Trump killing all the fish

Sep 14th, 2024 12:51 pm | By

Of course he did.

Court finds Trump Tower violated environmental laws and endangered fish in the Chicago River

After several years of litigation, a Cook County judge has found operations at Trump Tower violated state and federal environmental laws that protect the fish in the Chicago River, the Illinois attorney general’s office announced Wednesday.

Cook County Circuit Judge Thaddeus L. Wilson on Monday granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs, finding Trump International Hotel & Tower at 401 N. Wabash Ave. liable on all counts. This means there will be no trial. Raoul’s office is seeking civil penalties and injunctive relief, to be determined by the court at a future hearing, which has not yet been scheduled.

“Effectively, what was found is, there’s no question that they have done all the things that they were accused of doing,” Margaret Frisbie, executive director of Friends of the Chicago River, told the Tribune.

A lawsuit filed in 2018 by then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan alleged the cooling system intake structure at Trump Tower siphoned water from the river so powerfully that it sucked in fish and trapped them against its screens, resulting in the death of thousands of aquatic organisms. Because of the system’s capability to pull in more than 20 million gallons of water from the river per day, federal law required extensive studies of its environmental impact and of fish populations in the river. The building also pumps water back into the river that is up to 35 degrees hotter.

Advocates say the Chicago River is healthier now than it has been the past 150 years. It is home to all kinds of animals, including migratory birdsbeavers and turtles, as well as 80 species of fish — up from fewer than 10 in the 1970s. The system has become a natural resource for local businesses and recreation.

Count on Trump to do the opposite of all that.

Tribune investigation in 2018 found that none of the other buildings holding cooling intake permits — nearly a dozen high-rises along the river — had similarly violated applicable rules. Most other downtown buildings, including many on the river, rely on different methods to keep cool, such as cooling towers connected to the public water system or an underground network of pipes that deliver chilled water from a handful of “ice batteries.”

But not Trump. Trump is a maverick. Trump does whatever Trump wants. Trump is a gleaming bronze symbol of doing whatever the fuck he wants all the time no matter what.



Trumps just wanna have fun

Sep 14th, 2024 11:10 am | By

How Trump got sidetracked:

Donald Trump wanted to spend this week attacking one of Democratic rival Kamala Harris’ biggest political vulnerabilities. Instead, he spent most of the week falsely claiming that migrants are eating pets in a small town in Ohio and defending his embrace of a far-right agitator whose presence is causing concern among his allies.

Trump’s repeated parroting of unfounded social media rumors about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating pets stole headlines during a trip West, including stops in Arizona and Nevada, late this week. The promotion of the claims overshadowed a series of speeches aimed at the economy and blaming Harris for border security failures.

Well, you can see why though. Which is more fun, the economy or personalities? Exactly.

Trump, in a news conference in California on Friday, promised “large deportations” from Springfield, Ohio — the town that has become a political flashpoint as Republicans, including Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, spread false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets.

The city of Springfield notes on its website that approximately 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants live in Clark County, and that Haitian immigrants are there legally as part of a parole program that allows citizens and lawful residents to apply to have their family members from Haiti come to the United States.

With or without pets.

He also pointed to a Venezuelan gang in Aurora, Colorado. Continuing to use dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants, Trump said “nests of bad people” are being emptied into the United States. “It’s like an invasion from within and we’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country. And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora.”

“The people of Ohio are scared,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get so bad. You know what we’re experiencing now is they’re just getting settled in.”

Trump reiterated the same themes later Friday at a rally in Las Vegas. “We are under invasion just like it was an army, except in many ways it’s more difficult because they don’t wear a uniform, you don’t know who the hell to go after,” he said.

To go after. He’s such a lovely lovely man.



Background

Sep 14th, 2024 10:26 am | By

About those naughty immigrants in Springfield, Ohio

In addition to Tuesday’s debate, Trump held a news conference Friday in which he rambled without evidence about how Haitians had descended on Springfield “and destroyed the place”.

When Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Once home to major agricultural machinery companies in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.

That helps explain how they were able to find places to live: there must have been a fair amount of vacant housing.

“They came to us for one reason: they were looking for ways to find out how to work,” Casey Rollins, executive director of the St Vincent de Paul Society’s Springfield chapter, said of those who came to the Ohio city from Haiti.

