Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Lying for Islam

    Oh please.

    Green Party guidance has claimed anti-LGBT laws in Middle Eastern countries are the fault of the British Empire.

    The Muslim Greens, an affiliate group of the Left-wing party, made the claim in guidance that outlines how members can identify Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate as part of its code of conduct.

    The guidance, published on the Muslim Greens website, is intended for the Green Party in England and Wales. On the website, the group says “queerphobic legislation in many Muslim-majority countries is deeply tied to colonialism”.

    Because Islam is so very progressive in every way, right?

    It claims that suggesting Muslims are “uniquely queerphobic because of Islam denies acknowledging how modern-day queerphobia is strongly rooted in the British Empire”.

    It states that the idea that Islam “is in some way based around hating and marginalising queer communities” is itself Islamophobic and a form of anti-Muslim hate.

    We’re allowed to hate Islam. There are all too many real life opportunities to observe Islam being hateful. Just Google “stoning women” to see the abundance.

    A Green Party spokesman said: “This is comprehensive, well thought-through and evidenced guidance produced by Muslim Greens for Green Party groups and local parties to help them understand all aspects of Islamophobia and its link to other forms of discrimination and racism.”

    But Islam is not a race. Islam is a religion, with religion’s boundless entitlement to tell people what to do and what rights they can have and when they should stone women to death.

    “It explains the rise and normalisation of Islamophobia in Britain, the role of successive governments and mainstream media in fuelling anti-Muslim hate, and the importance of education and understanding history.”

    Ah see now you’re mixing them up. Islam is a religion; Muslims are people. Hating a religion is not synonymous with hating its followers/victims. It can lead to that, sure, but it’s still not the same thing. We have to be free to resist religions, and that means we have to be free to tell the truth about them. Islam is a bad one.

  • Confronted with an adult

    This is interesting.

    The bit I find particularly illuminating is that Collins points out that Trump spends nearly all his time surrounded by people who flatter flatter flatter him. That’s his life. So these few moments when there are people who don’t flatter him, and who ask him serious questions instead, is like a bucket of ice water poured over the head.

    And then you add in the fact that mentally he’s about 3 years old, and it all becomes clear. Mommeeeeeeeee who is this horrible woman who is asking me these mean questions??? He was in a nice warm bath and suddenly he’s in a blizzard with sleet freezing his eyes shut. No wonder he barfs insults at her nonstop!

  • Kimchi croissant world

    TERF Times writes:

    As Green convert and former Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle fortified himself for conference with a ‘kimchi croissant with Gaza Cola’, a small group of the party faithful stood outside.

    These are the women from Green Women’s Declaration, who were excluded from the main hall after party officials told them its presence would make ‘trans members feel unsafe.’

    But the group didn’t appear to be armed with much more than leaflets with incendiary points such as ‘Sex is real’, ‘Lesbians are same-sex attracted females’ and ‘protect women from abuse, discrimination and harassment.

    Besides, what about women feeling unsafe? Why all this hand-wringing and sobbing over the unsafelike feelz of the tiny number of people who claim to be the sex they’re not, combined with the dead silence about the feelz of half the fucking population? Why do purported trans feelz matter infinitely while the feels of actual definite women don’t matter in the slightest?

    GWD exists to combat what it calls the party’s “chilling atmosphere of censure”, support members who speak up for reality and restore sex-based protections to Green politics. Its declaration has been signed by more than 1,600 party members and supporters: a substantial constituency to treat as though they are a threat to public order.

    Yet earlier this week, the Green Party Executive, which includes tit whisperer Zack Polanski, said the feminist activists had been barred because:

    “GPEx took this decision because it believes that having GWD present at conference would make our trans members feel unsafe, based on the prior conduct of some GWD members.”

    What prior conduct? You mean defending their rights?

