Jolyon is furious.

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 regulator submitted an updated code of practice for services, public functions and associations to the minister for approval. Tomorrow (16 October) will mark six months since the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers, and six weeks since the draft code was sent to the minister.

I suspect that their advice will be rather different from that of the “Good Law” Project.

More on Michael O’Flaherty.

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 the role and his “election as Commissioner is a mark of the high regard in which he is held.” Proof positive of how out of touch these politicians are with reality and with public opinion. The days of minority rule will hopefully end soon.

For the millionth time I’m surprised at how easy it is for men to ignore women.

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 organizations vowed they’d continue robust coverage of the military no matter the vantage point.

Images of reporters effectively demonstrating against barriers to their work are unlikely to move supporters of President Donald Trump, many of whom resent journalists and cheer his efforts to make their jobs harder. Trump has been involved in court fights against The New York Times, CBS News, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press in the past year.

But not Fox News? What a surprise.

The Pentagon Press Association, whose 101 members represent 56 news outlets, has spoken out against the rules. Organizations from across the media spectrum, from legacy organizations like The Associated Press and The New York Times to outlets like Fox and the conservative Newsmax, told their reporters to leave instead of signing the new rules.

Even Fox. That’s a surprise.

Only the conservative One America News Network signed on.

Heroic quisling.

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 is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke – telling a very offensive, stupid joke – is cause to ruin their lives.”

No indeed. Adult kids who tell sexist or racist jokes must be protected; it’s those pesky bitches and n-words who must not be protected.

Politico obtained months of exchanges from a Telegram conversation between leaders and members of the Young Republican National Federation and some of its affiliates in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont.

Mother Jones reports that public records indicate that eight of the 11 Republican operatives who took part in the offensive chat appear to range in age from 24 to 35.

The revelations have prompted bipartisan calls for those involved to be removed from or resign their positions.

Oh but that would ruin their lives. Wait, what? That would ruin their lives? No it wouldn’t. Being kicked out of a political group doesn’t ruin people’s lives.

Republican legislative leaders in Vermont, along with the governor, Phil Scott – also a Republican – called for the resignation of Sam Douglass, a state senator, revealed to be a participant in the chat.

A state senator? So…not a kid then? Not within a mile of being a kid then?

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

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. It’s at the mercy of the T, and the T is deranged and malevolent. The T hates women with every fiber of its being. The T should be cut loose from the LGB and then entirely ignored.

Amina Shah, Scotland’s national librarian and chief executive, decided to remove the book in August based on a risk assessment produced by the library which warned the book could be “perceived as harmful”.

That assessment, Ms Shah herself stated, was “not due to the content of the book itself or the views expressed” but to the “potential impact” it might have on the reputation of the Library. She said risks might include protests outside the library which would disrupt the exhibition as well as the potential for violence directed at staff and visitors.

So she caved. How very Neville Chamberlain of her.

The review also concluded that the process which resulted in the decision to exclude the book fell short of the library’s own equality, diversity and inclusion commitments by failing to “work in collaboration with people with lived experience of gender critical beliefs”.

Aha! For once it’s acknowledged that we have lived experience too!

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 ministers in early September.

Specialist. Because what? Nobody knows what a woman is any more?

Some Labour MPs joined transgender groups in expressing alarm at the EHRC’s interim advice, which said the supreme court ruling meant transgender people should not be allowed to use toilets meant for the gender they live as, and that in some cases they could not use toilets consistent with their birth sex.

There’s no such thing as “the gender they live as” – there’s only “their sex.” What people pretend is no one else’s concern or responsibility. Personal fantasies are personal. There’s fantasy and there’s reality, and it’s the reality of sex that determines who uses which set of toilets.

If people came up with a trend for pretending to be a giraffe, it would not be the state’s duty to rebuild all schools and hospitals and universities to accommodate animals 18 feet tall.

There is speculation that the government hopes to finalise the guidance after the EHRC’s outgoing chair, Kishwer Falkner, who was appointed under the Conservatives, finishes her term at the end of next month.

Ah. Wait it out so that they can continue to destroy women’s rights. How impressive.

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 and – I don’t want to yap for too long – but a chant that we’ve been workshopping in Oxford that maybe you guys want to join in.

“It goes ‘Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zios in the ground’.”