“So we got together immigration lawyers and interpreters to figure out how to help them work. We are getting them online and getting them to apply [for work permits]. We wanted workers here [in Springfield] – they want to work.”

It’s the Rust Belt. It’s been losing people and jobs for decades. Some places, I think it’s safe to assume, are more short on housing and some are more short on jobs, while some are short on both.

Haitians and immigrants from Central American countries have been in high demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables – where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce – and at automotive machining plants whose owners were desperate for workers due to a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Labor shortage. Immigrants in high demand. Trump’s vicious questions answered.

New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened across south Springfield where once abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents. A popular Haitian radio station has been broadcasting for several years. And every May, thousands turn out for Haitian Flag Day that’s celebrated at a local park.

And the phrase “abandoned neighborhoods” is not some journalistic fantasy – it’s a thing that happens, and it’s bad. Detroit, for instance, is just plain rotting away in some nabes.

But there’s a but.

But the glut of new arrivals has also stretched hospitals and schools in the area, angering many locals who resented their presence. The outrage reached a crescendo last August, when an 11-year-old boy was thrown from a school bus and killed after its driver swerved to avoid an oncoming car driven by a Haitian immigrant who didn’t have an Ohio driver’s license.

The child’s death fueled anger and racism on Facebook and at Springfield city commission meetings, where public comments about immigration have often run for more than an hour. Locals upset by the growing immigrant community wondered if they were being taken over – if Springfield had become ground zero for the baseless “great replacement theory”.

Soon, rightwing extremists seized on Springfield’s unrest.

Aaand we’re off to the races.



Biden exercised his parole authority

Sep 14th, 2024 9:38 am | By

The Associated Press last March on the “eeek eeek eeek migrants” question:

In his Super Tuesday victory speech, former President Donald Trump elevated false information that had gone viral on social media, claiming the Biden administration secretly flew hundreds of thousands of migrants into the United States.

Trump said during his speech, “Today it was announced that 325,000 people were flown in from parts unknown – migrants were flown in airplane, not going through borders … It was unbelievable. I said that must be a mistake. They flew 325,000 migrants. Flew them in over the borders and into our country.”

But migrants are not being flown into the U.S. randomly. Under a Biden policy in effect since January 2023, up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter the country monthly if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at a specified airport, paying their own way. Biden exercised his “parole” authority, which, under a 1952 law, allows him to admit people “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

Biden has exercised parole authority far more than any of his predecessors, which Trump calls “an outrageous abuse” that he will end if returned to the White House. Biden has granted entry — by land or air — to at least 1 million people using parole, not just the 327,000 who flew from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela though December.

Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesperson, said Wednesday that reports of secretly flying people into the country were “categorically false” and that Cubans, Haitian, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans were “thoroughly screened.”

Which is more than Trump can say.



Worse

Sep 14th, 2024 1:52 am | By

He’s a wannabe Hitler now, screeching about rounding people up and mass deporting them.

Donald Trump has said he will mass deport migrants in a small Ohio town that has been rocked by baseless claims that its Haitian influx are eating pets and park animals.

“We’re going to start with Springfield,” Trump said on Friday, adding the town had been “destroyed” by immigration. He mentioned a second city in Colorado, which right-wing commentators have falsely claimed is in the hands of a Venezuelan gang.

Springfield officials say that the debunked claim of pet-eating has sent shockwaves through its community, and has led to violent threats that have shut schools.

Wake up, BBC: don’t call people an “influx.” That’s trumpy talk.

Trump was asked whether he was considering a visit to the town during a press conference at his golf course in Los Angeles on Friday.

“I can say this, we will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio – large deportations. We’re going to get these people out. We’re bringing them back to Venezuela,” he said.

He’s a foul, disgusting man. He taints us all (us Yanks) with his foulness.



The capture

Sep 14th, 2024 12:54 am | By

A damning summing up:

JK Rowling is leading calls for resignations across Scotland’s rape crisis service after a report found a centre in Edinburgh had “damaged” survivors.

It’s not so much that she’s leading them, I think, as it is that she’s got the clout to get people to listen. Maybe that’s what “leading” means in this context, but I doubt she wants to be portrayed as the boss, or to get all the credit.