    No particulars of this alleged misconduct were offered. One of those pictured with seditious literature outside the venue was Emma Bateman. After being elected as chair of Green Party Women, and suspended three times, she is taking the party to tribunal. Writing on her Crowdfunder she explained:

    “Since at least 2018, I and others have been warning the Greens that their anti-women policies would not wash with voters. The party chose to burn us as heretics, and they are still pouring on petrol eight years on.”

    It seems the Green Party functions as a free-range nature reserve, where every species of weirdo is protected except the adult human female who knows her rights matter.

    The fear of TERFs is the norm at the top. Earlier this year, Polanski called the EHRC guidelines on single-sex spaces “deeply regressive” and claimed they were “pushing trans people out of public life”. The Green Party also officially supports gender self-ID: a policy which would make women’s boundaries, safety and dignity depend on the goodwill of any man who fancies crossing them.

    And they think this is progressive, and we pesky mouthy women are reactionaries.

    Jude English, one of GWD’s directors, told The Telegraph earlier this week: “We are saddened that we must go to court to defend our character and values against a party we have served for years.”

    She added that senior figures in the Green Party “do not yet understand that the Human Rights Act includes the rights of women as a sex class and the Equality Act confers on them as individuals a duty to uphold our human rights”.

    And it’s not just that they don’t understand, it’s also that they passionately defend their misunderstanding and bash women who do understand.

  • Delete the part about Poland

    Trump mythologizing over here, Polanski mythologizing over there.

    Zack Polanski’s tale of ancestral migration from Europe has faced questions after it emerged all four of his grandparents were born in Britain.

    Speaking at the Green Party conference last October, the Green Party leader said he was proud of his Jewish heritage and told party members his ancestors “faced the Nazis” in Poland before arriving in England.

    However, Mr Polanski’s recent ancestors were reportedly all in Britain before the Second World War, which raises the question of which of them fled the Nazi regime.

    Mind you, there was plenty of Antisemitic violence to flee before the Nazis, but still, you don’t get to claim Nazis before there were any Nazis.

    He said: “I am literally the product of migration. It’s why defending migrants matters so much to me.

    “I want to tell you about a common Jewish experience. It’s a tale as old as time. My Jewish ancestry – it’s confusing and it’s muddling because we were constantly on the run. But from what I can gather, my ancestors started in Latvia in a Jewish town, but they fled because of pogroms.

    “They fled to Ukraine where they faced more pogroms. Then they ended up in Poland where they faced the Nazis. Then they arrived in England and met anti-Semitism here too.”

    Except for the Nazis part.

    Public records of births, marriages and deaths confirm Mr Polanski’s great and great-great-grandparents came from Latvia and Russia, which Mr Polanski has previously said.

    But, according to the Daily Mail, historical Census records from 1891, 1901 and other public resources, suggest they settled in the UK in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

    His four grandparents all come from the North and both of his parents were born in Manchester.

    So it’s mostly true but not entirely true. His Mancunian parents were very lucky; they were out of Hitler’s reach.

  • Dispatches from the playpen

    Trump has been showing off his renowned intellect this afternoon.

    Six of Trump’s Sunday afternoon posts included pictures of the Kennedy Center’s apparently deteriorating interior—which he called “crumbling,” “dilapidated” and “grotesque”—as well as sharp words for Christopher Cooper, the federal district judge who ordered his name removed from the venue.

    “The Kennedy Center is crumbling, and a great danger to anyone who walks inside,” Trump said in one post, claiming it will “only get worse unless the Radical Left Judge, with his Trump Hating lawyer wife, allows me to do what must be done!”—an apparent reference to the Kennedy Center’s latest attempt to place Trump’s name on the venue, which Cooper blocked.

    Nope, that can’t be right. Rulings aren’t handed down by married couples, even if both of them are judges, let alone if one of them is a mere Trump Hating lawyer.

    He also posted a handful of Greenland memes, one of which shows a large Trump looming over a mountain, while the other shows Trump looking at a group of penguins (which do not live in Greenland) holding American flags.

