female.” They sit in a privileged spot, having been born male, such that they will never know or understand the second class citizenship (at best! At worst, it’s enslavement status) that is baked into being born female. They never wish for that! Oh, no! They can see the disadvantages of being actually born female, but they have no real inkling what it’s actually like to live it.

They never sign up for the drudge work of being female: the unpaid household labor, the childcare responsibilities, the invisibility, the imprisonment, the exclusion from public life. They only want the outer trappings — the clothes, the hair, the being deferred to in the chivalric sense of having doors opened for them, having their meals and gifts paid for by someone else. They absolutely abhor what would go along with being an actual woman: being ignored, being talked over, being shunted aside, being invisible, being excluded, being looked down upon, being paid less, being oppressed in the million and one ways that women are oppressed.

They like having their cake and eating it too: invading women’s spaces, taking women’s places, beating women at sports and taking their team spots, placements, wins, trophies, prizes, scholarships, and everything else. They love the opportunity to be champions and victims at the same time! They like being able to lie with impunity, being able to force everyone else to play along and validate the lie, and to punish anyone who won’t play along.

No, I doubt that any of them genuinely wishes to have been born female.

Kushner pretends not to know what a conflict of interests is.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser Jared Kushner has defended his business dealings with Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

After leaving the White House, Mr Kushner’s private equity firm received a $2bn (£1.59bn) investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Mr Kushner worked closely with Saudi Arabia on a number of issues during the Trump administration. He has denied that the investment represented a conflict of interest.

To put that more accurately, Mr Kushner exploited his connection to Trump to endear himself to Saudia Arabia, which proceeded to give him 2 billion dollars. He has no relevant education or training that would make him a useful aide to the chief executive, and no shame about brazen nepotism.

Speaking on Tuesday at a Miami summit organised by US news outlet Axios, Mr Kushner dismissed any suggestion that the Saudi investment into his firm was unethical.

Of course he did. He’s as scummy as Trump and Trump’s daughter.

Behold: a callow clueless indifferent man gives women’s rights away.

Take the recent controversy over parkrun, the mass‑participation 5km fun run that has become the latest target in the cross hairs of the radical trans‑exclusionary police.

By “the radical trans‑exclusionary police” he of course means women protesting the destruction of women’s sports and prizes and rights at the hands of men in lipstick. No skin off Jonathan Liew’s nose, is it.

In recent weeks parkrun has been doggedly pursued by protesters and the media, unhappy at its policy of allowing trans women to identify as female.

No, stupid; angry at its policy of allowing men to compete as women.

And really the telling part of the parkrun row is the way the anti-trans movement in sport has begun to broaden its focus beyond the Olympic 800m, or national swimming trials, or suppressed testosterone levels, into areas of identity and belonging. The proposed parkrun ban is – short of genital inspectors in the token queues – basically unenforceable. The cruelty is the point here: the desire to forcibly out trans women, even when it might threaten their safety.

The cruelty? What about the cruelty of invading everything belonging to women? What about the desire to forcibly enter women’s spaces, even when it might threaten their safety?

The great shame is that for its many devotees parkrun’s appeal lies in its simple purity: a holistic, community‑driven vision of sport untainted by commercialism or top-down power, free of politics or culture wars. So of course, like the National Trust or the BBC, it needed to be defiled, made a contested space, made a more toxic and less welcoming space.

And he’s so blinkered, so oblivious, so indifferent to women that he doesn’t even manage to notice that men taking over women’s everything makes everything more toxic and less welcoming for women.

That’s gotta sting.

I caught a glimpse of this the other day but didn’t follow it up; I should have. Vancouver police claim they “don’t know” what sex a guy accused of rape is.

The Metro Vancouver Transit Police say they “don’t know” if the primary suspect in a skytrain sexual assault is male or female despite having recovered semen during the investigation.

On February 8, the Transit Police issued a press release pleading for help to identify the suspect. While photos and videos showed what appeared to be a male with long hair, some basic information on the suspect was curiously omitted from the release. No pronouns were used, and no information on the suspect’s sex was included.

In a recorded phone call with journalist Amy Hamm, Constable Amanda Steed said the information had been intentionally left out because the Transit Police were unsure of how to refer to the suspect.

They put out a press release asking for help in identifying the suspect and they omitted crucial information about the suspect. Are we stupid enough yet?

