Author: Ophelia Benson

Kishwer Falkner responds to Bridget Phillipson’s insult.

Sad to read in @thetimes that Bridget Phillipson is blaming me for delay to EHRC Code. She certainly stoops low. She had Code for 3 months when she sent me this letter last November – no indication of any grandstanding then. pic.twitter.com/GOcIuHMnLM

— Kishwer Falkner (@KishwerFalkner) May 22, 2026

She certainly stoops low – and for the cause of diminishing women’s rights, at that. How does she sleep at night?

Nadia Whittome MP writes:

While it appears that the government has successfully pushed back on some particularly harmful elements in the previous draft, the new Code of Practice will still lead to the exclusion of trans people from services and facilities that they have used without issue for a very long time.

Without issues, she means. Without issue=without offspring.

Anyway, no they haven’t; of course they haven’t. Women have been pointing out and objecting to the “issues” for at least a decade. It is not the case that there was a peaceful utopia in which men used women’s toilets and rape crisis institutions and women were perfectly fine with it. Not listening does not mean the objection never happened.

This will do nothing to improve women’s lives and the many struggles we face, but it will put trans people (and anyone perceived as trans) at increased risk of discrimination, harassment and violence.

Letting men use women’s toilets and rape crisis institutions is increased discrimination, harassment and violence against women. It’s not hypothetical; making sure that women can’t avoid men in any circumstances=violence against women.

The Code unfortunately still represents the culmination of years of anti-trans campaigning from a small, well-funded minority who have had outsized influence in the media and in politics, and have weaponised the courts for their own ends.

It’s not anti-trans; we don’t care about trans; trans is meaningless. It’s anti-removal of all places of safety for women.

The legal situation for trans people is now deeply incoherent and means that it is untenable for them to be able live their lives with dignity. This is completely out of line with the values of equality that a Labour government is meant to champion. Instead of making this Code statutory, the government should be legislating to clarify and protect trans people’s rights, privacy and inclusion.

At the expense of women’s rights, privacy, and inclusion. How is that fair? Please remind.

Well ok if you insist, but you can’t enforce it.

New government guidance has said that transgender people should not be asked what sex they are before they use toilets or changing rooms.

But what if it’s a man using a women’s toilet or changing room? Are women just supposed to shrug and give up?

The long-awaited updated code of practice, from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), confirms that single-sex space facilities in businesses and public buildings must be used based on biological sex.

However, it also warns firms that it would not be “practical or appropriate” for staff to challenge individuals they suspected were using the wrong lavatory or changing room.

So…we’re right back where we started, but with a little ribbon on top. Yes you can have your spaces for women, but no you can’t tell a man to get out. Contradiction much?

The EHRC guidance, approved by Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities, was published on Thursday…

Under the guidelines, businesses and public bodies must ensure that toilets, changing facilities and sports teams are segregated based on biological sex and not gender identity.

The code makes clear that transgender people should instead be offered a third or gender-neutral space. Leaving a trans person without access to any facilities or services would be unlikely to be proportionate and could be discriminatory, the guidance warns.

But a trans person in that scenario would have access to the facilities for her/his sex. It does not leave a trans person without access to any facilities.

The guidance states: “It is unlikely to be either practical or appropriate to approach any particular individual to make enquiries about their sex in relation to facilities, such as toilets, which are incidental to the primary service.”

Notice how this casually makes the victim the aggressor. The man in the women’s toilet is the one who has done the inappropriate “approaching” here. We do get to tell him to get out, and raise the alarm if he refuses.

The code also says that if “individuals are asked about their sex in a way that requires them to disclose this information in public, or if the language or manner of a request is rude, combative or offensive”, this could be deemed as “discrimination or harassment”.

Men intruding in women’s toilets are being rude, combative and offensive, and they are the ones doing the harassing.

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of women’s rights charity Sex Matters, said: “The guidance could be clearer that service providers are entitled to ask people to state their sex, and to require an honest answer.