You guys let’s chant about putting Jews in the ground, won’t that be exciting? Make us proud.

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 to undermine such rulings through moral panic and behind-the-scenes lobbying mark a worrying misuse of institutional power.

All the more so when it’s a man blithely nuking women’s rights.

We remind the Commissioner that the “current climate” in the UK includes the recent attack on Europe’s largest women’s rights conference, FiLiA, which was vandalised by trans activists, requiring police protection for female attendees. The incident was the latest in a long series of attacks, threats and intimidation targeting women’s rights advocates across Europe.

The Council of Europe must uphold genuine human rights principles – equality before the law, the protection of women and girls, the safeguarding of democratic institutions from ideological capture – and its Commissioner must stay within his mandate.

Women have rights too, bro.

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 Commission (EHRC) in effect banned transgender people from using facilities according to their lived gender and allowed services to request birth certificates to ensure single-sex services were protected.

Blah blah. People are not automatically allowed to do X according to their lived Y if Y is a fantasy that contradicts reality. That has never been a “right” except in theocracies. I could have a fantasy that I’m Keir Starmer, but I still wouldn’t be allowed to kick cis-Starmer out of 10 Downing Street.

In a letter to the respective chairs of the UK parliament’s joint committee on human rights and the women and equalities committee, O’Flaherty said there was a tendency in the UK to see the human rights of different groups as a “zero-sum game”.

He added: “This has contributed to narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others.”

Oh fuck off. It’s not a matter of “narratives”; it’s a matter of women’s rights. It’s trans ideology that relies on “narratives”; women are not a story but a fact, however stale and tiresome.

“Such a zero-sum approach risks certain inferences being drawn from the UK supreme court judgment that could lead to widespread exclusion of trans people from many public spaces.”

He means toilets. Men will be widely excluded from women’s toilets, but that does not exclude them from public spaces, because they can just use the men’s toilets, being as how they are men.

I’m so fed up with this tremulous lachrymose concern for men who playact being women at the expense of actual women. What about us, god damn it? Why is his fantasy about himself more important than our safety?

O’Flaherty said his letter “in no way detracts from the need to continue improving measures to prevent violence against women and girls, as well as the protection and promotion of women’s rights and gender equality more generally.”

Oh yes it does. That’s exactly what it does.

That’s not accurate.

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 is that they want to be accepted for who they fantasize they are. Children enjoy that. Children enjoy pretending to be various kinds of people. The enjoyment fades over time though, because pretending starts to seem silly.

Except when it doesn’t, I suppose. There are all these people – old enough to drive and vote and drink vodka – who go to comic book conventions and similar. I wonder if that’s part of the trans craze picture. I wonder if too much willing suspension of disbelief has enabled belief that people can change sex with the power of thought. Maybe Owen knows.

But either way, “just living their lives” is not a “just” when it includes men taking prizes and jobs and places in sports that were supposed to be for women. In that case they’re not “just living their lives,” they’re living a woman’s life, which prevents her from doing so.

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 enduring the worst mass bleaching event on record as oceans reach record high temperatures, with more than 80% affected. What was an underwater riot of color and life is being replaced with a bleached, seaweed-dominated landscape.

“We have now pushed (coral reefs) beyond what they can cope with,” said Mike Barrett, chief scientific advisor at the World Wildlife Fund UK and co-author of the report. Unless global warming is reversed “extensive reefs as we know them will be lost,” the authors wrote.

And global warming is obviously not going to be reversed. We’re doing nothing to reverse it. Cars zoom, planes fly, cruise ships cruise.

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 to go into women’s kitchens and raid the fridge or into women’s beds and rape them. The “blanket” part is crucial. There are no exceptions for women’s right to have spaces where men can’t follow them. It’s not Michael O’Flaherty’s job to declare exceptions to that right.

In a letter to Lord Alton of Liverpool and Sarah Owen MP, the chairs of two parliamentary committees, he criticised a tendency to ‘see the human rights of different groups as a zero-sum game’.

‘This has contributed to narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others,’ he added.

Bollocks. Men are men. That’s not a “narrative” and it’s not a “prejudice.” Men are barred from some women’s spaces for good reasons; when it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I forget; who was it who authorized Trump to kill people in boats near Venezuela? Could it have been nobody?

