Trump is such a difficult guest/roommate/colleague/friend.

Trump is accusing some of his onetime supporters of being “weaklings” who are falling prey to Democratic “bullshit” about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — concluding that he no longer wants their support.

The message was the clearest sign yet of the cracks emerging in the president’s coalition, many of whom are loudly demanding more information about the disgraced financier, who has been subject to myriad conspiracies since his death by suicide in 2019. And some of his allies don’t appear to be listening, with Republicans in Congress taking steps Wednesday morning to potentially force the Justice Department to release more documents.

How is this possible when the dictator specifically told them not to?

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote in a missive on Truth Social. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

Ouch! That’s how he talks to his fans? I don’t know about you but I would be quite offended, and would demand a refund.

“I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote. “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”

I don’t want it any more! You ruined it! You ruined everything! I hate you! I’m never talking to you again! Never never never never!!!

Sigh.

Originally a comment by maddog on A lemon by any other name.

Where to begin?

1. He talks with his hands. They never stop moving. He must be very distracting, not to say annoying, in a courtroom setting.

2. What is he wearing? A blazer over his undershirt?

3. “The UK Supreme Court ruled that the term ‘sex’ in the Equality Act must mean biological sex, even though ‘bioligical’ is not written into the Act.”

Well, duh. Statutory construction, how does it work? Of course, if the Act had made that clear in the first place, we wouldn’t have had all the silliness of men taking over everything from women under the johnny-come-lately doctrine of “transgenderism.” It wasn’t made explicit in the Act for the simple reason that nobody thought it would have to be said, that everyone knows what “sex” means, and nobody anticipated the perversion of ordinary language so successfully achieved by the trans lobby. If “biological” had been included in the statutory language, there would not have been the need to litigate what the statute means. But interpreting statutes is what courts DO. You, of all people, as a barrister, should know that. The trans lobby created “ambiguity” where there really was no cause to do so, and thus brought upon themselves the necessity of litigation to declare the proper meaning of the statute. Trans activists have only themselves to blame for this result.

4. The EHRC interim guidance “effectively exclud[es] trans people from single-sex spaces, denying them privacy . . . ”

No, it doesn’t, you liar. The guidance makes clear — as trans activists shout so vociferously when it suits their purposes — that sex and gender are not the same thing. Single-sex spaces are single SEX, without regard to anyone’s gender identity. It doesn’t stop anyone from claiming any gender identity they want. It’s just that the relevant criterion is biological sex, so use the facilities for your sex. So-called trans women can be that gender identity to their hearts’ content, and still use the single-sex facility for their biological sex.

As to denying trans people’s “right to privacy,” trans identified men in men’s spaces, and trans identified women in women’s spaces, will have as much privacy for their intimate functions as any other man or woman in the appropriate sex-segregated space. But that’s not what they really mean. What they want is for no one to be able to notice or remark on their actual sex. It’s like their being “transgender” is some kind of state secret. It’s not. If you are out and about in public, it is usually pretty obvious what your sex is, particularly if you are a man, no matter what you wear or how made up you are. (Heh: made up. Snerk.) That’s the one that matters the most: for women to be protected from the men, and to know who the men are. Women are peculiarly vulnerable to male violence, with potential consequences that no men ever have to face.

5. “. . . and erasing intersex identities.”

Another lie. Quelle surprise.

For one thing, trans dogmatists insist on using the incorrect term, “intersex,” rather than “disorders of sex development,” or DSDs. They do this deliberately to muddy the waters, to pretend that there is such a thing as a “spectrum” of sexes. “Intersex” individuals presumably lie on some continuum between the endpoints of “male” or “female.” T advocates thus make people with DSDs pawns in their fight, even though DSDs have nothing to do with transgenderism. DSDs happen to people who are one sex or the other (not both; not “in between”), but something in their genetic makeup has interfered with normal development of the reproductive pathway for whichever sex their body is.