    This, remember, is not one of Trump’s grandchildren, nor is it the family dog. This is the prezzident himself, posting childish jokes on soshul meeja all afternoon.

    Trump also posted a screenshot of a post billionaire Elon Musk made on X earlier in the day, in which he said “No more AI,” calling Trump’s preferred “SI” acronym “better.” Trump also posted a black-and-white photo of himself, captioned, “Super Intelligence.” The president has pushed for artificial intelligence to be renamed super intelligence, and last week, he signed an executive order directing federal agencies and departments to only use the “SI” moniker in official communications moving forward.

    Oh, jeeezus. Changing the name won’t change the realities. If AI might get away from us and start doing its own thing, calling it Betsy will not help.

  • After being banned

    Green women but not those Green women.

    Two directors of the Green Women’s Declaration have spoken out on GB News after being banned from entering their party’s conference in Brighton.

    Speaking to the People’s Channel about why they were banned, Zoe Hatch and Jude English declared that they are “no longer allowed” to voice their agreement with the Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces.

    Banned for knowing that men are not women. So very progressive.

    Recalling her long-term membership with the Green Party, Ms Hatch told GB News: “I’ve been a long standing Green Party member, I joined because I was really, really concerned about the environment and concerned about my children’s future.

    “And it came to my attention when I was on The Executive, I was there when they wanted to expel Shahrar Ali, and I couldn’t be part of that, so I resigned from that.”

    Ms Hatch then became one of seven chairs of Green Party Women, which represents female members, but revealed that they have all been either “suspended or expelled” for expressing support for the Supreme Court ruling.

    She said: “We’ve all been suspended or expelled because we believe and we really just agree with the Supreme Court judgment around single sex provision for women, which I think the majority of the British public do as well.

    Well let’s hope so. Let’s hope most of the British public doesn’t think men can be women.

    Having formed the Green Women’s Declaration in response to the action against Green Party Women, Ms Hatch explained that for two years in a row, they have applied for a stall inside the party conference, to which they were then banned from attending all together.

    She told GB News: “We applied for a stall last year and again this year, because we are Greens and we want to interact with the rest of the party conference.

    “We’re a policy and advocacy group around this particular issue for women’s rights, and we’ve been banned from attending, but we haven’t been given any justifiable or good reason or any explanation at all, actually, for why we haven’t been denied the right to a stall or even any advertising in the brochure this year.”

    I suppose that’s because they don’t want to come right out and say they don’t give a damn about women.

    Having formed the Green Women’s Declaration in response to the action against Green Party Women, Ms Hatch explained that for two years in a row, they have applied for a stall inside the party conference, to which they were then banned from attending all together.

    She told GB News: “We applied for a stall last year and again this year, because we are Greens and we want to interact with the rest of the party conference.

    “We’re a policy and advocacy group around this particular issue for women’s rights, and we’ve been banned from attending, but we haven’t been given any justifiable or good reason or any explanation at all, actually, for why we haven’t been denied the right to a stall or even any advertising in the brochure this year.”

    It’s easy once you know how. You just lie. You claim to support women’s rights but you don’t actually.

    Ms Hatch concluded that a proposed women’s rights section was previously deemed “transphobic” by the party.

    She told GB News: “Last year we put forward a whole women’s rights section and it was deemed transphobic just because it was talking about women’s rights and it was ruled out of order, but there was no justifiable reason.”

    Sure there was. The justifiable reason was that they told you it was transphobic. End of story.

    Women ain’t got no home in this world any more.

  • And lots of us

    Heh

  • Difference is one thing, and stoning is another

    Well yes but it’s not that simple.

    One of these things is not like the other. “Brown” is of course not a good reason to vote against a candidate.

    “Muslim” is not inert that way. Islam has content, to put it mildly. Islam treats women as inferior and subordinate and deserving of ferocious control and punishment. There are liberal Muslims who reject all that, but it’s not clear that Mothin Ali rejects any of it.