The author intervened after Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman, quit as chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) having been found to have “failed to set professional standards of behaviour” and for not understanding “the limits on her role’s authority”.

Pff. He systematically bullied everyone there, especially the women who needed the service.

For critics of Rape Crisis Scotland, the row erupting about ERCC symbolises the ideological capture of the Scottish government by trans activists.

It is the ideological capture. No need for symbolism; it’s the thing itself.

This week’s report on the ERCC, commissioned by Rape Crisis Scotland, found that Wadhwa had failed to ensure the centre carried out its primary function: to deliver services to women and girls who have experienced sexual violence.

Its practices “caused damage” to survivors and some “did not feel safe” using it, according to the author, Vicky Ling, a legal specialist.

During her research, Ling asked the ERCC for further information on the women-only services it provided but was told there was “very little demand” for them.

Anyone believe that? Anyone at all?

It emerged that for a 16-month period until February this year “there were no protected women-only spaces available through ERCC unless they were specifically requested”.

These people make me feel stabby.



Costs

Sep 13th, 2024 2:54 pm | By

Good. news.



To the surprise of no one

Sep 13th, 2024 9:45 am | By

Oh no oh no there’s a wacko hanging around with Trump, that will ruin everything.

The presence of hard-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer alongside Donald Trump on the campaign trail in recent days has raised questions, including from some Republicans, about the influence the controversial former congressional candidate may have on him.

Seriously! Because otherwise he would be entirely rational and thoughtful and able to utter a coherent sentence.

[O]n Tuesday, [Loomer] travelled to Philadelphia on board Trump’s plane for the presidential debate in the city. Perhaps the most memorable moment of that debate came when Trump repeated a baseless claim that illegal immigrants from Haiti have been eating domestic pets in a small Ohio city. “They are eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said.

City officials later told BBC Verify that there have been “no credible reports” this has actually happened. Trump said he was repeating claims he had heard on television, but the theory was aired by Ms Loomer just a day before the debate. On Monday, the fringe pundit and social media influencer repeated the claims to her 1.2m followers on X.

While the level of access Ms Loomer has to Trump is unclear, and his running mate JD Vance has also spread the baseless theory, Ms Loomer’s post and her presence in Philadelphia has led some Republicans to blame her for the former president making the unfounded claim on stage.

Right, because normally he doesn’t make unfounded claims at all ever.

Another outspoken Trump supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, took issue with Ms Loomer this week over her comments questioning Harris’s race and a post in which she said the White House “will smell like curry” if Harris – who is partly of Indian descent – is elected. Greene said Ms Loomer’s comments were “appalling and extremely racist” and did “not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA” – prompting a flurry of furious messages in her direction.

That’s great. The Trump maniacs are now brawling over who is the most maniacal. The answer is: ALL OF YOU.



Soft landing

Sep 13th, 2024 8:53 am | By

Aha, another turn of the screw, so to speak – Wadhwa already had a fancy new job. His talents must be off the charts.



Some luxury “cis privilege” benefits package

Sep 13th, 2024 7:00 am | By

Victoria Smith nails everything, as she always does.

ERCC’s former chief executive officer, Mridul Wadhwa, has now resigned after being accused of “not understand[ing] the limits of her role” and “fail[ing] to set professional standards of behaviour”.

That is putting it mildly. The problem here is not one of disorganisation or managerial overreach. As anyone who followed the tribunal of former ERCC caseworker Roz Adams will know, it is one of deliberate sabotage. It is not that the need for women-only spaces somehow fell off Wadhwa’s radar. It’s more that Wadhwa — a trans-identified male who does not have a Gender Recognition Certificate — did not approve of the kind of survivor who requests them.

There is nothing about the damage Wadhwa has done to ERCC that could not have been predicted several years ago. The tragedy is that plenty of those who enabled the sabotage still claim to be feminists. For women such as Nicola SturgeonMhairi Black and Shona Robison, trans activism’s infiltration of the women’s movement provided the ideal way to prove how forward-thinking and progressive they were.  There is, after all, more status in claiming to be a trans ally than in aligning yourself with the women of the past, those drudges who built up the very things that you are now free to trash.

Feminism – the real kind – is so last year, last decade, last century. It’s boring. It’s respectable. It’s old. Where’s the fun in that? And if feminism isn’t fun, well, it can go fuck itself. It becomes just another tedious whiny clueless mommy-figure telling you to clean up your room.