The US military conducted yet another strike on a boat alleged to be trafficking drugs off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people on board, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday.

Trump said that the vessel was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” but did not name any organization or provide evidence to back up the assertion.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

This is at least the fifth time the US has announced such a strike; the Pentagon announced another one in early October.

Is it open season on people in international waters? Are we all allowed to “conduct a strike” on boats as long as they’re in open waters?

The administration has defended the strikes. In a letter to Congress, the Pentagon said Trump had determined that the US is in an “armed conflict” with the drug cartels his administration has designated as terrorist organizations, and that smugglers for the cartels are “unlawful combatants,” CNN has previously reported.

Yeeeah I think that’s some made-up law right there. Can other countries “strike” US vessels as long as they’re in open water?

Earlier this month, Republican Sen. Rand Paul announced that he was cosponsoring a War Powers resolution that would stop the president from being able to unilaterally conduct such strikes.

“Blowing up boats without due process could risk unintended escalation and trigger regime change efforts — an approach history has repeatedly shown to fail. That’s why I’m co-sponsoring a War Powers resolution to stop it. Congress must reassert its authority,” Paul said on X.

Paul also publicly criticized Vice President JD Vance last month after he celebrated one of the strikes. “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul said in response to the vice president.

Vance is a despicable guy.

The local airport says it’s not taking Noem’s crap.

The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) won’t air a video of U.S Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown, a spokesperson confirmed. 

The video was made to play on monitors over TSA lines at airports nationwide. In the video obtained by CNN, Noem states: 

It is TSA’s top priority to make sure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe. However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay.

Bluh. No competent proofreaders there? “the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible”? “impacted” instead of “disrupted” or similar? What a hack.

The video will not be airing above TSA lines at SEA Airport. A Port of Seattle spokesperson shared a statement with KING 5: 

“The Port of Seattle will not play the video on its screens at SEA Airport, due to the political nature of the content. We continue to urge bipartisan efforts to end the government shutdown and are working to find ways to support federal employees working without pay at SEA during the shutdown.”

Other Pacific Northwest airports are also choosing to not run the video. A spokesperson for Spokane International Airport told KING 5’s sister station KREM 2 that it wasn’t able to accommodate the request to run the video due to the airport’s First Amendment policy, saying the video falls under prohibited advertising content on political issues. A spokesperson for the Boise Airport said the airport declined to play the video due to the airport’s policy prohibiting commentary about political issues.

Well done Pacific Northwest!

So this is going well.

More than 150 unvaccinated schoolchildren are being quarantined for 21 days in South Carolina after being exposed to measles, state officials said. Because the students who were exposed did not have immunisations, they were forced to miss school during the period of potential disease transmission.

South Carolina is the latest US state to experience a measles surge this year after outbreaks in New Mexico and Texas where hundreds were infected and three people died.

Great news, right? It was boring having immunization take measles out of the picture, doncha think? Life is better with a little excitement and risk. Provided it’s those other kids over there.

So far this year the US has confirmed 1,563 cases, the highest level nationwide in more than 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Thanks, Bob! You’re making us all proud!

The South Carolina Department of Public Health reported its eighth confirmed measles case in two weeks on Thursday, in Greenville County, in the northern part of the state.

“What this case tells us is that there is active, unrecognized community transmission of measles occurring in the Upstate, which makes it vital to ensure that the public have received their measles vaccinations,” a department release said.

The MMR vaccine is the most effective way to fight off measles, which can lead to pneumonia, brain swelling and death. The jabs are 97% effective and also immunise against mumps and rubella.

In addition to the outbreak in South Carolina, cases are on the rise in Utah and Arizona, where 55 and 63 cases have been reported, respectively.

Rock-solid Republican states all of them.

However the Beeb notes that there are even worse outbreaks in Canada, so it may not be all the fault of the Kennedy school of malpractice.

Further north, large numbers of measles have been reported across Canada, particularly in the provinces of Alberta and Ontario.

The country has logged 5024 cases, the government said, more than three times the number in the US, despite Canada’s far smaller population. The data has raised questions about why its spreading so quickly there and whether Canadian authorities are doing enough to contain it.

Be careful out there.

Grovel grovel grovel we’re sorry we ever thought of it, we’ll never do it again.