“It’s absurd to say that it is ‘unlikely to be either practical or appropriate’ to ask an individual what sex they are in relation to facilities such as toilets: on the contrary, if a man walks into a women’s space it will be not just appropriate to challenge him, but essential.

“Otherwise women’s rights to single-sex spaces cannot be enforced.”

Precisely.

A source close to the minister said: “Bridget believes firmly in the importance of protecting single sex spaces for women, but this can be done in a way that ensures dignity for trans people too: it is not an either-or.

“Bridget has ignored the frothing on both sides of the culture war and encouraged EHRC to focus on what matters: the dignity of everyone in our country. She will take no lectures on the rights of women just as she will never punch down on any minority.”

No, she’ll just punch down on women from her position as a government minister.

At long last, the guidance.

Finally, the Government’s long-awaited guidance on protecting single-sex spaces has been published. And it’s a bit of an anti-climax. There are no suffragette banners or burning bras. Instead, after a 13-month wait, we’ve been treated to a bland written statement, delivered to Parliament by Bridget Phillipson wearing her Minister for Women and Equalities hat.

So seemingly begrudging is Phillipson’s acknowledgement that she has “approved the draft code” that we can almost see the accompanying grimace. Turn to it, and it is easy to see why. It makes clear that sex “refers to a male or a female of any age” and that “in relation to a group of people it refers to either men and/or boys, or women and /or girls”. This statement of the blindingly obvious should not be radical. But it so terrifies Labour’s activist set that Phillipson, for months, sat on her hands.

Labour’s trans-obsessed set, that is. Activism per se is not a bad thing; the issue is what the activism is in aid of.

On Thursday, all out of excuses, Phillipson could dither no more. It has fallen to her to instruct those in charge of schools, hospitals, and prisons that “sex means biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010”, with the proviso “that trans people are still protected by the Act under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’”. But, crucially, “A Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) does not change a person’s sex for the purposes of the Act”.

Doesn’t change it for any other purposes either. Nothing changes a person’s sex. We can’t change species, and we can’t change sex. We can’t become rocks or planets or stars; we can’t become ducks or petunias or the Taj Mahal.

Of course, it’s not just Phillipson. From the Prime Minister down, the entire Labour Party seems to have believed six impossible things about sex and gender before breakfast. With so many about-turns to make, it is hardly surprising that Phillipson has dithered, and guidance has been pushed out on the final day before Parliament breaks for recess.

But this delay has had real consequences. Across Britain, hospitals have continued to allow trans-identifying biological males to use women-only spaces such as wards, changing rooms and lavatories. Nurses like those from Darlington have been forced to fight expensive legal battles to ensure access to single-sex changing rooms. In Yorkshire, a mother had to sue her daughter’s all-girls school after it “secretly” admitted a boy who identified as female.

Yeah well. They’re all just women, so it doesn’t matter.

Even now, Phillipson’s interference helps explain why the EHRC’s code of practice runs to many pages, with multiple examples and plentiful caveats. One of the “tweaks” she demanded was more examples of how organisations can be “inclusive” and ensure that trans people have access to toilets and changing rooms.

And so we have bizarre details of the circumstances in which someone can be asked to clarify their sex. The code states: “Evidence of such concern might include the individual’s physique or physical appearance, behaviour or concerns raised by other service users.” In other words, if someone looks like a man, then they might be a man. Most four-year-olds know this!

Playing dress-up is all very well, but when adults do it they can run into complications.

Delay, deny, befuddle, make up problems, catastrophize, wring hands over hypotheticals, look under the sofa, have a headache, ask the police for advice, say maybe next year.

Long-awaited equality guidance has warned that transgender people should not routinely be challenged over which lavatories they use, despite setting out how gyms, leisure centres and hospitals can lawfully restrict services on the basis of biological sex.