    It’s not just automatically cool and multicultural and liberal in the broadest sense to treat Islam as just ordinary theism with a few quaint customs added on. Mo was not joking.

  • As any other form of racism

    The vote:

    The Green Party has declared that “Zionism is racism”, after a motion was passed by members at its conference against the wishes of several MPs.

    The move means that Zionism, the movement that led to the creation of Israel as a Jewish state, will be “treated as any other form of racism” by the party.

    So if Jews wanting a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust is racism, what was the Holocaust? Anti-racism?

    An amendment to the motion designed to protect Jewish Greens who attend venues that identify as “Zionist”, such as synagogues or community centres, from disciplinary proceedings for racism was also rejected, with more than 1,000 members voting against it. This means Jewish members of the party will risk being reported to the party for racism if they attend these venues. 

    Sounds cozy. Fellow Greens watching you, monitoring you, ratting on you. Solidarity forevaaa.

    Elise Benjamin, a founding member of the Jewish Greens, turned her “inclusion card” — a yellow slip of paper given to members so they can alert moderators if they experience discrimination at the conference — into a yellow star. Under Nazi rule, Jews were forced to wear a yellow star of David on their clothes when in out in public, to identify them.

    She told the Jewish Chronicle: “My family were murdered in the Holocaust… now people here have celebrated a vote that will make Jews unsafe.”

    …

    Caroline Lucas, who was the Greens’ first MP, representing Brighton Pavilion from 2010 to 2024, said the motion was “divisive” and could be “seen as a sign that Jewish people aren’t welcome” in the party.

    “I do have serious concerns about this motion,” she said this week. “There is no single definition of Zionism, and irrespective of the intentions of the people who put that motion forward, I think there is a real risk that it’ll be divisive and could be seen as a sign that Jewish people aren’t welcome in the party. I will not be supporting it for that reason.”

    It could so very easily be seen as a sign that Jewish people aren’t welcome in the party. In fact I’m seeing it that way myself right now.

  • That’s called “predicting”?

    Always classy.

    Trump rallied Saturday for Republicans in Ohio’s competitive races for Senate and governor, predicting that the party will defy expectations in a choppy midterm election climate.

    “I think we’re going to have a big surprise, because they don’t know what’s happening,” Trump said while speaking onstage inside a high school gymnasium near Dayton.

    “Just get out and vote,” Trump added. “If you do that, we’re going to win, and we’re going to win big. And we’re going to shove it up their ass.”

    Making us proud every day.

  • Trump personally instructed

    Huh. It turns out the taxpayers are paying for ads glorifying Trump.

    Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.

    The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet the Press,” which Mr. Trump is known to watch.

    Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government, the people said.

    In other words our money.

    The taxpayer-funded ads have been criticized by Democrats and even some Republicans as a possible violation of federal laws against using taxpayer dollars for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” And they come as the president is also directing spending from his super PAC — MAGA Inc., which entered the fall with $400 million — for which he has been raising money since he won re-election in 2024.

    It was not clear why taxpayer funds, and not money from the super PAC, were used for the spots.

    Sure it was. He wants to keep his money and spend our money. Simple.

    The White House has called the ads public service announcements and said they are appropriate because there is no “call to action” to vote for any candidate. Some of his aides also noted that Mr. Trump is not running for office now, in an attempt to blunt criticism of the ads as violating federal laws about the use of public money.

    When pressed by a reporter on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said: “If somebody said that that’s wrong, I’ll gladly pay the money.”

    “But these are ads for the country,” he added. “You have to understand. I’m not promoting a candidate. I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.”

    Right right right, he’s not promoting himself at all.

    Asked to comment for this story, the White House press office sent an unsigned statement saying, “These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders and abroad.”

    Huh. Well then they’re not working.

  • The maneuver

    The standoff drags on.