For another thing, having a DSD is not a “gender identity.” DSDs are objectively observable and ascertainable medical conditions. Sometimes there will be no reason to suspect the existence of a DSD until puberty. But the undeniable physiological changes wrought by puberty can be scientifically examined, and the existence of a DSD condition can be either ruled out or confirmed.

It just goes to show that the trans lobby will involuntarily co-opt anyone and anything to their cause, if it will serve their purposes. TAs are users, with no regard to the desires and feelings of others. Many people with DSDs wish the trans lobby would leave them alone, and not use them as a political football. TAs don’t care.

By and large, the people who claim to be “transgender” do not have any DSDs, and have perfectly normal male or female reproductive systems. So the “what about Intersex?” gambit is a non-starter. It is irrelevant.

6. The Supreme Court ruling supposedly “follows the ninth pattern of genocide: denial of identity.”

What are these numbered “patterns of genocide”? What is the evidence that substantiates the relation of any such “patterns” to the practice of “genocide”? How many of these ” patterns” does it take to ascertain whether there is any “genocide” being contemplated or carried out? Is one sufficient? It doesn’t seem so.

The only people denying anyone’s “identity” are the trans activists themselves. They are denying the existence of the manifestly observable sex of their own bodies, in favor of fantasies about being the sex that they actually are not. Trans activists also deny the identity of women as an oppressed class on the basis of their sex.

Why are you talking about “genocide”? The -cide suffix has to do with killing. HomiCIDE is the killing of a human being (“homo” = human). ParriCIDE is the killing of a father (“parri” = “patri-” = father). SuiCIDE is the killing of oneself (“sui” = self). Where is the killing in this supposed “genocide”? AFAICT, no one has been killed, is being killed, or is contemplated to be killed. Without any killing, past, present, or future, how can there be a “genocide”? Methinks he doth protest too much. All that’s happening is that transgender people have to abide by sex classifications, where sex is the relevant consideration. It doesn’t stop them being “trans” at all. It just makes them do their cosplay in the bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, hospital wards, prisons, etc. , for their sex. So why is anyone, Lemkin Institute or nonbinary barrister Oscar Davies, yammering on about “genocide”?

7. The Lemkin Institute is alarmed by government rules that demonstrate intentional erasure, and hostile media framing of transgender people as “other.” That’s evidently the mechanics of the “ninth pattern of genocide.” “When you force people out of bathrooms, you’re cutting away at the right to exist themselves.”

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.

No one is being ” forced out of [all] bathrooms,” such that they don’t have ” a right to exist themselves.” No one is “cutting away at” the right of trans people to exist. Go right ahead and express your “gender identity” — whatever that may mean — however, and however much, you like. No one is stopping you or saying you can’t. Just, when it comes to bathrooms and other things classified by sex, stick to the ones for your sex. Pretty simple.

8. “When genocide prevention experts raise a red flag, you don’t debate semantics. You stop, you reflect, and you act.”

For crying out loud. What makes anyone a “genocide prevention expert”? How do you know this Lemkin Institute has any “genocide prevention” expertise? I’m not impressed. Neither the Lemkin Institute nor you seems to know what “genocide” even means. There’s no killing going on, nor any prospect on the horizon. No genocide. The “red flag” in this case is utterly baseless. It’s Chicken Little, screaming about a disaster that isn’t happening and isn’t going to happen. It’s typical transperbole: if a trans person doesn’t get their way, it’s oppression and literal violence. Get real.

Yes, we noted the false red flag. We stopped, and we reflected on the claims being made. They are bogus. So we continue to act: to restore women’s sex-based rights, and to safeguard children from dangerous interventions.

A bit more on the two people who idennify as an institute:

Their Ukraine project sounds decent enough, but it’s still at least deceptive for one or two people to idennify as an institute.

H/t Piglet for the Bellingcat tip.

From last November, The Algemeiner on the trickery of the bogus “Lemkin Institute”:

Members of the family of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and pushed for the passage of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, say they are outraged that a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization is using the Lemkin name to pursue an agenda of extreme anti-Israel activism.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention was initially registered as a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation on Aug. 19, 2021, and won US federal tax-exempt recognition in September 2023. In recent months, it has veered into strident anti-Israel political advocacy, supporting anti-Israel campus protests and reaching millions of viewers with social media posts that falsely accuse Israel of genocide.

