Yesterday at Westminster Magistrates’ Court:

A trans campaigner would have won “kudos” over the arrest of Graham Linehan, a prominent gender-critical activist, a court heard.

The Father Ted and IT Crowd creator is on trial accused of harassing a trans teenager with social media posts and damaging their mobile phone in October last year.

The 57-year-old told police his online posts about 18-year-old Sophia Brooks did not constitute harassment, Westminster magistrates’ court heard on Thursday.

Sophia Brooks aka Tarquin. He’s a male “trans teenager”.

During cross-examination, Sarah Vine KC, defending, said Brooks, a former police volunteer, wanted to get Linehan arrested for “kudos”.

She said that, as a prominent gender-critical campaigner, getting Linehan arrested would have been a “massive

This is a very nice Jolly Old England-type souvenir.

#FreeGrahamLinehan pic.twitter.com/XvXsTCp7HN

— Ashley (@Ashley__USA) September 4, 2025

… Read the rest

Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers

Cool. In a few months or weeks it will be people who criticize Trump.

By ordering the U.S. military to summarily kill a group of people aboard what he said was a drug-smuggling boat, President Trump used the military in a way that had no clear legal precedent or basis, according to specialists in the laws of war and executive power.

Mr. Trump is claiming the power to shift maritime counterdrug efforts from law enforcement rules to wartime rules. The police arrest criminal suspects for prosecution and cannot instead simply gun suspects down, except in rare circumstances where they pose an imminent threat to someone.

By contrast, in armed conflicts,

Circular firing squad.

I'm a fan of Janice Turner, and unlike her, both a fan and a friend of @Glinner. These lines are beneath Janice IMO. "Linehan, whose obsessive, narcissistic, often cruel social media presence has done more harm than good to the defence of women’s sex-based rights… 1/5 https://t.co/9UNP0VrYBE

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 4, 2025

And I can assure you that it is as nasty as it gets. Everyone I know who has suffered at the hands of these lunatics, who have the police in their pocket, has been deeply and personally affected by it. Lucky you if you don't know that from experience. 3/5

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 4, 2025

I'm not going to add

A former Detective Chief Inspector at the Metropolitan Police is not impressed by recent events.

Is the Met on an inadvertent campaign to make Nigel Farage the Prime Minister? Politically he is the only winner from the arrest of the comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport on Monday, for a series of posts made on the social media platform X earlier this year.

The circumstances behind the arrest, by armed officers, are so bizarre that they almost beggar explanation. As a former Detective Chief Inspector in the Metropolitan Police I have a fairly good sense about what happened in this case – and how it could have been avoided.

By not having damn fools running the place is … Read the rest

I go outside for a few hours and all hell breaks loose.

A disgraced transgender police officer is believed to have reported gender-critic Father Ted creator Graham Linehan to the police over his social media posts.

Former Pc Lynsay Watson, who was born Alex Horwood, was sacked by Leicestershire Police for gross misconduct in 2023 after allegedly harassing a free speech campaigner and critic of gender ideology.

An anonymous social media account, believed to be linked to Watson, boasted in April this year of reporting Linehan, the Father Ted writer and gender sceptic, to the police over several social media posts he made about transgender issues. The account encouraged other transgender activists to do the same.

Watson has a well-documented

Sarah Phillimore explains why women don’t get the anxious tender obsequious concern and protection that is lavished on our trans siblings:

The police have long lived in the shadow of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the righteous anger directed at their failure to act promptly or at all to find his killers. The Macpherson report of 1999 was clear that as the police were institutionally racist, they could not be trusted to make proper assessments of any report of racial hatred and must therefore simply accept all complaints and investigate them thoroughly.

The ‘investigate’ bit often got neglected and soon a two tier system gained root – criminal offences and the ‘non crime hate incidents’ where any complaint, no

NY Times sums up the Kennedy v public health hearing:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced a withering barrage of questioning from a Senate committee on his vaccine policy and his record as President Trump’s health secretary, responding at times with clear disdain for the senators, public health data and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which he oversees.

That’s just great, isn’t it? He has disdain for senators, public health data, and the CDC. He has confidence and pride in…his own unaided hunches.

Appearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, Mr. Kennedy blamed the C.D.C. for the number of American deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic, and said he did not trust the data that showed vaccines saved

Somebody is feeling left out…

This one paragraph in a Telegraph piece on trans ideology and the gun-toting police abuse of Graham Linehan…

Look at the health service. In Scotland, a nurse named Sandie Peggie has taken NHS Fife to a tribunal after it suspended her for complaining about a male trans colleague using the female changing room. This week, lawyers representing NHS Fife argued that there’s “no evidence” that women, Ms Peggie aside, “have a problem” sharing female-only spaces with male trans people.

Really? Has it not occurred to NHS Fife that, if women don’t complain, it might just be because they’re scared? Not least because complaining might get them punished by their employer?