    When President Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House, it took Washington by ​surprise. Now, there is a move in the US Congress to avoid a second such surprise with legislation to prohibit him from demolishing ‌the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

    The maneuver comes on the heels of a federal judge ordering the Trump administration to provide at least 30 days’ notice before taking steps to demolish the building. Trump himself had told reporters in mid-September that unless his name was on the Kennedy Center, “It’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down.”

    All very well but if he decides to knock it down he will knock it down. Congress can legislate to prohibit him all it wants but that won’t stop him. Nothing stops him.

    Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley ​of Oregon and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska authored the brief, 15-line bill, along with Democratic Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine.

    “A memorial to honor ​a president of the United States designated by an act of Congress may not be demolished unless authorized by an ⁠act of Congress,” the bill states.

    Merkley and Murkowski attempted to rush the bill to passage late on Monday in the Senate, only to have Republican Senator Mike Lee ​of Utah block it. An aide to Lee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Now they and Pingree — all senior appropriations committee members who oversee spending on federal ​buildings and parks — are eyeing new moves, such as slipping it into must-do legislation Congress is likely to fight over at the end of the year.

    “We were just trying to put whatever guardrails up that we could,” Pingree said in a telephone interview, given the controversy over the temporary closing of the Kennedy Center by its board, which is controlled by Trump appointees, ​and Trump himself raising the idea of tearing down the building on the banks of the Potomac River — unless his name was added to the edifice.

    Quite. Whatever guardrails they could, which won’t withstand Trump’s complete indifference to guardrails.

    Even if ​the bill fails to pass, Pingree said, it provides “a strong statement from Congress,” given its bipartisan backing by senior lawmakers opposing a tear-down.

    “It’s unbelievable that he thinks he has the right ‌to do ⁠that,” Pingree said.

    It’s all too believable. Disgusting, but entirely credible. He thinks he has the right to do absolutely anything.

    Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland ⁠said in ​an interview that while Congress clearly has say over how money is spent on the Kennedy ​Center, he hoped Trump’s advisers would rein him in. “I’m not interested in escalating the conflict,” Raskin said when asked about possible legislation, before the bipartisan bill was introduced.

    But he added: “We did not create a center for John F. Kennedy ​and any other president monarchicly minded enough to want to scrawl his name in graffiti on the building.”

    Yet here we are.

  • He can make noise

    Some extracts from a long interview Trump did with TIME magazine.

    Trump:

    Because I don’t think anybody should be forced to bear fake news, constantly bad stories, because I’ve done great things. I mean, I’ve done Venezuela. I’ve done—I can name, I can name 100 great things I’ve done. I never get good press. I never get fair press. Doesn’t have to be good. All it has to be is fair. So at a certain point, you say, “What’s the purpose of like this crazy Kaitlan Collins?” She’s a very average person. She’s the most unhappy young person I’ve ever seen. If I did something spectacular by any standard, and they would write about it, they will only write badly. Sometimes I’m amazed at how they can—you know, yesterday I got tremendous applause from massive crowds that came to Duncan. And I said to the people, “Don’t feel bad tomorrow when you read that I got booed out of the place.” I didn’t get booed out of the place.

    I went to Tennessee. The crowd went wild. I went to, yesterday, to Chicago. Got the big golf tent. President’s coming. The crowd went absolutely wild. And I said—I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it but I just said a few words before the guy started playing. They asked me to make a speech. I said, “I’m not going to make a speech. I want to play golf.” But I said to him—I mean, they had to stop the crowd from—they were going crazy, 100%. There was no negative number. Did anybody write anything negative about it? Check it out.

    Trump on Iran:

    They killed 75,000 people in the last number of months. Protesters, innocent [unintelligible], a lot of very good people. They killed 70, anywhere from 72 to 75,000. We all documented. They went on Brett Baier the other day and they lied about it. They said 3,000. Brett Bair said, “You got to be kidding, me!” No, they killed 75,000 people. It’s unbelievable. It’s a bloodbath. So we’ll see. And the reason people don’t rise up, because they’re afraid of being killed. You know, they go out in the street and they end up killing 1,000 people, 2,000, sometimes less. They use snipers to go right through their head, and when—remember the women went, they had 500,000 women, and then they started getting hit by snipers right in the middle of their head? The women looked and they saw that, then they saw another one, and they ran like hell.