Less than one week after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, the institute released a “genocide alert” calling the onslaught an “unprecedented military operation against Israel” while decrying the Jewish state’s actions against Hamas as “genocide.” The Oct. 13 message came before Israeli launched its ground offensive in Gaza.

…

Joseph Lemkin, a New Jersey lawyer who is related to Raphael Lemkin, said he was unfamiliar with the institute until being informed of it by The Algemeiner.

Lemkin, who represented the family at a UN event marking the 65th anniversary of the genocide convention, described himself as “totally outraged” to see his late relative’s name used to push an anti-Israel agenda. His father was Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin.

Whatever you think about Israel v Hamas or Hamas v Israel, it’s clear that the “Lemkin Institute” has zero actual connection to Raphael Lemkin and is exploiting his name in a particularly revolting way.

H/t Piglet

And that’s not even the end of it.

Two topples in one day!

For once I’m glad to have woken up in the middle of the night.

Sandie Peggie cleared of gross misconduct allegations

NHS Fife has cleared the nurse at the centre of a high-profile tribunal case of all disciplinary charges.

Sandie Peggie was being investigated by the health board after Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman doctor, accused her of a “hate incident” and patient safety breaches following a confrontation in a changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.

News of the outcome of the internal investigation came just hours before Ms Peggie’s Employment Tribunal against the health board and Dr Upton is due to resume.

In a statement, Ms Peggie’s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, said: “On Tuesday July 14, the evening before the resuming of her tribunal, Sandie Peggie received confirmation from Fife Health Board that, following a disciplinary hearing, none of the gross misconduct allegations against her were upheld.

“This follows a disciplinary hearing on June 25, which considered four gross misconduct allegations: two relating to patient care failures, one of ‘misgendering’ Dr Upton, and one relating to her encounter with Dr Upton in the workplace female-only changing room on Christmas Eve 2023.

“Sandie is relieved and delighted that this 18-month-long internal process has concluded and cleared her of all allegations.”

She’ll never get those horrible 18 months back though.

Yet another buffoon yammering about the “Lemkin Institute” as if it were Amnesty International. It’s a guy with a laptop. That’s it. It has no significance.

Ok now Trump is pissed off. He thought he and Volodya were buddies. Of course he did: being both vain and stupid made it inevitable.

Trump did not develop a new fondness for Ukraine or its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He did not abruptly become a believer in the traditional transatlantic alliances prized by his predecessors as a counterweight to Moscow. Rather, Trump got insulted.

By ignoring Trump’s pleas to end the war and instead ratcheting up the fighting, Putin has made Trump look like the junior partner in the relationship. The Russian leader has “really overplayed his hand,” one of the officials told me. “The president has given him chance after chance, but enough is enough.”

Yeah! Pretty soon he’s just another fella around here!

Trump and Putin have spoken a half dozen times in the past six months, and Trump has grown steadily more frustrated, the four people told me. He told advisers this spring that he was beginning to think Putin didn’t want the war to end, an assessment that U.S. intelligence agencies reached more than a year ago.

Bahahahahahahaha oh god that’s like a punchline to a very stale joke. “Why Adolf, I’m beginning to think you don’t like Jews. Why Niagara River, I’m beginning to think you have a slight drop-off here. Why Arizona, I’m beginning to think you have a bit of a ditch north of Flagstaff.”

When Trump recently intensified his calls for a cease-fire—at one point writing on social media, “Vladimir, STOP!”—Putin chose to defy him by escalating attacks on Ukraine yet again.

You astonish me. How could Putin ignore something as official and heartfelt as “Vladimir, STOP!” on social media?

With Putin continuing to ignore his pleas for a deal, Trump has felt humiliated, fearing that he appears weak

YA THINK???

