Janice Turner on the problems with Pride Policing:

In 2019, Stephen Ireland posted a film of himself at Surrey police HQ in Guildford beside a Jaguar patrol car customised with a swirling rainbow design and the name of the organisation he founded and controlled, Pride in Surrey (PiS). “This is what I will be riding around in today,” says an ecstatic Ireland, as the officer who will act as his chauffeur waves.

Ireland energetically cultivated Surrey police. He spoke on panels alongside officers, attended joint school visits, befriended its LGBT staff group. PiS was a “partner agency” on the force’s website. Most significantly, he was highly regarded by the then chief constable Gavin Stephens. After Surrey’s police and crime commissioner Lisa Townsend expressed gender critical views, Ireland launched a vicious campaign to have her sacked. Stephens, instead of offering her support, told her to apologise because Ireland “is a friend of Surrey police”.

Now that “friend” is serving 24 years in prison for raping a 12-year-old boy. Ireland had messaged his partner David Sutton, 27, (jailed for four and a half years) to say he’d found a “14-year-old baby” on Grindr who “wants to play with men’s bodies”. Discovering he was even younger, Ireland said: “OK, we just have to keep it a secret.” The couple smoked methamphetamine with the boy, described in court as “highly vulnerable”, filmed the rape and added it to their bank of paedophilic images.

I still, for the millionth time, have to wonder why Surrey police was so cuddly with Pride in Surrey and not with women in Surrey.

Paedophiles don’t all creep in the shadows: some know it’s safer to loom large on the landscape. That master of hiding in plain sight, Jimmy Savile, held a Friday morning breakfast club for West Yorkshire coppers at his Leeds flat. After his crimes were exposed, detectives said his friendly openness closed their minds to rumours. Likewise, it is not suggested Surrey police knew about Ireland’s crimes — its eventual investigation was thorough — but that its institutional approval acted for years as a protective forcefield.

Plus he’s a guy and guys are trustworthy, while women…well, you know.

The Mediterranean is too hot.

…recent ocean heat in the Mediterranean Sea has been so intense that scientists fear potentially devastating consequences for marine life.

The temperature of the sea surface regularly passed 30C off the coast of Majorca and elsewhere in late June and early July, in places six or seven degrees above usual…It has been the western Med’s most extreme marine heatwave ever recorded for the time of year, affecting large areas of the sea for weeks on end.

…

“What is different this year is that 30C sea temperatures have arrived much earlier, and that means that we can expect the summer to be more intense and longer,” said Marta Marcos, associate professor at the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain. “I grew up here, so we are used to heatwaves, but this has become more and more common and intense.”

We’re all familiar with heat, but more and more of it where it shouldn’t be is still a bad thing.

A letter to the editor:

The 2022 Census found that just under 0.5% of people in Scotland are trans. The Scottish Government employs 9,300 staff, so perhaps 40 are trans. Most will have been working at the government for years, and happily using the toilets in a way that matches their gender identity and appearance. For many of them, their work colleagues may not know that they are trans.

No.

Grown-ass adult people know a woman when they see one, and they know a man when they see one. The end.

There have been no reported cases of a trans person causing trouble or harassment in any of those toilets.

Oooh imagine that – in a climate of intense bullying of people who know what sex other people are, the people being bullied don’t dare complain.

But the group Sex Matters wants those trans people now to be forced to switch to using the other toilet – trans women required to use the men’s toilet, and trans men to use the women’s (“Seven-day ultimatum to ministers over trans toilet policy”, The Herald, July 4). That will be a mismatch with their presentation and appearance.

How fascinating; now think about what it will be for everyone else.

Such a change would humiliate trans staff and reveal their trans status to colleagues and other users. 

Again. Fascinating; now think about other people. Think about the women humiliated by years of having men in their toilets.

If this does go to the legal action threatened by Sex Matters, we will see how the Scottish courts decide between the privacy and dignity of trans employees and the insistence by Sex Matters that everyone has to always be treated as the sex on their original birth certificate…

Er, no, we will see how the Scottish courts decide between the privacy and dignity of everyone and the bizarre unreasonable demands of a handful of people who claim to be trans.

effectively an insistence that trans people, as such, do not exist. Of course trans people do exist

Stop right there. Manipulative wording foul, as usual. Of course people who claim to be trans exist; the issue is that they claim to be the opposite sex, and that claim is absurd and impossible. Of course they do exist, but they are wrong (or dishonest) about their claims to be the sex they are not.