    Word is he made that up.

    We’re selling millions of barrels of oil—that’s ours—and it’s been amazing. But we fought that war, it was less than one day. It was over. We’re doing very well in Iran too. But it’s a much bigger area, much bigger country, much further away. And—but the result is going to be the same. They want to make a deal. As soon as I make a deal, oil prices will drop to what they were. You know, when I was—you’ve heard me say this—When I was part of the going in, I was in Iowa, helping them campaign a little bit for the thing that we have coming up. And in Iowa, I mean, it was—oil was $1.90. I mean, it was like almost nothing. We broke the $2 barriers. One station was $1.85. One was $1.95. One was $1.99, and it was coming down all over the country. Now California is a little bit fictitious because in California they judge every time you lower the oil, they judge that. But I had no other way down there. And then I said to my people, including him, I said, “I hate to do this, you guys, but we have to take the nuclear weapon away from you.”

    Aaand you get the idea. It’s all like that. Childish, incoherent, fictitious, random, disconnected. Shockingly mindless. It’s terrifying.

  • Refused to rule out

    Trump has been chatting.

    Trump deflected responsibility for misleading Americans about the length of the Iran war, dismissed low poll ratings as “fake numbers”, and refused to rule out the possibility of declaring a state of emergency before the midterms, in a wide-ranging interview with Time magazine.

    And by state of emergency he means the outcome of the midterms?

    Overall, just 31% of people said they approve of Trump’s handling of his job as president.

    But when asked about his low approval rating during his interview with Time, Trump dismissed concerns.

    “They’re fake numbers,” Trump said. “I would beat anybody running today by 20 points. Your numbers, that you have, are fake. The pollsters are corrupt. They’re almost as corrupt as the writers.”

    Speaking of corrupt, Bub, look in the mirror.

    In the months leading up to the midterms, Trump has claimed US elections are insecure and signed executive orders seeking to assert more control over voting methods – such as restricting mail-in ballot voting and requiring ID.

    He has previously refused to rule out declaring a national emergency around elections to implement his desired regulations. Other administration leaders, such as the FBI director, Kash Patel, have not ruled out the possibility of deploying federal law enforcement officers to polling locations, which is against the law.

    When asked whether he would declare a state of emergency before the midterms, Trump told Time magazine: “I don’t rule anything out or in. We’ll see.”

    In other words if he doesn’t like the outcome he will attempt a coup.

    Among other topics the president discussed with Time magazine, he responded affirmatively when asked whether he regretted appointing supreme court justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

    “What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very – I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they voted against me often,” Trump said.

    He thinks the Supreme Court is like the mob. He does you a favor, you gotta do what he wants. He does you a favor, you owe him, punk.

  • Not inclusivity but submission

    The Free Speech Union tells us:

    Cambridge students are being forced to undergo “inclusivity training”.

    At least one Cambridge college is requiring students to attend training delivered by Stop Hate UK. The group has posted a video on social media saying students should always display “positive attitudes” and “use respectful and kind language that will not cause harm or offence”.

    That goes way beyond everyday civility into controlled speech and even “attitudes”. News flash: our attitudes are our own business.

    Stop Hate UK has also described “Islamophobia” as a “crime”. The UK has no blasphemy laws, and this shows how activist organisations have been emboldened by the new non-statutory “anti-Muslim hostility” definition to stifle criticism, debate and challenge of Islam.

    The FSU should also have pointed out that “anti-Muslim” is not the same thing as “anti-Islam”. Muslims are people; Islam is an ideology, and a very horrible one at that. Religions are ideologies; religions make fact-claims; religions tell us what to do and think and say. We have to be free to dispute the whole system, or else we’re just doomed to de facto theocracy.