“I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done. And then I hang up and say, ‘That was a nice phone call,’ and the missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office today, referring to Putin. “And then after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything.”

Oh come on now, mustn’t be hasty. Make it twenty times. Make it fifty. Show them how generous and patient you really are.

Suzanne Moore on the Sandie Peggie tribunal:

[Dr “Beth”] Upton had begun transitioning in 2022 but claimed to be both “distressed” and “afraid”. If you’ve ever been physically assaulted or intimidated, you’ll know what it’s like to truly feel that way. But Peggie is small – and Upton is certainly not.

I have been, and I do know. Peggie is small and Upton is huge, plus he has the Trans Army behind him. I don’t believe for a second that he felt distressed or afraid. My bet is on sadistic glee.

Nevertheless, Peggie was suspended by her managers and faced a disciplinary hearing. Somehow, in these cases, it’s always the woman who says no who ends up being portrayed as threatening and bullying. The gender cult demands unquestioning acceptance of the idea that trans people are always victims.

Along with the idea that they are always more “marginalized” and persecuted and intimidated and bullied and yadda yadda than women are. It’s a core part of the Steal Everything approach to women that makes trans dogma such fun.

NHS Fife wanted to keep this quiet. Understandably. They sought to keep Upton anonymous and have the upcoming hearing held in private. Neither of these things happened, which is just as well, because what’s being exposed is a muddle of mismanagement and deep stupidity.

The board of NHS Fife also did not want to disclose how much this has all cost, but they have been forced to: £220,000 up until the adjournment in February. Another 11 days of hearings could push costs up towards £1 million. The taxpayer, remember, is paying for both Upton’s and NHS Fife’s defence.

The socialism of huge men in skirts.

Currently we are in a situation where many of our institutions are so immersed in gender ideology that they cannot respond to the actual needs of women. Or, indeed, correctly and swiftly interpret the law.

This immersion, though, was never organic – it did not come from a place of wanting fairness for everyone. If it did, I would support it.

The truth is that it has been imposed from on high as a response to intense lobbying and acquiescence to activist demands.

One can see this particularly in the case of the BBC, whose top brass started taking meetings with Stonewall activists in 2012. Everyone was sold on the idea of trans rights being the new civil rights and a symbol of being cutting edge.

This is how the full-scale abandonment of both women’s rights and any notion of safeguarding has been enacted by supposedly progressive institutions – in the name of some non-specific idea of modernity. It has been appalling.

And where do we end up? With public money being spent to fight a working-class nurse who doesn’t want to get undressed in front of a man? How is this right?

The emperor is naked. We have long known that. Let him parade his nakedness in his own special cubicle. Get out of ours!

And stay out!

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Two gowns on his shoulder.

I’m guessing that Zara also fails to provide changing rooms based on astrological sign, or the colour of one’s aura.

A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

No, there’s no such thing as a “non-binary shopper.” Someone might claim to be “non-binary”, but that declaration does not change their sex, or remove it altogether. They might, at most, be “gender nonconforming”. But, being a beardy bloke, he should not be trying to access women’s changing rooms.

A clothing store specializing in women’s clothing can’t be expected to offer facilities for male crossdressers, or male crossdressers claiming to be “non-binary.” If he wants to, he can shop online, buy whatever he wants, using whatever name he wants, and nobody would be any the wiser. But that’s no solution, that’s part of the problem; he needs to be noticed. He’s special, and must be pampered, catered to, and validated. If he’s not sufficiently satisfied, he gets to pout in front of an audience. Not only that, he gets to bully and shame real, live people. Shopping online robs him of all of these pleasures; in cyberspace, no one can hear you whine.

As far as “dehumanized”? No. I’d say it’s more likely the other way around. Just as “bringing your whole self” to work doesn’t really help job performance or workplace morale if your fellow employees have to alternately genuflect and walk on eggshells because you’re so much more fucking awesome than they are, because of your invisible gender feels.