From The Independent:

“I’m appalled by my party’s stance on trans rights,” says Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East, over the ban on puberty blockers and the government’s response to the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman.

Then she’s a fool. (To be fair, we already knew that.) There’s no such thing as a “right” to receive puberty blockers because you believe you are the sex other than the one your body has. That’s not a right, it’s tampering.

It’s such a prominent topic, that Whittome’s been asked many times by her constituents if she thinks about leaving the party, or if the Labour party – founded by the trade union movement, as a party for the working class – no longer serves her and her beliefs. 

Yes, the trade union movement, for the working class – wtf does that have to do with puberty blockers?

Whittome says she’s “really proud that this government’s pledged to half violence against women and girls,” but thinks that the increasing attacks on trans women in the news, the courts and on TV, which are “rooted in very archaic and misogynistic ideology,” are harmful for all women. 

Then she’s stupid and wrong.

“If we’re continuing to marginalise and scapegoat trans people, especially trans women, as a threat to other women, that means we’re not focusing on the real problem – men who are violent.”

Trans women are men. The ones who are violent are men who are violent. That’s the whole point.

The number of male violence offenses of stalking, harassment, sexual assault and domestic violence have grown by 37 per cent in the past five years. Trans people, particularly trans women, are far, far more likely to be victims,” she says.

Than women? Where did she get that statistic? Her dreams?

Ok so what about this then.

On a lighter note, when did the fascist playbook become throwing a strop?

Trump has been randomly holding back funds for things he might not like if he had any clue what they are. Better penniless than sorry, right?

The Trump administration has declined to release nearly $7 billion in federal funding that helps pay for after-school and summer programs, support for students learning English, teacher training and other services.

The money was expected to be released by Tuesday. But in an email on Monday, the Education Department notified state education agencies that the money would not be available.

Because it’s bad to fund education. Ignorance is good – just look how far it’s taken Trump!

“It’s catastrophic,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, a group that works to expand after-school services for students. She estimated that the federal dollars for after-school and summer-school programs — about $1.3 billion annually — support 1.4 million students, mostly lower income, representing about 20 percent of all students in after-school programs nationally.

Among other things, those after-school programs make it possible for parents of young children to have jobs. Trump is keen for the working class to be working, right? Well, having 6-year-olds sent home at noon is not going to help with that.

Heidi Sipe, the superintendent in Umatilla, Ore., a low-income, rural district, said her district’s after-school program has traditionally gone until 4:45 or 5:30 p.m. and was fully funded through federal dollars.

She recently sent a note to parents urging them to make backup plans, though few exist in her community, where she said there is no Y.M.C.A. or similar alternatives.

Which means some people (mostly women) are going to have to quit their jobs, which will make their families poorer.

Robert Reich in a rally the troops screed on Facebook:

[Trump] is targeting universities that he believes haven’t adequately eliminated DEI, or have allowed transgender athletes to compete, or failed to stop demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza. Last week, his regime forced a major university president to resign.

It doesn’t help the cause of resisting Trump to lie about the trans issue. The issue is not “allowing trans athletes to compete.” The issue is letting men compete against women.

Huh. After all these years, Frances Coppola (not the movie guy) is still being horrible.

I bet you thought tariffs were something to do with international trade. Silly you; no, they’re to force naughty countries to do what Trump tells them to do.

Trump sent his Brazilian counterpart a stunning letter Wednesday, informing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that his country would face a new 50% tariff “due in part to…the way Brazil has treated” former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump political ally.

Also Brazil hasn’t made its bed or put away its toys.

Trump blamed the massive spike in tariffs partly on “Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans.” The first reference is related to the trial of Bolsonaro, a one-time frequent visitor to Mar-a-Lago, on charges of attempting to illegally overturn his country’s presidential election results in 2022. “This trial should not be taking place,” Trump wrote. “It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

Trump really does not like it when a guy who merely tries to overturn his country’s election results is charged with the crime of trying to overturn his country’s election results.

But Trump also attempted to frame the decision as one grounded in legitimate economic and trade issues. “In addition, we have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with Brazil, and have concluded that we must move away from the longstanding, and very unfair trade relationship engendered by Brazil’s Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers. Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal,” he wrote. Contrary to Trump’s claims, though, the United States holds a $7 billion trade surplus with Brazil.