Well now wait a minute. How are we using “routinely”? And what does that mean anyway? If a man is in a women’s lavatory, then women get to tell him to get out. If he goes into the women’s lavatory routinely then they get to tell him to get out routinely – and more. They get to make a complaint about his doing it routinely. The burden should be on the men, not the women. Women are not at fault for telling men to get out.

The final version [of the guidance] includes stronger references to protecting the dignity and safety of trans people, new sections on discrimination protections, and more limited circumstances in which trans people could be excluded than the original document put forward. 

In other words the guidance has been weakened. Those bitchy women don’t get to have things all to themselves just because they need them. Bitches.

Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, said that the guidance ensures the protection of “people’s rights across our country”.

Well it sounds as if it doesn’t.

A government source insisted that any changes from the original submission were not designed to water down the guidance, but to ensure that it could withstand legal scrutiny and work in practice.

They said that ministers had pushed the EHRC to carry out a full consultation rather than attempt to “fast-track” the guidance after the judgment and criticised Baroness Falkner, the EHRC’s previous chair.

They said that the “grandstanding of the previous EHRC leadership made this process harder than it needed to be: if time had been taken in the preparation, this could have been delivered sooner” and added: “The government had to battle to get the EHRC to run a proper consultation rather than a fast-tracked version — a shorter consultation could have made successful legal challenge more likely. 

…

Falkner disputed the characterisation and said that “consultation processes are frequently extended when there is considerable interest as we discovered there was”. She said that Phillipson had thanked her for providing the draft code of practice when she left the EHRC, and added that she appreciated Falkner’s dedication. Falkner said: “To now have me, and my entire board, discredited in this manner is shameful.”

It just never ends. How dare women try to defend our rights?

Among the changes from the previous version is new wording which warned that requiring transgender people to use facilities that match their biological sex “may cause safety risks and distress for trans users”.

Letting men barge into women’s facilities may cause safety risks and distress for women, but apparently that’s just so much dandelion fluff.

Another section, included in both versions, said that it was “unlikely to be either practical or appropriate” for providers of ordinary facilities such as bathrooms to ask people to prove their sex.

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, described the section as “absurd”. She said: “On the contrary, if a man walks into a women’s space, it will be not just appropriate to challenge him, but essential. Otherwise women’s rights to single-sex spaces cannot be enforced.”

That’s clearly the goal of all these tutters and hang-wringers.

You hadda be there.

Trump spoke to the assembled graduates of the US Coast Guard Academy on Wednesday, offering advice, congratulating them on their success … and also commenting on their bodies and going off on a tangent about every political achievement he considers himself to have made.

…

“Our country is hot,” Trump said, while “under the last administration, we were a dead country.” 

That’s probably only about the 500th time he’s said that. Maybe.

“I hate good-looking men,” the 79-year-old Trump said, unprompted, as a young man being recognized for his excellent academic record approached the stage. When the student who’d scored highest in the fitness test came up, he told the crowd: “I wanna check him out … Look at the muscles on this guy! I just hit him on the shoulder and hurt my hand, it’s like hitting a rock!”

The reason Trump cares about this stuff, he added, is because “it’s competition for me too. I have to compete with you now!” What that means is anyone’s guess, but never mind, because the next name on the list was the class president, who just happened to be Trump’s Achilles’ heel: a woman.

“If I didn’t invite her up, I’d be accused of discrimination,” was what the president said when he came to Savannah Riera’s name. If that line sounds familiar to you, it’s because he used it a few months ago for the gold medal-winning women’s Olympic hockey team, when he “joked” that he would have to invite them to the State of the Union alongside their male counterparts for the same reason.

Well sure but it’s such a fabulous joke that it’s acceptable for him to bring it out again. What could be funnier than telling them he wouldn’t invite a woman up if he didn’t have to? Hahahahaha hilarious.

After almost an hour, it seemed that he was ready to round off his speech: he announced that he was going to offer a few words of hard-won life advice to the graduates. And, despite it all, this is probably where it became most weird.