“Bringing your whole self” shopping doesn’t enhance the retail experience for those forced to deal with your fucking awesome invisible gender feels. For you, they’re a captive audience, doing their best to please customers in order to make a living. Making unreasonable demands of store staff, who are obligated by their positions to try to make you happy, is abusive. Your money gives you power over them. Your actions might cause problems for the company they’re working for (like bad publicity, when you go running in tears to the press with your non-story, on a slow news day). In fact, you’re counting on exactly that implicit threat in order to get your way. Depending on the employer, the clerk you’re pressuring might be sacked if the boss decides “The customer is always right,” even though sometimes, the customer is just an asshole.

Staff refusing to let you access women’s spaces which you are not entitled to enter, for the safety and dignity of their female clientele (let’s not forget them, shall we), does nothing to damage your “humanity”. It might make you confront the boundaries of your delusion, and the limits of your ability to force others to accommodate, and participate in it, but that’s on you, not them. Seeing your comfort as more important than women’s safety doesn’t make you the good guy, let alone a “victim.” Your interest in women’s change rooms makes you a suspicious man. A similar insistence on accessing a children’s area in which to change would also, correctly, raise a safeguarding flag. Claiming an NB “gender identity” does not change that. You are no less a man, and therefore, under prudent, and necessary, safeguarding rules, no less a threat than any other random man.

Tying your “humanity” to others’s compliance with your selfish, unreasonable demands is not a sign of good psychological health. Ditto investing so much (anything?) in a nonsensical “gender identity,” in order to be special or different for just existing. Everyone exists. You’re not that special. Get over it, or get help. Shop from home; leave the clerks (and the female customers) alone.

Oh goody, an opportunity to hassle the workers at a clothing store. Always fun.

A non-binary shopper said they felt ‘dehumanised’ and accused a fashion brand of being ‘transphobic’ after they were refused entry to a women’s changing room.

That’s just silly. Humans are the only ones who pretend to be the opposite sex and make a big fuss on social meeja if no one believes them.

Giorgio Firico, 21, tried to go to the ladies changing room at Zara in Oxford when the female assistant told them it was against the rules and refused to give them a number for the clothing.

Giorgio, who studies in the US and is in Oxford visiting a friend, said: “I was wearing men’s clothing but I had two gowns on my shoulder, it was obvious what I wanted to try on.”

It was obvious he wanted to be a pest. That so often is obvious.

Zara has been contacted for response, but had not responded by the time we went to press.

Yeah and it never will. Your attempt to be interesting has fallen flat.

But…but…but…

Good Law Project aka Jolyon Maugham exclaims Trans people must be allowed to have children.

But sir, trans people have had their child-making bits removed or rendered nugatory.

The Gender Recognition Panel is refusing to legally recognise trans people’s affirmed gender if they’re trying to conceive children. But that breaches their human rights.

Does it? How? Is legal recognition of “affirmed” aka fake “gender” a human right? It seems a good deal too niche to be a right. It may be a right according to the Jolyons of the world, but that’s not really definitive.

Good Law Project has appeared at the High Court to support a man who has been denied his gender recognition certificate. The Gender Recognition Panel rejected his application, saying that because he was trying to conceive, he had not been living as a man.

See, that just underlines what a consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers all this is. What tf does “living as a man” even mean? Is it like children living as someone off the tv by thinking it inside their heads? Bullshit in, bullshit out, so a bullshit “gender certificate” is going to remain bullshit whether the man is trying to conceive or trying to count the hairs on his chest.

The full horrors of Tuam are about to be dug up.

The full excavation of a mass grave of babies and young children at Tuam in County Galway is under way. The exhumations will be carried out at the site of an institution for unmarried mothers, which operated between 1925 and 1961.

The story came to international attention 11 years ago, after amateur historian Catherine Corless discovered there were death certificates for 796 babies and children who were in the institution, but no burial records. In 2017, investigators found what they described as “significant quantities of human remains” at the site.

What the BBC carefully does not spell out is that 706 dead babies and children is a massive number and indicates neglect at best and horrors at worst. The Irish Catholic church is under the microscope again and it’s not going to be pretty.