For this is a story of letting a thing be wrecked because you think so little of those who created it. Reading the past few years’ discourse on female-only spaces and inclusion, one could be forgiven for thinking women were handed rape crisis centres as part of some luxury “cis privilege” benefits package. The truth is that they fought for them. It is shameful that such a small thing — not the end of rape, nor even a meaningful reduction in rape, merely the resources to support women in its aftermath — should have had to be fought for at all. 

Well when you put it that way, yes, so…erm…let’s not put it that way. Let’s just keep saying women are boring.



Rumbling

Sep 13th, 2024 6:27 am | By

So much dirty laundry getting thrown into the tub today.



Wadhwa out

Sep 13th, 2024 5:48 am | By

FINALLY.

Notice that the BBC carefully conceals the “gender” of the subject in the headline.

Rape crisis centre CEO stands down after report into failings

Also uses a very deceptive photo of said CEO. He looks very womany.

And then there’s the crappy confusing lede:

The chief executive of a sexual assault support service has stood down after a review found it failed to protect women-only spaces.

What is “it”? The chief executive? The review? The service? Which? This is what happens when you try to obfuscate the core fact in the story: your reporting becomes opaque.

The male CEO of a rape crisis center has resigned after a review found that the center under his leadership failed to protect rape victims.

Mridul Wadhwa – a trans woman – resigned after a Rape Crisis Scotland report found she failed to behave professionally while head of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC).

HE. He, damn you. He he he. He should never have applied for the job in the first place. He. Stop lying to us about this campaign to steal everything from women. STOP. IT.

The investigation, carried out by an independent consultant, also found Ms Wadhwa “did not understand the limits of her authority” and the needs of survivors were not prioritised.

In a statement, the ERCC board said it was implementing recommendations from the review, but felt the “time was right for a change of leadership”.

Ya think?

Don’t hire a man this time. Or any time. Seriously.

For Women Scotland – which has campaigned against changes to transgender rights – accused the board of “ignoring its own culpability”.

For Women Scotland has campaigned against the hostile takeover of women’s rights by men who call themselves women. What the Beeb so cautiously and squeamishly and hostile to womenly calls “changes to transgender rights” are/is in fact a protracted ongoing determined effort to take rights away from women and hand them over to men in lipstick.

In a statement posted on X, they said: “This is the very least that they can do. It seems the board are intent on ignoring their own culpability.

And the BBC is intent on helping them do it.



Oh I see, it’s my fault is it?

Sep 12th, 2024 5:37 pm | By

Good old Twitter.

“Visibility limited: this Post may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct.”

Ok where’s the hateful conduct?

The tweet is in response to this one:

I’m not seeing the hateful conduct in my reply. Disdain, yes, but hateful conduct, no.


A demanding test of cognitive health

Sep 12th, 2024 5:28 pm | By

The debate as a test of cognitive fitness:

A 90-minute debate that involves unknown questions and unanticipated rebuttals requires candidates to think on their feet. It is a much more demanding and representative test of cognitive health than a simple mental-status exam you take in a doctor’s office. Specifically, the debate serves as an evaluation of the candidates’ mental flexibility under pressure—their capacity to deal with uncertainty and the unforeseen…Donald Trump’s expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.

I don’t suppose that will come as a surprise to anyone. He’s always been stupid, but not this stupid.

He replied to a question about the attempted coup:

I have said “blood bash—bath.” It was a different term, and it was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. That was where bloodbath was. Also, on Charlottesville, that story has been, as you would say, debunked. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse—all of these people, they covered it. If they go an extra sentence, they will see it was perfect. It was debunked in almost every newspaper. But they still bring it up, just like they bring 2025 up. They bring all of this stuff up. I ask you this: You talk about the Capitol. Why are we allowing these millions of people to come through on the southern border? How come she’s not doing anything—and I’ll tell you what I would do. And I would be very proud to do it.

Mmm yes. It leaps from fragment of a thought to fragment of a thought, making no sense of any kind.