We’ve all become accustomed to this way that Trump does political rhetoric — the ideological stream-of-consciousness, the personal and political attacks, and the bombastic self-congratulation. But what’s most shocking at this point is how little he has to say when he gets the opportunity to speak from the heart. Those final words of advice were so basic and cliched as to be effectively meaningless.

“Never, ever give up,” the president of the United States said, as if he were imparting some closely guarded secret. Also: “think big.” And lastly, “work hard.” 

The way he does? Running his mouth, telling underlings which insults to post on Truth Social, spitting insults at women journalists? That kind of hard work?

Female MP requests more and more and more trampling of women’s rights.

While it appears that the government has successfully pushed back on some particularly harmful elements in the previous draft, the new Code of Practice will still lead to the exclusion of trans people from services and facilities that they have used without issue for a very long…

— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) May 21, 2026

From the top:

While it appears that the government has successfully pushed back on some particularly harmful elements in the previous draft, the new Code of Practice will still lead to the exclusion of trans people from services and facilities that they have used without issue for a very long time.

This will do nothing to improve women’s lives and the many struggles we face, but it will put trans people (and anyone perceived as trans) at increased risk of discrimination, harassment and violence. The Code unfortunately still represents the culmination of years of anti-trans campaigning from a small, well-funded minority who have had outsized influence in the media and in politics, and have weaponised the courts for their own ends.

The legal situation for trans people is now deeply incoherent and means that it is untenable for them to be able live their lives with dignity. This is completely out of line with the values of equality that a Labour government is meant to champion. Instead of making this Code statutory, the government should be legislating to clarify and protect trans people’s rights, privacy and inclusion.

She means without issues, not without issue, which is formalese for no offspring. Anyway, of course men haven’t been using women’s services and facilities without any issues! Men have been using them with lots and lots of issues; that’s how we got here.

Yes, keeping men out of women’s spaces, jobs, prizes, organizations and so on will do a lot to improve the lives of women who have found men in their spaces, jobs, prizes, organizations and so on. That’s the point. Men do harm to women by invading spaces and taking jobs and prizes and so on that are meant for women. Saying it won’t is mindless dogma.

Why is our influence outsized? Furthermore, what about the influence trans activists have exercised? Don’t they punch well above their weight when it comes to chat about rights and dignity and all the rest of it?

The government should not be legislating to clarify and protect trans people’s rights, privacy and inclusion at the expense of women’s rights, privacy and inclusion. Men who pretend to be women are not, repeat not, more vulnerable or more dismissed or more bullied or more ignored than women. Quite the reverse.

How do we explain Trump?

Does he have dementia? Or are we seeing more glaring manifestations of his legendary arrogance, which is rooted in his profound insecurity? Or is it merely the stupidity of a man who not only never reads a book but reportedly can’t even read one-page briefing papers?

He can probably read them, i.e. he would be able to pronounce the words (haltingly) if necessary, but grasping their meaning is another matter.

Whatever the explanation, the bottom line is sobering: The person with the power to sic the Justice Department on perceived political foes; to send masked, heavily armed, and poorly trained troops out among the populace; and to order a nuclear attack is slipping. Maybe fast. And the chance that his Cabinet or his party will do anything about it is zero, which means we’re going to have to survive two and a half more years of this.

Assuming he lives that long.

Trump shows his age the most in the apparently diminished functioning of his frontal cortex—the thin layer of gray matter that helps the brain make decisions and regulate itself, the part of the brain that prevents you from saying the unkind or insane thing. Trump appears unable to hold himself back. He called a reporter “piggy.” He called another a “fresh person.” He confuses Greenland (which he wanted to invade) with Iceland.

Ruder and ruder with every day that passes. He started from Already Very Rude Indeed, so the daily increase is less than edifying.