The bodies were in underground chambers in a disused sewage system.

Because the Irish Catholic Church saw them as so much garbage. But hey, don’t you dare have an abortion. You have to gestate that fetus to term and then push it out so that we can starve and torture it to death.

The institution, which was known as St Mary’s mother-and-baby home, was run by Catholic religious order the Bon Secours Sisters and owned by Galway County Council.

Yeah really very wonderful bon secours there. Top notch. Almost as good as handing the babies over to a pack of wolves.

Scientists say the remains are largely “commingled” – in other words, the bones are mixed up.

Because the babies were thrown into the sewer system like so much garbage.

Where are the grownups???

He was doing them a favor.

The US Department of Justice dropped charges on Saturday against Michael Kirk Moore, the Utah doctor accused of destroying more than $28,000 worth of government-provided Covid-19 vaccines and administering saline to children instead of the shot.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, announced the news in a statement on the social media platform X, saying the charges had been dismissed under her direction.

“Dr Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi said. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing.”

Excuse me no he didn’t give them a choice, he lied to them.

According to a 2023 press release from the US attorney’s office in Utah, Moore distributed at least 1,937 fraudulent vaccination record cards in exchange for either direct payment or required donations to a specific charity. The minors he gave saline shots to were under the impression, at the request of their parents, that they were receiving a Covid-19 shot.

That’s not “doing them a favor.”

Recently, the Trump administration canceled a $766m award to Moderna on the research and development of H5N1 bird flu vaccines, and officials announced new restrictions and regulations for Covid mRNA vaccines.

Well that’s fucking terrifying. They’re going to let bird flu run amok. It will be like London in 1665 all over again.

H/t Tim Harris

That’s rich coming from UN Women.

What is the point of calling something “for women” if you’re going to let men have it? Why not just skip the calling it “for women” part if you’re going to do that?

A row at Hampstead Heath Ponds over permission for transgender women to continue swimming in the Ladies’ Pond could reach the High Court.

The campaign group Sex Matters is planning to make a £50,000 legal claim against the City of London Corporation, which runs the bathing ponds on Hampstead Heath, north London.

Since 2019 transgender women, who were born biologically male, have been allowed to swim in the Ladies’ Pond under formal guidance.

Transgender women who were born biologically male and remain biologically male because that’s how that works.

Critics say, however, that this is a breach of the law, in the light of the Supreme Court ruling in April that biological men should not have access to women-only spaces.

I’m a critic, and I say that it’s been an insult and unfair all along, ruling or no ruling.

The organisation that runs the pond is strengthening its policy of welcoming transgender women to the Ladies’ Pond and said that it was planning to put up signs to say that trans women could use the pond, changing rooms and showers.

Because it’s just so necessary to shove men into everything that belongs to women, and refuse to let women have anything just for women. It’s imperative to keep punishing women for being women – disgusting useless people that we are.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Consequences for marine life.

Sulfuric acid will fall as acid rain. Particulate matter of all sorts often leads to (temporary) cooling, but it doesn’t last as long as carbon dioxide. As the carbon increases in the air, the other pollutants remain the same, and eventually they get overwhelmed.

While the optimum trade off may be fewer stomata, it makes it foolish to say that plants will gain that much from increased carbon dioxide. Which is what I was saying earlier – unless the plant growth is limited by carbon dioxide, and ONLY carbon dioxide, you will not likely see great increases in plant growth. Since nitrogen and water are the two greatest limitations on plant growth, and there are only certain conditions where CO2 is limited, the overall increased growth of plants will likely be minimal. The death of plants from increased heat, and from increased insects (insects reproduces better when its warmer) will more than offset that.

The answer? At this point, I would say there isn’t one. Every answer has a downside, yes, even nuclear. But…the answer would be a combination of wind, solar, and nuclear, with limited use also of hydropower. The real answer is to reduce the population, because every single possible answer will be met with, yes, but it will hurt the poor. Yes, but we have to feed eight billion people. Yes, but….