That.

Trans “activism” is uniquely privileged among social justice … Read the rest

The NY Times cautiously tests the heat.

Britain’s most senior police officer has called for the government to change or clarify the law regarding free speech amid intense public debate over the arrest of an Irish comedian on suspicion of inciting violence against transgender people on social media.

Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, which serves the London area, said his officers had been put in an “impossible position” in which laws were drawing them into “toxic culture-wars debates.”

Some toxic culture-wars debates.

When, I wonder, is the last time 5 UK cops arrested a man for social media threats against women.

Have any UK cops ever done that?

They don’t arrest rapists, so it seems unlikely that … Read the rest

Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Greens.

"These are totally unacceptable tweets… I think it was proportionate to arrest him"

Zack Polanski, Green Party Leader, on the arrest of comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport on Monday.#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/wzN2lkqxLx

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) September 2, 2025

Well I think Polanski’s remarks are totally unacceptable, therefore he should be arrested by five men with guns and held in a cell for twelve hours. … Read the rest

And then there’s the second part.

In a statement, Rowley said: “On Monday, officers arrested a man in his 50s at Heathrow in relation to allegations of inciting violence, linked to posts on X. The officers involved in the arrest had reasonable grounds to believe an offence had been committed under the Public Order Act.

“While the decision to investigate and ultimately arrest the man was made within existing legislation – which dictates that a threat to punch someone from a protected group could be an offence – I understand the concern caused by such incidents given differing perspectives on the balance between free speech and the risks of inciting violence in the real world.”

See it?

“a threat to … Read the rest

Met police chief calls for review of law after Graham Linehan arrest

The Metropolitan police have declined to drop their investigation into the comedy writer Graham Linehan for tweets about trans issues, and said that the law used by officers to detain him needs reviewing.

The Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said on Wednesday officers should not be “policing toxic culture wars debates”, and while any review took place, officers would investigate only more serious cases concerning online messages.

I gather the Met isn’t thrilled about all the headlines.

In a statement, Rowley said: “On Monday, officers arrested a man in his 50s at Heathrow in relation to allegations of inciting violence, linked to posts on X. The officers involved

Originally a comment by What a Maroon at Miscellany Room.

It’s fairly common when you’re in a group of three or more to refer to one of the group in the third person. As an example, imagine a classroom discussion, where Johnson (a man who insists that others use female pronouns when referring to him in the third person) has just expressed an opinion. The teacher, in an attempt to stimulate some conversation, may then turn to Smith and say, “Do you agree with what [3rd person sg. pronoun] says?” Of course the teacher could just say “Johnson”, but it gets awkward if the question becomes more complex: “Do you agree with Johnson when Johnson says X?”

From a … Read the rest

Steven Pinker writes:

Evidence that woke isn’t dead, peer review is problematic, and science needs to address deep problems in its culture: A grad student at Harvard conducted the first systematic, data-based study to document & explain the rise in gender dysphoria. His paper was rejected from a leading journal because, among other things, “Throughout the manuscript, the authors use language that is considered prejudicial and outdated (e.g., “natal sex” as opposed to “sex assigned at birth”). It is critical to follow best practice and guidelines surrounding gender inclusive language, particularly for research specifically on the topic of gender incongruence, expression, and identity.”

Lordy lordy lordy. What sane person considers “natal sex” outdated compared to “sex assigned at birth”? … Read the rest

Oh how interesting. I wonder if I will ever see any former colleagues say the same.

As for the mad props, how about some mad props for those of us who rejected the bullshit from the outset?… Read the rest

boswelltoday on Peggie V NHS Fife & Dr Upton:

Jane Russell’s Closing: A Masterclass in Wishful Thinking

Jane Russell KC’s closing argument for NHS Fife and Dr. Upton was a performance in the art of inversion – turning reality inside out and expecting the tribunal to applaud. She spoke with elegance, but what she asked the panel to believe was preposterous: that a nurse of thirty years’ service was a bully, that a man in a women’s changing room was harmless, and that the law demands women silence their instincts to preserve a colleague’s feelings. She began with her little parable about hoofbeats – “think horses, not zebras.” According to Russell, Peggie had conjured up a fantasy of danger.

Helen Webberley threatening death for people who know sex can’t be swapped.

Coffin emoji. Haw haw haw.… Read the rest

Judge tells Trump No you can’t.

A federal judge on Tuesday barred President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard and other military troops in California to execute law-enforcement actions there, including making arrests, searching locations, and crowd control.

The ruling came in connection with a lawsuit filed in early June by the state of California challenging Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s deployment of the Guard to deal with protests in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

Judge Charles Breyer said that Trump’s deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and 700 Marines to L.A. violated the federal Posse Comitatus Act, which bars U.S. Military forces from enforcing the law domestically.

Breyer’s ruling in U.S. District