  • Speaking of feels

    Women who know that men are not women are not allowed to attend the Greens conference.

    A gender-critical women’s group has been barred from the Green Party conference after being told it would make trans members “feel unsafe”.

    Hey Green Party. Has it ever occurred to you that the presence of men who claim to be women can make women feel unsafe?

    The Green Women’s Declaration (GWD) was told it was not allowed to have a stall at this year’s party gathering in Brighton.

    The Green Party Executive (GPEx), which includes Zack Polanski, the leader, ruled that the group could not have a presence at the conference.

    An email to the GWD, seen by The Telegraph, said: “GPEx took this decision because it believes that having GWD present at conference would make our trans members feel unsafe, based on the prior conduct of some GWD members.”

    The Green Party did not provide any details or evidence of the conduct of GWD members which had led to the decision.

    Well they don’t need to, do they. They are The Righteous, and feminist women are The Wicked.

    The Green Party’s decision this year comes after the 2025 Supreme Court judgment and subsequent guidance by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

    The Supreme Court ruled last year that “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 referred to biological sex rather than gender identity.

    The EHRC subsequently published single-sex spaces guidance barring trans women, who are born male, from accessing female changing rooms and toilets.

    Earlier this year, Mr Polanski called the EHRC guidelines “deeply regressive” and claimed they were “pushing trans people out of public life”.

    In other words, for the billionth time, men’s invasions of women’s spaces are defended at the expense of women. The men get what they want and the women are told to get out.

    Jude English, one of the directors of GWD, told The Telegraph: “We are saddened that we must go to court to defend our character and values against a party we have served for years.”

    She added that senior figures in the Green Party “do not yet understand that the Human Rights Act includes the rights of women as a sex class and the Equality Act confers on them as individuals a duty to uphold our human rights”.

    A Green Party spokesman said: “The Green Party always strives to be a welcoming and inclusive place, and this year’s conference will be the biggest we have ever held.”

    The Green Party clearly does not strive to be inclusive of women.

  • When asked about the limits

    Trump says he’ll seize power if the elections next month don’t go the way he wants.

    Trump said in an interview published Thursday that he has not ruled out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections in November.

    “I’m not committing to anything,” Trump said in an interview with Time when asked about the limits of his presidential power. “We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”

    It’s all illegal and unconstitutional, but that doesn’t matter, because no one can stop him.

    The president has a history of threatening to deploy troops via the Insurrection Act of 1807 between his two terms.

    Trump has a history of a lot of things, all of them bad.

  • Category error

    Yes of course equality is for everyone, because that’s the whole point of it. That has nothing whatever to do with claiming to be the opposite sex and trying to force everyone to agree with the claim.

    Pretend-gender games have nothing to do with equality or egalitarianism.

    He’d be better off talking about rights rather than equality.

    He does no the two are not identical, doesn’t he?

    Doesn’t he?

  • New and inclusive

    Oh goody, it’s Inclusive Terminology Guidance time again.

    Its new ‘Inclusive Terminology Guidance’ instructs members to stop using words and phrases including ‘elderly’, ‘female politician’ and ‘mothers and fathers’. Also discouraged are ‘able-bodied’, ‘sex-change’, ‘homosexual’, ‘a nutter’, ‘youngster’ and ‘sexual preference’.

    The guidance recommends replacing ‘gendered job titles’ with ‘gender-neutral terms wherever possible’. Members should say ‘chair’ instead of ‘chairman’, ‘police officer’ instead of ‘policeman’ and ‘parents and carers’ rather than mothers and fathers.

    I agree with the part about not saying ___man when the meaning is generic, i.e. it’s not referring to a specific male cop but to a general sex-unknown cop. Same with mailman, delivery guy, etc. I’ve agreed with that for decades. But what does that have to do with mothers and fathers? The words “mother” and “father” are not job titles. Some kids lack one or both, so in some contexts it might be best to say “parents”, but that doesn’t mean canceling the words entirely.