There are excuses floating around in the ozone, and whenever something is suggested that might lead to a change in lifestyles, someone just grabs whichever one is floating by at that moment and deploys it…wham!…to smash your argument to smithereens. We really need to get off our buts.

The truly real answer, though, is the one NOT written on the front of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – panic. But that won’t solve anything, so we say not to, and we still don’t solve anything, because no one thinks it’s worth panicking about. Both solutions are non-starters, and so we don’t start.

It’s sort of like peace in the Middle East.

A long backgrounder piece on the Peggie v NHS case with lots of interesting details.

NHS Fife may be fatally undermining its own case against a nurse who had an altercation in a hospital changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a trans woman, which resumes this week

Good. Keep undermining, NHS Fife.

Peggie, an experienced nurse, was experiencing a sudden and heavy period and feared that it had bled through to her scrubs. She entered the hospital changing rooms to find Upton, a biologically male doctor who identifies as female.

What was said between the pair is disputed, but there was a confrontation. Peggie expressed her discomfort with sharing changing facilities with a colleague she considered male and, within hours, a bullying complaint was lodged by Upton.

That part can never be underlined enough. A woman needing to change her blood-soaked clothes is called a bully by an extremely tall hulking man because she objected to his presence in the women’s changing room. He said she bullied him. Those five words sum up what is so wrong with this revolting perverse women-hating ideology.

The Supreme Court ruling in April that backed the “biological” definition of woman — ostensibly a big boost for Peggie’s case and the wider “gender-critical” cause — led to immediate calls for NHS Fife to throw in the towel. It has refused to do so, contributing to a legal bill of over £220,000 (and rising). 

Because women must be both punished for disobedience and deprived of all rights.

During the tribunal, Jane Russell, the KC representing the NHS and Upton, launched what was perceived to be a character assassination on Peggie, suggesting that the nurse supported Donald Trump, had behaved like a “dog with a bone” and had been “haranguing this poor doctor” ​during the changing room showdown.

This poor poor poor doctor who towers over the nurse – yes he’s definitely the victim here.

One MP said: “Personally I find the case completely astonishing. It speaks to the SNP’s whole approach to gender issues and the extent to which it has taken hold in the public sector. Sandie Peggie’s case is the clearest example of how this niche ideology has taken over, even taking precedence over the law.

“If they lose this case, as they surely will, there will be serious questions of the NHS Fife leadership and the SNP government about how this was ever allowed to get to this stage. There will have to be accountability.”

The answer is gender ideology. It rots the brain.

Although the witness list has not been made public, the tribunal will hear from Isla Bumba, the equality and human rights officer at NHS Fife, whose advice Peggie’s managers relied upon after Peggie complained about Upton’s presence in women’s facilities. ​She had met Upton in the changing rooms twice before the Christmas Eve row.

Bumba, who is in her twenties and worked as a Covid contact tracer for two years after graduating in 2020 before landing the NHS Fife role, told Peggie’s line manager, Esther Davidson, that Upton had a “right” to use the female changing rooms because she “identifies as a woman”.

Bumba, who is paid between £50,861 and £59,159 per year, has described herself as a “support aid” to NHS staff and dealt with issues such as “staff [who] are not sure what the correct pronouns for someone are”.

[Michael] Foran said the fact that NHS managers deferred to Bumba, rather than to lawyers, was “baffling” but spoke to a wider cultural issue in the public sector.

Yes we know what that cultural issue is.

Other key witnesses ​include Kate Searle, an emergency medicine consultant, who was Upton’s line manager and agreed that she should use women’s facilities. Searle also received Upton’s complaint about Peggie’s conduct in the early hours of Christmas Day, 2023.

She has been accused of sending an email to consultants four days later, presenting Upton as the victim and Peggie as the “bully” before an investigation had been opened.

To repeat: Upton is huge; Peggie is not. That’s not always relevant but it sure as hell is here. It’s at the core of the ideology as well as this case – the absolute, ferociously imposed dogma that a man who claims to be a woman is always the victim and a woman who objects to his presence in women’s toilets or politics is always the bully.