“We’ve left it out for a reason; it’s because we don’t know. The video evidence shows someone who… would appear female, who is female presenting, but the physical evidence is that of a genetic male,” Steed said. She later confirmed in an email to Reduxx that the physical evidence is in fact the suspect’s semen. 

Despite claiming that the Transit Police “didn’t know” what the sex of the suspect was, Steed admitted that they “believe” he has a penis.

You are the police. Stop fucking around. The guy reportedly sexually assaulted a woman; it doesn’t matter how he “presents” – i.e. that he has long hair. You know perfectly well what sex he is and by pretending you don’t and so omitting that fact from your request for assistance in finding him, you’re refusing to do your job and treating his victim like garbage. Stop doing that!

According to their website, The Metro Vancouver Transit Police is “the only dedicated police service in Canada focused on reducing crime and disorderly behavior in and around the public transportation system.” They also describe one of their four operational priorities as “reducing sexual offences.” In 2018, the police force launched an “Anti Sex Offence Campaign,” which consisted of a poster campaign and a number for victims or witnesses to text or call the transit police.

But if the suspect is a trans laydee don’t bother, Metro Vancouver Transit Police aren’t interested.

H/t NightCrow

Comedy:

The Soho theatre is investigating a complaint about a comedian who allegedly abused a Jewish audience member who refused to applaud a Palestinian flag…The incident reportedly took place on Saturday near the end of a one-hour Shtoom show by Paul Currie in front of an audience of 200 people at the central London theatre.

According to a witness who gave an account to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), Currie placed a Ukrainian and a Palestinian flag on the stage, and invited audience members to stand and applaud. The witness, who asked to remain anonymous, told the CAA: “When we all sat down again, [Currie] looked towards a young man sitting in the second row and said: ‘You didn’t stand, why? Didn’t you enjoy my show?’ The young man, who we discovered soon after was Israeli, replied: ‘I enjoyed your show until you brought out the Palestinian Authority flag.’”

The audience member claimed Currie told the man: “Get out of my show. Get the fuck out of here. Fuck off, get the fuck out of here.” Other members of the audience allegedly joined in, shouting “Get out” and “Free Palestine” until the young man left, the witness said.

The theatre put out a statement:

Beyond the Fringe it ain’t.

Trouble at the Garrick:

One of London’s last remaining gentlemen’s clubs, the Garrick, has taken the highly unusual step of expelling a member, amid rising tensions over the club’s unwillingness to change its men-only membership rules.

Former theatre producer Colin Brough, a member for 40 years, was expelled from the club after sending a series of angry emails to fellow members expressing his conviction that women should be admitted immediately.

Gentlemen don’t display anger. It’s ungentlemanly.

The long saga of the Garrick’s refusal to admit female members attracts regular interest because its membership includes a roster of influential establishment figures and household names. Current members include actors Stephen Fry, Hugh Bonneville and Brian Cox as well as the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, and many judges, including the former president of the supreme court David Neuberger.

And you see this is why clubs of this kind shouldn’t be excluding women. They’re centers of establishment power and influence, so systematically excluding categories of people excludes those people from power and influence.

Michael Beloff KC, who had initially advised the club in 2011 that its rules prohibited female members, decided in November 2022 that he had made a mistake in his original advice and wrote new guidance concluding there was no legal justification for excluding women. He added that the club was likely to face “an expensive lawsuit” if it continued to bar women.

Beloff notified the club’s management of his error and sent them revised advice, but this guidance was not shared with members before a November 2023 poll on attitudes towards admitting women. Of those members who participated in a postal vote, 51% indicated that they were in favour of admitting women, while 44% were opposed, but the club needs a two-thirds majority to trigger a rule change.

Their hands are tied, you see. Regrettable but what can you do? Besides hiding the legal advice that is?

Brough wrote that some fellow members had admitted nervousness about the potential “reputational damage” they would face if it emerged publicly that they were members of a club that banned female members.

He quoted a supportive message from Fry, who acknowledged he felt “ashamed and mortified by the continuing exclusion of women from our club”.

Fry’s email continued: “I fear that I’ve been lax about either resigning, campaigning or making any kind of a noise about this. It’s a mixture of indolence and reluctance to get involved in fusses, allied with a natural incompetence at and fear of political infighting, committees, round robins and all the antagonism and heat they generate.”

Oh buck up Stephen. You’re a manly man in a men’s club, so you could at least skip the whining.