After the mainstream media picked up on how aggressively random and disjointed his stump speeches had become, Trump gave it a name, “The Weave,” and said it was all intentional. But the claim was nonsense. The pattern has continued into his second term—recently, for example, in a late-March Cabinet meeting about the war, when he got lost in a five-minute digression on how much money he’d saved by using Sharpies to sign legislation and executive orders.

Now, there are people who can talk and/or write in such a way as to weave meaning from digressions, interpolations, followings up, and the like. Montaigne for example. There are good thinkers/writers who can loosen the reins on their minds with good results. Trump is not one of them.

The third thing that caught Segal’s ear was that, on certain occasions, Trump said or posted something really shocking even for him: “The outlandish things he’s been saying when people died, right? Like Robert Mueller, I am glad he’s dead, or Rob Reiner.” Maybe that’s just an older man losing patience with decorum, Segal said; but “this feels a little bit more like dysregulation. Like, ‘I have a wildly aggressive thought, I am just going to say it.’”

Yeah boy when you combine the sadism of a Trump with the dysregulation of a Trump you get this monstrosity we hear from every day.

After Trump’s crazed post on Easter Sunday, Vin Gupta made national headlines by posting on X: “Erratic. Can’t finish sentences. Often confused. Illogical train of thought. Word finding difficulties. Developing and worsening gradually over time. The President is exhibiting all the signs of dementia.”

In an interview, Gupta kept returning to the word “impulsivity.” Speaking the week after Easter, he said: “I think his impulsivity and his erratic behavior, as we’ve all seen just in the last two weeks, seems like it’s getting worse. Like he just has less of a filter. Even at baseline, he had no filter. But it seems like the disinhibition is worse. And when you think about the family history, I think reasonable people can ask reasonable questions.”

Yeah imagine starting with no filter and then getting worse.

For once Congress may block some of the crazy.

A bipartisan House effort is afoot to kill the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund created by the Justice Department that could pay allies of President Donald Trump, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the effort ahead of a formal announcement.

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) have drafted text and are taking steps to unveil the legislation soon, the people said.

Speaker Mike Johnson raised the level of urgency to block the fund among some congressional skeptics when he refused to say Wednesday whether violent Jan. 6 convicts should have access to the taxpayer money.

I found that sentence slightly confusing. I think it means Johnson’s refusal prompted skeptics to act.

Fitzpatrick said in an interview Wednesday he’s waiting to hear back from the Justice Department regarding a list of questions he sent Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche seeking more information about who will be able to access the fund, which was created pursuant to a settlement between Trump and the IRS.

Fitzpatrick said his constituents and others “don’t want a DOJ slush fund that has not been described or explained to anybody.”

Too much even for some Republicans. I wish there were more of them though.

January 6 rioters celebrate:

Supporters of President Donald Trump who tried to overturn the 2020 election are among those eager to potentially cash in from the $1.8 billion compensation fund for people the Trump administration believes were victims of government “weaponization and lawfare.”

In interviews with CNN, convicted US Capitol rioters from January 6, 2021, fake electors and prominent election deniers said they’re hoping to tap the massive fund, which they think is long overdue.

“I can’t even find a job answering the phone at a motorcycle dealership,” said convicted January 6 rioter Dominic Box, who spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting trial and was later pardoned by Trump. “I can’t find a way to support myself right now. I lost my career. I look forward to financial compensation. I need it. This will be a welcome relief.”

Yes and why can’t he find even a crappy job? Because he was part of a mob that tried to overturn an election by violence. Actions have consequences.

A lawyer for One America News, the pro-Trump channel that promoted false 2020 vote-rigging claims, also confirmed to CNN that the company is “seriously considering pursuing rights under this fund.” OAN was later dropped by most large cable providers and also settled multiple 2020-related defamation lawsuits.

That aside, they’re a great outfit.

Top Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, have dodged questions over whether people convicted of January 6-related crimes, including people who assaulted police, should be awarded any of the funds.

No “do the crime pay the time”? How uncharacteristic.

