The ban is not universally admired.

The decision to ban fans of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending a Europa League match in Birmingham has ignited a storm of criticism, underlining deep divisions over public safety, antisemitism, and political accountability.

The ban, recommended by Birmingham City Council’s Safety Advisory Group and supported by West Midlands Police, was labelled “utterly unacceptable” by Culture Minister Ian Murray and denounced as a “national disgrace” by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer condemned the ban, calling it the “wrong decision” and emphasising that the UK must actively combat antisemitism. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch warned that barring Maccabi Tel Aviv fans risks sending a “horrendous and shameful message” that Jews

Jolyon rejoices in a win.

In a landmark decision for trans rights, the High Court has ruled that a panel acted unlawfully in denying a trans man a gender recognition certificate because he was trying to conceive.

Ooooh they never, did they?! Those fiends! Imagine telling a woman she’s not a man merely because she’s trying to do what only a woman can do?!

In February, a gender recognition panel denied the man, whose identity is protected by an anonymity order and is referred to in the judgment as W, a gender recognition certificate. This was on the basis that he had been trying to conceive a child – concluding that this meant he was not living as a

How to deal with anti-Semitism: tell the Jews to get out.

Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv will not be allowed to attend the Europa League match at Aston Villa on 6 November owing to safety concerns.

West Midlands police said it had classified the fixture as “high risk” based on “current intelligence and previous incidents, ­including ­violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Uefa Europa League match between Ajax and ­Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam”.

The police said it believed the measure would “help mitigate risks to public safety” and that it remained “steadfast in our support of all affected communities, and reaffirm our zero-tolerance stance on hate crime in all its forms”.

I think … Read the rest

Unbelievable.

Thank you all who put the safety of Aston Villa fans, Birmingham residents snd the British public above the zionist and political pressure to let Israeli hooligans and terrorists run riot in our country. https://t.co/9TmdL1ZmbQ

— Iqbal Mohamed MP (@iqbalmohamedMP) October 16, 2025

The Guardian reports:

Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv will not be allowed to attend the Europa League match at Aston Villa on 6 November owing to safety concerns.

West Midlands police said it had classified the fixture as “high risk” based on “current intelligence and previous incidents, ­including ­violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Uefa Europa League match between Ajax and ­Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam”.

The police said it

Today we learn that women’s safety is a niche issue that the bosses can’t be bothered to notice.

Premier Peter Malinauskas is resisting pressure to ban transgender women from female prisons in South Australia, labelling it a “niche issue” behind reducing reoffending and indigenous incarceration rates.

In an interview with The Advertiser, Mr Malinauskas said he had “not turned my mind to our policy pertaining to trans prisoners”. Mr Malinauskas repeated his early 2023 definition of a woman as “an adult female”, adding he would not characterise as “the number one priority” the issue of transgender women in female prisons.

Dude. It doesn’t need to be the number one priority. Saying it’s not the number one priority is not … Read the rest

We’re not doing this right.

The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped by a record amount last year, amid growing concern that forests and other carbon “sponges” are starting to fail.

The amount pumped into the air by factories, power plants and vehicles was almost static last year, a report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) found.

However, the Geneva-based UN organisation said atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, the main driver of climate change, had increased by a record 3.5 parts per million (ppm). Between 2011 and 2020, the average rise was 2.4ppm a year. The finding, scientists said, raised the “scary” prospect of even more global warming.

Not doing it right. We want to go the other… Read the rest

Oh good, yet more vulgar ostentation, because we haven’t had enough of that yet. The mix of evil and ludicrous gets more nauseating every week.

Trump wants to build a triumphal arch across from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the latest in his efforts to make over the capital city in his style.

The so-called Arc de Trump would commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary next year and is reportedly being privately funded by Trump’s supporters.

Can we not? There’s enough of that already thanks to Trump’s previous riots in the gilt shop, we don’t need more.

His other second-term developments include a gilded makeover for the White House, paving over the Rose Garden and constructing a $25

Jolyon is furious.

The EHRC has finally, five months after producing its wildly transphobic and, we believe, unlawful Interim Guidance now taken it down. Our judicial review challenge to that Interim Guidance will be heard in less than one month. pic.twitter.com/W5l7JALvul

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) October 15, 2025

Also in today, the EHRC offers legal advice.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has written to the Minister for Women and Equalities, urging the UK government to ensure that accurate and up-to-date statutory guidance on the Equality Act 2010 is available to those that need it.

The EHRC provides expert advice on how to comply with the Equality Act and put the law into practice. On 4 September the

More on Michael O’Flaherty.

No country knows better than Ireland, the negative impact that Michael O’Flaherty has on women’s rights.

His influence over the Irish Govt resulted in the “most progressive” gender self ID model that the legislature could pass. They just stopped short of allowing babies to… pic.twitter.com/aIlZyHNmAt

— The Countess (@TheCountessIE) October 16, 2025

His influence over the Irish Govt resulted in the “most progressive” gender self ID model that the legislature could pass. They just stopped short of allowing babies to “transition” Irish Govt & media are controlled by aggressive trans NGOs who receive state funding. We have full state capture of this aggressive ideology marketed as “being kind to a vulnerable minority”.

@MichealMartinTD nominated O’Flaherty for

Journalists just say no.

Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power. The nation’s leadership called the new rules “common sense” to help regulate a “very disruptive” press.