Previous attempts to force the club to allow women have been unsuccessful. When Joanna Lumley was proposed as a member in 2011, prompting the club to take legal advice on the issue, some members scrawled expletives on her nomination card, and one wrote: “Women aren’t allowed here and never will be.”

So don’t let them tell you it’s just tradition yadda yadda. It’s not. It’s that other thing, the m word, that we’re all so tediously familiar with. Women aren’t allowed here coz we hates’em.

Just a little more on Dr Gina Gwenffrewi: what you learn if you click on the Research button.

The study of global transgender female identities and their representation in the arts and media. This includes a particular focus on trans female identities excluded from mainstream trans narratives in the Global North, and their relationship with structural inequalities connected to socio-economics, nationality, and race and ethnicity. Methodologically, I draw on Lacanian/post-Lacanian thinkers, from Jacques Lacan to Julia Kristeva, Jacqueline Rose, and Judith Butler. However, my work currently is hugely informed by and indebted to perspectives gained from the scenes of trans artists of colour especially in North America, including persectives on race and socio-economics from writers/artists such as Jamie Berrout, Janet Mock, Fabian Romero, Reina Gossett, CeCe McDonald, and generally the output of Oakland-based editor and artist Nia King.  Increasingly, and complementary to my focus on race and socio-economics, my work is influenced by the insights on intersections of trans/queer experience with race and class of Joao Gabriell, Sara Ahmed, Michelle Davies, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and specifically in relation to global economics and their impact on trans communities, of William Davies and Naomi Klein.

That’s the Research summary. Under Current research interests we find:

Currently, one new area of my research is informed by the global backlash against trans rights and the discourses of trans-exclusionary ideologies. My current research on the period especially of 2017-2021, focuses on Scotland, the U.K., and the broader Anglophone Global North. This includes the media furore surrounding Gender Recognition Act reform, and the media storms involving the social media output of the writer JK Rowling. More broadly, my research area of Trans Media Studies interrogates the interplay of patriarchal trans-exclusionary ideologies within the national media and politics, and the gender-critical movement. On a further, related area, an increasingly significant area of focus for my research is the impact of online radicalization on trans-exclusionary ideologies. My research accordingly draws on the work in Trans Media Studies of TJ Billard, as well as Julia Serano and Talia Mae Bettcher. Somewhat separately, and building on my PhD thesis, my future research will also continue to focus on the impact of neoliberalism on trans bodies. This includes via the works of disempowered QTPOC communities, and the output of activists such as Jamie Berrout and CeCe McDonald, and the gap between more empowered LGBT+ institutions, which reflect white, middle-class issues, and the politics of prison abolition, defunding the police, anti-imperialism, and leftist-driven social justice movements with a more intersectional focus dealing with multiple sources of oppression. Accordingly, my research draws on the academic work of Dan Irving, Dean Spade, Tourmaline, and Eric Stanley, as well as Angela Davis, Sara Ahmed, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

Sounds like research in the archives of Twitter, doesn’t it.

Pathetic. Utterly wall to wall pathetic.

One, replies are closed. Two…they don’t even bother to say what they object to. That’s a pretty striking omission for a “statement” intended to shape public opinion. “We don’t like it that Fanshawe is the new Rector. We can’t explain why. We stand around.”

Yet again we see that trans ideology makes people stupid.

The Telegraph on the worked-up “controversy” over Simon Fanshawe.

In 2019, Mr Fanshawe signed an open letter accusing Stonewall of undermining “women’s sex-based rights and protections” and “demonising” anyone who dissented from its gender policies as transphobic.

Transgender rights campaigners at the university are attempting to drum up support for an open letter calling on the university to axe the appointment and find “a true advocate of equality, accessibility, diversity and inclusion” instead.

They claim Mr Fanshawe’s appointment  “creates a hostile environment for the many trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming students studying at the university”.

No it doesn’t. The presence of people who have thoughts that are different from yours does not create a hostile environment for you. If that were true then all environments would be hostile and nobody could do anything. News flash: everybody has thoughts that are different from yours, just as you have thoughts that are different from other people’s. 100% agreement on all subjects is not possible. Cope.

While Mr Fanshawe was not a co-founder of the LGB Alliance, which was set up by two lesbians and is critical of transgender ideology, he has supported the organisation and spoken at its events.

Jonathan MacBride, a staff member at the university and an officer at its staff pride network, told STV News that Mr Fanshawe, who now works as a diversity consultant, had an “excellent history of supporting gay and lesbian rights.”