A Scottish pub has cancelled a Harry Potter-themed event after public backlash.

The Old Forge, on the Knoydart peninsula on the west coast, said in an announcement on social media that the Halloween party had been called off as the theme “has proven dividing, and some of our staff have received inappropriate grief as a result”.

Well I should think so indeed. The naughty woman who wrote the Harry Potter books doesn’t think men can be women. Have you ever heard of anything so evil?

In a statement on Mondaty, the Knoydart pub said: “The pub management team have decided to cancel this year’s Halloween dinner party. It was always meant to be just a fun night, but unfortunately using Harry Potter as a theme has proven dividing, and some of our staff have received inappropriate grief as a result.

So it’s not so much that the theme was dividing as it is that some people think it’s ok to abuse bar staff for having a popular fictional character as a theme for a Halloween dinner party.

Ministers must not delay single-sex guidance

A key part of Bridget Phillipson’s second cabinet role as women and equalities minister, one might have thought, would be trying to keep discrimination against women to a minimum. Luckily for her, that job was made a lot simpler after the helpful intervention of the UK Supreme Court this year. In April’s landmark ruling, the court clarified what even the most legally naïve onlooker might have been able to guess: namely, that when words such as “woman” and “man” occur in the UK Equality Act 2010 they refer to female and male people respectively, and have nothing to do with anyone’s self-ascribed gender identity.

Much the way anyone’s imaginary age – be it 12 or 18 or 35 – has nothing to do with eligibility to vote, drive, marry, join the military.

Yet, despite the explicitness of that ruling, senior Labour figures are refusing to catch on. [Bridget] Phillipson [equalities minister] is now sitting on revised statutory guidance, produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), as to how the clarified law should be implemented in gyms, clubs, hospitals and other public spaces.

Sitting on in the sense of not acting on.

Though the official explanation for the delay in presenting the new guidance to the Commons is said to be the care with which it is being examined, the likelier explanation is that gender politics is once again being weaponised within Labour circles.

How much care does it take to figure out that men are not women?

Such clumsy acts of self-compromise are a reminder of the damage gender ideology wreaked on the political left. Savvier politicians would have taken the Supreme Court’s ruling as a political gift: a cast-iron reason to never again feel squeamish about defending women’s rights.

Savvier politicians or politicians who give a shit about women. Why is that always such a neglected reason?

Paying political lip service to the notion that these rules are complicated or ambiguous is discreditable. Labour should banish such confusion to the unserious fringes of politics, for example to the Green party, which this month banned delegates advocating sex-realist policies from its conference.

Plant a tree, silence a woman. Good job, Greens.

Trump pretends to be buddies with coal miners and other working stiffs, but when it comes to enforcing regulations that protect workers…sorry, he has a pressing engagement on the nearest golf course.

When coal miners came to Washington in April, they posed behind President Trump at the White House, wearing their hard hats and thanking him for trying to reinvigorate their struggling industry.

But on Tuesday dozens of miners and their families will be in a more unusual position: protesting the Trump administration outside the Labor Department building, arguing it has failed to protect them from black lung disease, an incurable illness caused by inhaling coal and silica dust.

They have been waiting months for the government to enforce federal limits on silica dust, a carcinogen that has led to a recent spike in the disease. But mining industry groups have sued to block the rule, and the Trump administration has paused enforcement while the lawsuit plays out.

When in doubt, side with the owners, who will never have to deal with black lung disease.

The federal government has recognized the health threats that coal dust poses since 1969, when Congress passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which set health and safety standards for coal mining and required federal inspections and monitoring for black lung disease.

But now, after decades of improvements, the disease has made a disturbing resurgence, particularly among younger workers because of their exposure to a different material: silica dust. Experts said that is in part because of changing mining practices. Most of the thick coal seams in places like Appalachia have already been mined, and workers are increasingly cutting through more rock to reach coal, exposing them to silica dust.

Composed of tiny crystals that can lodge in lung tissue, silica dust can cause inflammation and scarring when inhaled. It is considered about 20 times more toxic to the lungs than coal dust and can also cause lung cancer and kidney disease.

…

A 2018 study found that more than 10 percent of coal miners who had been working for at least 25 years had black lung disease. In Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, home to most of the miners who planned to travel to the Tuesday rally, up to 20 percent of veteran miners suffer from lung disease caused by dust.