Eleven days before the debate, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to criticism of his rambling speech by claiming that it is part of a deliberate strategy to frustrate his opponents. “I do the weave,” he told the audience. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like—and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

No they don’t. No they don’t. He doesn’t have any English professor friends, but even if he did, they wouldn’t say that. Even if they were fans they wouldn’t say that. They would change the subject to batteries or MIT or Laura and Sean and Jesse. Also no they don’t come back brilliantly together. They remain random idiotic splinters of half-formed pseudo-thoughts.

He can vomit words for hours, but he can’t do no weave.



Anecdotes & insults

Sep 12th, 2024 4:58 pm | By

Trump in Tucson:

Trump stood before a backdrop etched with his campaign promises of “make housing affordable again” and “no tax on tips” – a signal that the speech would focus heavily on amplifying his economic platform. But instead, the former president used much of his time to reframe his debate performance – which even Trump’s own aides have admitted will not win him new voters – by casting it in a far more favorable light.

(Far more favorable than what? We’re not told.)

Despite the advertised theme of the event, Trump did not spend much of the roughly hour-and-a-half speech sharing details of his economic plans. Instead, the Republican candidate dedicated the bulk of his time pandering to his base with meandering anecdotes, insulting his opponents, and reiterating many of his baseless talking points, including claims he won the last election.

Well, that’s Trump, isn’t it. That’s what we’re in for if he wins.

He also focused heavily on immigration, a typical target for his rallies, stoking fears about waves of criminals crossing into the country and again accusing Haitian immigrants of eating animals in Springfield, Ohio.

“They take in the geese … and even walk off with their pets”, Trump said, repeating the unfounded and racist smear that has been challenged by the town’s officials and has inflamed tensions and attacks against members of the Haitian community.

Well, as a member of the German community, he has a proud heritage of racist bullshit to uphold.

The Trump campaign was required to pay a $145,222.70 deposit for use of the auditorium and local police who would perform security duties at the event, a policy that was set by the city after the former president failed to settle an $80,000 bill for a rally held there in 2016.

“We learned our lesson,” Tucson city councilman Kevin Dahl told the Arizona Daily Star, adding that the city wrote off the debt.

I hope Tucson kept every penny of that $145,222.70 deposit.



People who can

Sep 12th, 2024 4:39 pm | By

Ahhhhh fuck it all – you try to read a scathing piece on Trump v abortion rights but then you bump up against the determined omission of women from the subject of abortion rights and yet again you give up.

No matter what Trump serves up on abortion, the fact is the conservative legal movement remains hell-bent on enacting some kind of national abortion ban, whether via legislation or simple, draconian enforcement of the Comstock Act. Their “leave abortion to the states” talking point never mentions how in 2024, for example, four states introduced legislation that criminalizes non-parent adults who support minors’ out-of-state travel for abortion care—and Tennessee enacted its law. Conservatives certainly don’t highlight the fact that they are champing at the bit to prosecute patients for accessing care in addition to the providers and aid organizations facilitating it.

And they’re definitely not talking about how their plans for enshrining fetal “personhood” into law would eliminate access to in vitro fertilization, threaten contraception access, and drastically expand the criminal surveillance of people who can get pregnant.

Minors; patients; people who can get pregnant. At that point it’s ahhhhhhhhhhhhfuckyou and not reading more. Disappearing women from the discussion is not the way to keep Trump from winning another term.



A core sense of whrblgrbl

Sep 12th, 2024 11:34 am | By

Lawyers, eh?

“No factual or legal support, just a bare assertion.”

And a very fatuous assertion at that. No, everyone does not have a core sense of belonging to a particular gender. What we have is a history of being told we’re one or the other, and a history of encountering other people who are one or the other, and a history of seeing movies and tv shows full of other people who are one or the other. Some of us may have a history of thinking and/or feeling that we should be grouped with the Other, while most of us assume we’re stuck with the “assignment” and get on with life. Calling that “gender identity” and saying we all have it is several steps too many.



An amazing sister

Sep 12th, 2024 9:44 am | By

A visit to the Gender Quislings.

Sandy Brindley is the Chief Executive of Rape Crisis Scotland.

Both of those things are indeed true.


Influencer

Sep 12th, 2024 7:15 am | By

At least there’s no palaver about who’s a woman and who’s a man when we’re talking about the Tate brothers.

Two women who say they were raped and strangled by the controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate have spoken to the BBC about their experiences. Another woman has alleged, for the first time, she was raped by Mr Tate’s younger brother, Tristan – also an influencer with millions of followers.