Former FBI Director James Comey joked on CNN that he may also have a claim to file, given that the Trump administration tried and failed in prosecuting him for allegedly lying to Congress and now filed new charges alleging that a picture of seashells on the beach spelling out “86 47” constituted a threat against Trump.

“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say personal, political, or ideological reasons,” Comey told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “So, I’m guessing I’ll be in line. I hope I’ll be ahead of those who savagely beat police officers and sacked the Capitol.”

Nah, they’ll be the first to profit.

She won’t be arrested for speeding.

Trans women must be barred from female toilets, changing facilities and sports teams, new official guidance is to state.

Bridget Phillipson is expected to confirm on Thursday that official guidance will state what businesses and public bodies must do under the law to protect single-sex spaces.

The guidance follows last year’s Supreme Court judgment that trans women, who were born male, are not legally women for the purposes of the Equality Act.

Yes, it follows it from very very far back. Miles back. 13 months.

The equalities minister’s failure to publish it until now has meant that hospitals and leisure centres are still allowing trans women into female spaces.

The guidance was written by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and submitted to Ms Phillipson in September, but she requested several revisions before agreeing to publish it.

You mean she extorted several revisions before agreeing to publish it.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, called on public bodies to stop dragging their feet and implement the guidance.

“There never was any reason for employers and service providers to wait for this guidance before implementing the law,” she told The Telegraph.

“The Supreme Court was completely clear that when providing single sex spaces and services, sex has to mean sex – male and female.”

And we know what that means. It’s not some arcane mystery.

The update to the EHRC’s code of practice – the official name for the guidance – was required after the Supreme Court ruled last April that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

As it always had. Pretending it could refer to men who claimed to be women was just that: pretending. “Women” can’t mean “women” if it also means “some men” just as “up” can’t mean “up” if it also means “a little bit down”.

ry-Ann Stephenson, the EHRC chairman, said in December that the guidance would give advice on ensuring “there are services provided for people who can’t or don’t want to use the services for their biological sex”.

That sounds expensive. Can we all do that? I don’t want to take this crowded bus; dispatch a limousine for me – does that work?

Alexandra Parmar-Yee, the director of Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, said the guidance must ensure trans people are protected as she described law as “a mess”.

“The earlier draft of this guidance encouraged the policing of everyone’s gender based on appearance and was focused entirely on excluding trans people,” she said.

Excluding them from what? The definition of women? Of course men are excluded from the definition of women, and vice versa. From institutions belonging to women? Of course men can find their own institutions; god knows there are plenty of them. Not all exclusion is invidious or unfair or cruel.

Dark places.

It's truly horrifying just how far some countries have descended into unreason and authoritarianism when it comes to speaking the truth about the two sexes. This will go very dark places indeed. https://t.co/5fUDdVoUhq

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) May 20, 2026

I just can’t get over the empathy for women.

Andy Burnham has said biological men who identify as women should be able to use female toilets.

Speaking from a meeting with Manchester’s “Youth Combined Authority” in 2022, the Greater Manchester Mayor said biological men who identify as women should be allowed to use female toilets.

In unearthed footage obtained by the Daily Mail, Mr Burnham also said the idea single-sex spaces should be exclusive for biological women was a “minority view”.

Yuhuh – nearly all women and most men=a minority. Makes sense.

The comments came before the Supreme Court unanimously ruled a “woman” and “sex” under the Equality Act 2010 exclusively apply to the biological sex assigned at birth.

So he just had no idea that men were not women. It must have been a shock to find out.

The Makerfield by-election candidate dismissed gender-critical activists as “supposed feminists” trying to stir up “culture wars” by asking for protections in such spaces.

Well thank god a man came along to set those stupid women straight.

Now what’s all this about Trump giving himself and the fam total immunity from everything forever?

The government, without any fanfare or even announcement, quietly added some very serious terms to the settlement that are remarkably favorable to Trump and those around him.