“It’s not the coal that’s getting them, it’s the silica,” said Mr. Martin, who paused to cough and catch his breath every few minutes during a recent interview. “We need to get this done for the younger generation.”

Limits on silica exposure were supposed to take effect in April. But the National Sand Stone and Gravel Association, the National Mining Association and other industry groups asked a federal appeals court to block the rule, citing the cost to mine operators.

In other words the industry groups are trying to suffocate more workers. They wouldn’t put it that way of course, but that is what they’re doing.

The Trump administration did not defend the rule in court. Instead, it agreed to delay enforcement and has since petitioned the court to prevent labor unions and a lung health association from intervening in the case. This month it asked for another court delay, citing the government shutdown.

That’s Trump, the workers’ friend – working to keep unions and lung health experts locked out of rulings on health and safety regulations for workers.

Democrats and labor unions accused the Trump administration of using coal miners as backdrops for photo opportunities while ignoring their health needs.

“The Trump administration was handed tools to protect black lung and they are doing everything in their power to toss those rules in the trash,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations.

Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said abandoning the silica standards “would be a real slap in the face for those who work so hard to power our communities.”

Slap in the face and hard punch in the lungs.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Aesthetics.

And of course those are ‘safe’ questions, meant to be answered with a Biblical citation, to comfort ‘doubters’. Note the lack of, “Explain childhood leukemia, you fucker!”

No, nothing so blunt is going to have survived the sanitizing, homogenizing editorial committee that came up with this display of architectural temporary tattoos, but even the questions that have made it through the winnow of orthodoxy are not so safe, if you’re prepared to look beyond the Bible for answers, or decline to recognize its authority or relevence. (Some of the questions below are from other images taken of the exhibit, more details of which can be found here: https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/whats-on/events/hear-us/ )

Q: “Are you there?”

A: No, there are no gods.

Q:”Does our struggle mean anything?”

A: No, it is not part of any “plan.” Shit happens for no intrinsic reason. We can bring reason to it, extract meaning and wisdom from things that happen, and apply them to what we do, but these things were not “put” there for us to “discover”. We build meaning from scratch. Life is not “meaningless”, but the meaning and significance we find is the meaning and significance we add to it. Life isn’t a piñata. Reality is not a fortune cookie. The stars are not there for horoscopes. The universe is what it is. We’re the ones adding the baggage.

Q: “Where does love come from?”

A: Love is a natural evolved sentiment which can be seen in animals other than humans. It does not require the interventions or manipulations of a non-existent class of supernatural beings, just like sunlight or metabolism. Gods add nothing to the picture.

Q: “Do you want company?”

A: Granting the existence of the Christian god, he might not need “company”, depending on how exactly that whole “Holy Trinty” thingy works. Historically speaking, most religions have been polytheistic, with lots of gods to keep each other company, and to squabble with. Some saint-heavy flavours of Christianity can start to look awfully polytheistic to the unwary and uninitiated, who might not see the distinction-without-a-difference that such Christians would offer in indignant protest. Technically, fictional characters can’t really be lonely, or sad, or anything. They have no existence beyond the imaginations of the people who create or read the stories of which they are a part. However real they may seem, they are never going to drive you to bingo, or shovel your walk.

Q: “God, what happens when we die?”

A: Asking a non-existent entity a question like this is a category error. There is no god to answer your question. Any “theological” answer you might receieve has been formulated by humans. Gods don’t write books, or talk to people, or answer prayers because they can’t. Some might claim that these answers come from a god, but it’s humans all the way down. But if you want to know what happens, here it is: you decompose, and all the materials that resided momentarily in/as your body are released for use elsewhere, including other bodies. There is no personal, individual, conscious survival after death. There is no judgement, punishment, or reward. “You” just aren’t, just like “you” weren’t before you were born. Nothing different, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise. We are fleeting arangements of eternal ingedients, briefly collected into and maintained in a form that is aware of itself and the Universe which gave rise to it. We cannot help but be one with everything. Adding gods to this tale short-circuits the proper appreciation of the Universe, and tends to exaggerate our role within it. We are part of an awe-inspiring, terrible wonder, and a mystery, and a miracle, but not a religious one. We have learned that on our own; no gods need apply. No gods can apply.