But he added: “But he speaks negatively and just offensively, to me and many people I know, about trans people. That is upsetting that the University of Edinburgh feels like this is someone suitable to have as our Rector.”

Show us. Show us on the doll where he speaks offensively. Until you show us I’m going to decline to believe that claim.

Mr Fanshawe, who won the Perrier Award for Comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe in the same year he founded Stonewall, has responded to criticism of his appointment by offering to meet with those who are unhappy.

He said: “I am delighted and honoured to have been named Rector. I will do all I can to advance the university and its staff and students and fearlessness in the exchange of ideas.”

It is a university after all, not a church or a nursery school.

The BBC reports the Simon Fanshawe news with more restraint than usual.

Writer and activist Simon Fanshawe has been named as the new rector of the University of Edinburgh.

The former comedian, who now works as a consultant on diversity and inclusion, will take up office on 4 March following an uncontested election.

Second sentence in they admit he’s a diversity and inclusion boffin, which kind of pre-empts claims that he’s a right-wing fiend. Good job.

After a lot of neutral factual detail they get to the pachyderm in the parlor.

Mr Fanshawe has a long history as an activist for LGBT rights but has in recent years become a critic of Stonewall, the organisation he helped found.

In a newspaper article in 2022, he said Stonewall had become a “propaganda machine that preaches extreme and divisive gender ideology under the guise of ‘factual’ information.”

He said the organisation’s views on transgender rights had become ideological and were “fast eroding women’s rights and their protection in female-only spaces, as well as posing a potential risk to children, who might be led to believe that irreversible medical intervention is the solution to common adolescent insecurities about identity.”

I wonder how many outraged junior BBC staff are fuming at that reasonable account of his views.

University of Edinburgh lecturer in Trans Studies Dr Gina Gwenffrewi condemned the appointment. Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, she said: “This is an outrageous declaration of contempt by the University of Edinburgh for trans people.”

That’s the harshest paragraph in the piece, and it’s clearly Gwenffrewi speaking rather than the Beeb. I wonder what she talks about in her lectures.

Final paragraph:

Women’s rights campaigners For Woman Scotland congratulated Mr Fanshawe and described him as a “lovely, thoughtful man who will be an asset to Edinburgh University.”

Has the BBC turned a corner at last?

Now here’s a brilliant thoughtful rebuttal of claims that Trump’s attack on Nato is a bad thing.

Last year, Marco Rubio co-sponsored a law preventing presidents unilaterally withdrawing from Nato. On Sunday the Florida senator, whom Trump ridiculed and defeated in the 2016 primary, also dismissed Trump’s remarks about Russia.

“Donald Trump is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,” Rubio told CNN, referring to a Washington thinktank. “He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now.”

Ahhh right, that’s ok then. Trump is a brainless ignoramus, and we’ve already figured that out, so it’s fine that he wants to trash Nato. Thanks Mr Rubio.

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting take on Trump in this conversation, saying he didn’t do all the authoritarian things he said he was going to do.

FS: So the authoritarian rhetoric didn’t materialise. Do you think that’s because it was always just talk, part of a tough guy image? Or do you think he just wasn’t capable of executing it?

AS: I don’t think he actually likes the exercise of power. He’s not that interested in controlling the lives of everyone around him, or indeed most Americans. He’s concerned primarily with his own ego, with his own glory, and with his own sense of being right in a particular moment. And so when it comes to difficult things, like rounding up 11 million people, he didn’t even try. There was some increased enforcement from ICE, but not much. We know how much wall he built, which is about a few hundred feet; we know how much Mexico paid for it, which was zero.

Hmm. I hadn’t thought about it that way before. He’s lazy. That may be the thread that saves us. He’s lazy and very easily bored. Talking about himself, bragging, threatening, that’s the fun stuff, but actually doing complicated things is work, and he doesn’t want to work.

FS: Some people have accused you of “Trump derangement syndrome” for the level of your concern. In retrospect, do you feel like you had a mild case of it?

AS: No. The former President Donald Trump is himself deranged, that is where the source of the derangement is. All we’re doing is responding to what he says and what he does. And what he said was: I intend to upend the entire Constitution of the United States and run it as a dictator. He didn’t do it. Now, the question is, why didn’t he do it? And some people say, well, he was checked by others. And he was. But my sense is he doesn’t actually want that kind of control. It’s too much responsibility.

And way too much work.

Let’s hope so.