They say the government is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from bringing claims against Trump, his family or his businesses for past tax issues, up to the date of the settlement this week.

Well how nice for them.

If the terms are allowed to stand, Trump, his family and his businesses would effectively be immune from “claims” or “examinations” related to matters pending before the IRS, including in previously filed tax returns.

The terms were quietly added Tuesday in a hyperlink to Monday’s original Justice Department press release.

“quietly” – gee, I wonder why.

Trump can use the fund to pay off scores of allies who did all manner of things — including sometimes illegal — on his behalf.

That’s most notably the case with those who, in many cases, literally rose up in arms for Trump on January 6, 2021. Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday declined to rule out financial payments to the many already pardoned January 6 rioters who assaulted police, suggesting some of them might too have been “mistreated.”

Diddums.

This is the putz who has destroyed the Washington Post.

Bezos on Trump: "I think he's a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Trump has lots of good ideas. He's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due." pic.twitter.com/VPyFUGRJZs

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 20, 2026

Credit is due nowhere. Zero credit zero where.

This is “more mature, more disciplined”?

Pants engulfed in flames.

Are there drugs in the porridge or what?

The Scottish parliament has been accused of making women statistically “invisible” after removing information on whether MSPs are male or female from Holyrood’s website. 

The Scottish Conservative MSPs Rachael Hamilton and Meghan Gallacher have written to parliamentary authorities seeking a full explanation on why the decision was made and whether there are plans to reinstate female on the website as a category. 

I bet we can guess why the decision was made. What sex people are is so last century; we need to let everyone run free, except of course women, who have to be harshly punished every time they neglect to call a man “she”.

Until this week, the site provided an option to list MSPs by party affiliation and by gender, with options showing as male and female during the last parliamentary session. 

However, the change has been made after the election of two Scottish Greens trans MSPs this month.

The newly elected Glasgow MSP Iris Duane, who identifies as a trans woman, has been included in the female list, while a new option has been created for Q Manivannan, who identifies as non-binary. 

Everybody gets a box of crayons; play time is from 10 to 10:30; nap time is 11 to midday; no pudding unless you eat all your dinner.

How do intelligent adults let themselves get so stupid?

UNISON Women's Conference 2026..

Unison President Catherine McKenna:
"Unison stands firmly for the rights of women and that includes trans-women"..

Unison stands firmly for the destruction of women's rights.. pic.twitter.com/6JCpQJSxWy

— Jonny Bell (@Jonnywsbell) May 20, 2026

…Unison stands for every member’s right to work free from discrimination, and that includes standing firmly for the rights of all women, and this includes trans women.

And thus it includes no women.

What is the point of talking about rights, and standing for rights? There is no point unless there are antagonists who want to deny or violate or ignore such rights. In short, cui bono? Who benefits from this ridiculous push to say women’s rights are for men? It ain’t women, so who is left?

If you include men in women’s rights then women’s rights become meaningless. We’re watching it happen.

Women’s rights and trans rights are not in conflict.

Yes they are. Of course they are. We’ve been documenting and demonstrating this for more than a decade.

Our movement is strongest when we are all together.

Yes all together in the women’s toilets and women’s promotions and women’s refuges, yeah? Rapists in with the victims, right?

Oh gosh, Richard not helping again.

The leader of the Lib Dems, and the leader and deputy leader of the Green party, think some women have penises. In itself, it seems like a relatively unimportant matter. But it is symptomatic of a contempt for science and evidence-based truth. Could you vote for a flat-Earther?

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) May 19, 2026

No, Richard, to women it doesn’t seem at all like a relatively unimportant matter. If the leader of the Lib Dems and the leader and deputy leader of the Greens disliked beans on toast that would be a relatively unimportant matter, but thinking men are women if they say they are is quite a different matter.

Off the cliff.