    A section is also devoted to what members should do if they inadvertently commit a linguistic transgression. In a relief to those who may struggle to navigate the party’s lexicon, the guidance reassures them that ‘it’s okay to make mistakes from time to time’ – provided they are trying. Those who fail to use the sanctioned language are advised to apologise, thank whoever pointed out their error, and ‘adjust your language moving forward’.

    Mmmno. Way too Stalinist. Sorry.

  • Anointed by what now?

    More on Hegseth’s unconstitutional theocracy:

    The United States Air Force announced Friday that the service is updating its personnel data systems to align with the Department of Defense’s (DOD) standardized list of Religious Affiliation Codes. Dozens of Airmen and Guardians have already expressed concerns, Military.com has learned.

    …

    Dozens of Airmen and Guardians, as well as concerned members from other services, immediately reached out to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to express dismay with the new guidance.

    One of them, a senior-ranking active-duty member of the Air Force who has served more than two decades, told Military.com under the condition of anonymity that their initial reaction upon seeing the Air Force’s statement was “confusion.”

    “Previously, when updating my emergency data, atheist was always an option,” the individual, an MRFF client, told Military.com on Saturday. “But it didn’t take long to see that it was purposely excluded.

    “So, my initial confusion quickly turned into outrage—not just for myself, but for the other Airmen and Guardians who may have the same belief system as I do, or belief system that isn’t one of the 31 options.”

    I continue to maintain that it’s not necessarily a belief system. Not eating chicken or chocolate isn’t necessarily a dietary system. Theism is a belief system, because it posits the existence of some kind of god. Simply not signing up to that system is not a belief system; it can be just a no thank you or just a no action.

    A former military chaplain who is a devout Christian and now an endorser told Military.com on Saturday that the new guidance is an “attempt to push Christianity onto the troops, and there’s implicit intimidation there.”

    “It’s a pretty clear message that unless you fit in—[the Air Force’s official release] had the Christian cross right there on the chaplain’s uniform,” they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It’s crystal clear.”

    The individual said there are all kinds of logos that show distinct religions represented by the chaplaincy, suggesting different patterns or symbols for individuals whose faiths have been excluded from previous DOD guidance. They view this as part of an ongoing effort at the top of the U.S. military “to push Christian nationalism.”

    “I think that’s pretty plain,” they said. “Where does it go from here? At this point, I think next is the persecution of non-Christians, or at least non-Christians made to feel at best they are second-class service members.

    There are people in the military, and of course, outside the military, who truly believe that this nation was established as a Christian nation, despite words to the contrary in both the Constitution and various founding documents,” they added.

    Such efforts, they opined, represent a shift from biblical Christianity to a more nuanced view based on political proclivities. Christianity is being “exploited for political purposes by the extreme far right, and that’s unfortunate,” they said.

    Well at least they’re not…oh wait, yes they are.

    Christianity and its role in the U.S. military has garnered widespread attention during the current administration, and under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

    In March, just days after the initial U.S. strikes against Iran as part of the ongoing military operation in the Middle East, MRFF received more than 200 complaints from service members.

    They were tied to a combat-unit commander allegedly telling non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” as originally reported by independent journalist Jonathan Larsen.

    Uh…yeah, that is just a tiny bit over the top.

    (Quick question. Why would Jesus pick Donald Trump to anoint? Why wouldn’t Jesus pick someone less…how shall I put this…less horrible? Why pick an ignorant greedy aggressive sadistic rapey thieving cheating bully?)

    Hegseth has routinely held Christian prayer services at the Pentagon since May 2025, inviting guest speakers deemed controversial by some.

    They have included Doug Wilson, a self-avowed Christian nationalist who has pontificated that women shouldn’t be able to vote and that the era of slavery perhaps had gray areas in how it was perceived.

    Only some people deem that controversial?