News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.

Yeah that’s not how that works.

It is unclear what practical impact the new rules will have, though news

They’re just children, barely out of nursery school.

JD Vance sought to downplay the revelation that leaders of a group called the Young Republicans exchanged hundreds of racist, sexist text messages – including one in which rape was called “epic”, and another in which someone wrote “I love Hitler” – as youthful indiscretions.

Vance, speaking on a new episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, the podcast run by colleagues of the late conservative activist, suggested that the participants in the leaked chats were much younger than they in fact are. Some of the participants are barely younger than the 41-year-old vice-president.

Right, and he’s just a baby too, so we can’t criticize him either. Have a heart.

“The reality

Oh dear. “Erase those other women but don’t you dare erase me!“

Woman who argued men could be women is upset a woman is being overlooked. The woman is herself of course. pic.twitter.com/jZ6ajANBR3

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) October 14, 2025

… Read the rest

We knew that already.

Scotland’s national library ‘caved in to activists’ by removing gender-critical book

Scotland’s national library removed a gender-critical book from an exhibition because it caved in to pressure from activist members of staff, an independent review has found.

The library removed The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays by feminists including JK Rowling and Joanna Cherry about their fight against Nicola Sturgeon’s gender self-ID laws.

The book was selected to be included in an exhibition opening in June celebrating the library’s centenary, but was removed after pressure from the library’s LGBT staff network, which called it “hate speech”.

Let this be a lesson to you. Never ever give in to the LGBT staff network. … Read the rest

Leave no stone unturned in the quest to destroy women’s rights.

The equalities watchdog has withdrawn interim advice on how institutions should respond to the supreme court ruling on transgender rights, which some campaign groups said could effectively exclude trans people from many public spaces.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said the advice, published in April, shortly after that month’s supreme court ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex only, had been taken down from its website.

In its place, the EHRC says organisations seeking to understand how to implement the ruling should “take specialist legal advice” ahead of the approval by parliament of the watchdog’s statutory guidance, submitted to

Chanting death threats now are we?

A University of Oxford student filmed allegedly chanting for Gaza to “put the Zios in the ground” at a pro-Palestinian march has been arrested.

Officers investigating chants at a Palestine Coalition demonstration in central London on Saturday arrested a 20-year-old-man on suspicion of inciting racial hatred, the Metropolitan Police said.

Videos appeared to show a man, who has been widely named as Samuel Williams, telling demonstrators that the chant had been “workshopped” in Oxford.

Oh well as long as they workshopped it that’s all right then. Due process etcetera.

In videos he appears to tell the crowd: “A steadfast and noble resistance in Palestine and in Gaza to look to, to be inspired by

Athena Forum responds:

On 3 October 2025, Michael O’Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, addressed a letter to the UK Parliament expressing concern over the Supreme Court’s recent ruling and what he described as the “current climate for trans people in the UK.”

As one of the main drafters of the Yogyakarta Principles, a non-legal activist document that seeks to erase sex as a category in law and policy, O’Flaherty has long blurred the boundaries between human rights and ideological advocacy. His intervention now appears less as a defence of rights than as political pressure on independent courts and legislators. The UK Supreme Court ruling reaffirms basic legal clarity and women’s sex-based rights. Attempts

Here we go again.

Trans people at risk of exclusion from many UK public spaces, rights expert says

Transgender people risk being excluded from many public spaces as a result of the recent UK supreme court judgment and must be protected from discrimination, a human rights expert has said.

Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, said he had concerns about the climate for transgender people in the UK after April’s supreme court ruling that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex.

Did he now. I wonder if he has any concerns about the climate for women.

Interim advice issued after the judgment by the Equality and Human Rights

That’s not accurate.

Britain has been made into a hostile environment for our trans siblings.

Trans people just want to live their lives, accepted for who they are, just like anyone else.

Instead politicians and media outlets turned their existence into a football – a grim episode in our history. https://t.co/fld58SVQcN

— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) October 14, 2025

It’s not “just like anyone else.” There are differences. Differences matter. And they don’t want to be accepted for who they are, they want to be accepted for who they are not. That’s the whole point. That’s what “trans” means. They’re men who want to be accepted aka validated aka confirmed as women. Men are not women.

What Owen Jones means … Read the rest

Tipping point crossed.

The planet is grappling with a “new reality” as it reaches the first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate tipping points: the widespread death of coral reefs, according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists across the world.

As humans burn fossil fuels and ratchet up temperatures, it’s already driving more severe heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires. But there are even bigger impacts on the horizon. Climate change may also be pushing Earth’s crucial systems — from the Amazon rainforest to polar ice sheets — so far out of balance they collapse, sending catastrophic ripples across the planet.

…

Since 2023, the world’s reefs have been

Which human rights?

The treatment of transgender people in Britain could breach the European Convention on Human Rights, a watchdog has warned. Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, has written to senior MPs to raise his concerns about trans rights in the UK.

He urged the Government to avoid legal uncertainty for trans people in the wake of the Supreme Court‘s landmark ruling in April. Mr O’Flaherty also warned against breaching the human rights of trans people through ‘blanket practices or policies’ on single-sex spaces.

Well what are the rights of trans people? Do male trans people have a right to go into women’s spaces? Of course not, any more than they have a right … Read the rest