Federal tax returns filed by President Donald Trump, family members, the Trump Organization, and related trusts and affiliates before this week are protected from potential Internal Revenue Service enforcement actions under a controversial $1.8 billion settlement with the Justice Department, a new document posted Tuesday shows.

The Justice Department, as part of the settlement, barred the federal government from prosecuting or pursuing “any and all claims” that could have been made by the IRS, which included “tax returns filed before” the effective date of the settlement, according to the document, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The protection extends to Trump, his family members, the Trump Organization and “parties including trusts, parent, sister or related companies, affiliates, and subsidiaries.” It covers any pending tax audits of Trump and the others referred to in the addendum that the IRS would have been conducting at the time of the settlement.

Blanche is Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer.

Words fail me.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said the provision violates federal law “that prohibits interference by executive branch officials in IRS audits.”

“Democrats are going to fight every element of this self-dealing settlement, but regardless of the outcome of those efforts, future administrations and IRS leadership should consider this illegal directive completely invalid,” said Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. “The Trump family is not above the law, no matter what Trump or his personal attorney say.” 

Of course it’s not, but it’s going to act as if it is unless/until someone stops it.

The settlement resolved a $10 billion lawsuit filed in Miami federal court by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and their company against the IRS over the leak of Trump-related tax filings by an IRS employee.

The Trumps on Monday dropped that suit in exchange for the Justice Department agreeing to finance a so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund with $1.8 billion. The fund is set up to be used to compensate purported victims of law enforcement actions by the department under the Biden administration. The Trump administration has referred to such action as “lawfare.”

Democratic members of Congress have called the settlement a “slush fund” for allies of Trump, including defendants convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and disrupted the confirmation of the electoral victory of former President Joe Biden.

Blanche, during testimony to a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday morning, would not rule out allowing people convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 riot to get compensation from the fund.

Filth.

I said words fail me, and they do. Filth is the only word I can summon.

Trump is having the government give him a massive load of cash because there’s nothing corrupt about that no sireeeee.

Trump, his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization dropped their $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service on Monday in exchange for the Department of Justice creating a $1.776 billion fund to settle claims by people who allege they are victims of so-called lawfare.

Can you say extortion? I know I certainly can.

A Miami federal court filing by Trump’s lawyers dropping the lawsuit suggested it effectively barred a judge from analyzing whether the president’s civil suit was legally valid and from dismissing it if she found it was invalid.

I don’t know what that means. Is it up to Trump’s lawyers whether or not dropping the lawsuit bars a judge from whatever? Can’t the judge just say no it doesn’t and get on with her job?

The move came days after ABC News reported the DOJ was negotiating the settlement, which was blasted by Democratic members of Congress who called the then-expected deal a “slush fund” for allies of Trump who had been prosecuted under the Biden administration.

That’s certainly what it sounds like from here.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, in a statement, said, “President Trump, his family, supporters, and countless other America First Patriots were illegally targeted by the Democrat-lead law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Justice, and the IRS.”

“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated actor to unlawfully leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to left-wing news outlets such the New York Times and ProPublica, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” the spokesman said. “Similarly, President Trump was also the victim of illegal harassment and invasions of privacy as part of the politically motivated and completely discredited Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and the wrongful, election interfering raid of his home at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.”

Oh very professional. Echo Trump’s childish wording and then fail to mention the fact that he kept cartons of top secret documents that he had zero legal right to have at his “home at Mar-a-Lago”.

The advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington blasted the settlement, calling it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”  

“While Americans are struggling with an affordability crisis, President Trump plans to use nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to pay off his friends and allies – including potentially the violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th,” said CREW President Donald Sherman in a statement.

“By settling his absurd $10 billion lawsuit against his own administration, Trump and the Justice Department just engaged in the most brazen act of self-dealing in the history of the presidency, and did so quickly in order to avoid the scrutiny of the judicial process, while quite likely violating the Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause in the process,” Sherman said.

Just one more reason to wish Trump had fallen off a cliff at age 13.