The Tate brothers, aged 37 and 36, currently face charges in Romania of human trafficking and forming an organised group to sexually exploit women. Andrew Tate is also charged with rape. If found guilty, the two men could be jailed for more than 10 years. They strongly deny the charges against them.

Oh, strongly – that makes a big difference.

Andrew Tate is currently under house arrest in Romania. In addition to the charges he already faces, prosecutors are considering new allegations against him, including having sex with a minor and trafficking underage persons. Both brothers are also being investigated for trafficking 34 more women.

Now, in a new BBC Panorama programme, two British women not involved with the Romanian case against the Tate brothers, have given detailed first-hand accounts of alleged rape and sexual violence by Andrew Tate. The allegations date back at least 10 years, to when Mr Tate was living in Luton.

Look, it’s their lifestyle, ok?

In 2014, Anna told Bedfordshire Police about the alleged attack. Two other women made similar allegations, and the investigation was taken over by Hertfordshire Police.

In 2019, a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, but it was decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges.

As usual. Rape is seldom reported; when it is reported it’s seldom sent to the CPS; when it is sent to the CPS it’s seldom prosecuted; when it is prosecuted it’s seldom convicted. Four filters; the end product is tiny. Rape is all but legal.

In the second half of the last decade, Andrew Tate began his rise to online fame. The self-proclaimed misogynist’s videos on YouTube and TikTok, and posts on Twitter, gained him millions of followers and a worldwide profile.

He preached a message aimed at boys and young men that women should be dominated. In one video, he said women were “intrinsically lazy” and added: “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.”

Meh. It’s just women. The real victims here are the trans women.



The part where they say it and the part where they take it back

Sep 12th, 2024 6:40 am | By

The BBC manages to say it at last:

Rape crisis centre failed to protect women-only spaces

But don’t get too excited, there’s still plenty of confusion and obfuscation and avoidance.

Rape survivors are no longer being referred to a support service in Edinburgh after a review found it failed to protect women-only spaces. The reviewer’s report said that Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre had not put survivors first or adhered to national service standards.

The report also stated that the CEO of the centre – a transwomen [sic] – failed to behave professionally and did not understand the limits of her authority.

We’re still stuck in the same mud of confusion. The CEO of the centre is a man, and he abused his authority. I don’t think the two reporters on this story – Mary McCool and Lorna Gordon – actually know that Wadhwa didn’t understand the limits of his authority, I think they just wanted to give him as much cover as they could get away with. The whole story reeks of avoidance and distraction. Not least, how could Wadwha not have understood when there were furious women yelling about it for months?

Rape Crisis Scotland said it was “extremely concerned” that the centre had not provided dedicated women-only spaces for 16 months, and as a result had paused new referrals to it.

The national charity, which sets standards for member centres, commissioned the investigation after an employment tribunal found the Edinburgh facility had unfairly dismissed a councillor with gender critical views.

That is, the Edinburgh facility run by a man had unfairly fired a councillor who knows that men are not women and cannot magically become women.

The review concluded that Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre had experienced a number of difficulties…

This included a strategy “which did not put survivors first” and a failure to protect women-only spaces.

There. At least the BBC finally admits that much.

The review also pointed out that the chief executive officer who was appointed in 2021 – Mridul Wadhwa – “did not understand the limits on her role’s authority, when to refer decisions to trustees and failed to set professional standards of behaviour”.

HIS role’s authority. His. He’s a man. The whole point is that he’s a man. He’s not courteous to us; why is the BBC being so “courteous” to him that most readers will continue to be misled into thinking he’s a woman?

In its recommendations, the review said the Edinburgh centre should take advice from Rape Crisis Scotland on the definition of “woman” and publicise this within the service. Women only spaces and times “must be protected and clearly publicised”, it said.

And by “women” it means women. Not men who pretend to be women, not including men who pretend to be women, but just women, actual women.

It said: “The needs of survivors should be listened to and respected when they come to any Rape Crisis Centre. It is important that survivors can make informed choices about the services they access at Rape Crisis Centres, and we recognise that for some survivors this includes the choice of a single sex service.”

For some survivors? Seriously? Do the people who wrote the review seriously think it’s only some women who don’t want to deal with men at a rape crisis center?

There’s still a long way to go.