So??? It should be 70 billion, no make that 700 billion. It should be so huge it can be seen from the moon.

So much for emergency management.

More cabins and buildings at Camp Mystic — the tragic site of more than two dozen deaths in the Texas flood — were at risk of flooding than what the federal government had previously reported, according to new analysis from NPR, PBS’s FRONTLINE and data scientists.

Maps by First Street, a climate risk modeling company in New York City, show at least 17 structures in the path of flood waters, compared to maps produced by FEMA, highlighting a longstanding risk facing many Americans. The analysis also shows at least four cabins for young campers were in an area designated by FEMA as an extreme flood hazard, where water moves at its highest velocity and depth.

For decades, FEMA’s maps have failed to take rainfall and flash flooding into account, relying instead on data from coastal storm surges and large river flooding, even as climate change is supercharging rainfall intensity. Nationwide, First Street found more than twice as many Americans live in dangerous flood-prone areas than FEMA’s maps suggest, leaving many homeowners and even local officials unaware of the risk.

You’d kind of hope the federal agency would do better.

But in recent years, many properties affected by disasters are turning up outside FEMA’s floodplains. When Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina last year, 98 percent of the damaged homes were not included in FEMA’s maps. This meant that not only were most homeowners unable to claim flood insurance, most of them had not been obligated to build in a way that could have helped them better survive the storm.

FEMA has known about this problem for years, but the agency lacks the mandate and funding from Congress to address it, according to Porter.

So we’re on our own.

Even when FEMA does mark the most dangerous flood areas, though, those warnings are not always heeded. At Camp Mystic, NPR found at least eight buildings, including four cabins used to house younger campers, are located inside what FEMA designates a floodway, the most dangerous area of the floodplain where water is expected to move rapidly during a storm.

Yes but they’re beside the river, where it’s pretty.

Even better is that they sat there whispering to each other like two kids who haven’t done their homework and are arguing over whose dog ate it.

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are facing ridicule after a reporter’s question seemed to catch both off guard, prompting the two to exchange whispers before passing the question off on another official.

“Psst, the what?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t hear.”

“Did you finish yours?”

“I didn’t start it, did you?”

During the presidential cabinet meeting on Tuesday, a journalist asked about Russia’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. Trump leaned toward Hegseth and whispered, “What do you know about this?” Hegseth responded quietly, “John might know,” prompting Trump to say aloud, “Well, I’d ask John to discuss it.”

Sir sir sir sir sir you’re supposed to be the big boss here, you went out of your way to get to be the big boss, so newflash, you’re at the top of the chain, you’re supposed to know. You’re not supposed to run around asking your flunkies or whisper like a child who’s wet his pants. This is your responsibility, not anyone else’s.

This is normal, everything is fine, they know exactly what they’re doing.

President Donald Trump’s decision to send more defensive weapons to Ukraine came after he privately expressed frustration with Pentagon officials for announcing a pause in some deliveries last week — a move that he felt wasn’t properly coordinated with the White House, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The Pentagon, which announced last week that it would hold back some air defense missiles, precision-guided artillery and other weapons pledged to Ukraine because of what U.S. officials said were concerns that American stockpiles were in short supply. Trump said Monday that the U.S. will have to send more weapons to Ukraine, effectively reversing the move.

Do they talk to each other? Do all parties make sure all other parties know what is being done? Or is it all just free-form, everyone acting on divine inspiration and nobody communicating?

Trump makes sure to tell everyone he never knew anything about any of it, which is a good look for a top boss.

But in a series of public comments that seemed to only cause further confusion about who exactly is in charge of the administration’s foreign policy, Trump pleaded ignorance about the halted delivery, telling Volodymyr Zelenskyy last Friday that he, as commander-in-chief, was not responsible. Asked by a reporter during a televised Cabinet meeting on Tuesday who had ordered the pause, Trump shot back, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

Uhhh because I’m the reporter and you’re the top boss, it’s not my job to know, it’s your job to know. It’s your job to know.

The White House declined to confirm that Hegseth made the call to stop the shipment to Ukraine, perhaps aware that having a rogue Defense secretary is just as alarming as having a president who’s oblivious to major foreign-policy decisions.

It’s all just as alarming as everything else.

GB News has more.

Labour’s LGBT+ group has sparked outrage after nominating a transgender woman to become their next Women’s Officer.

Delivering his verdict on GB News, commentator Alex Armstrong declared that a “man cannot understand women’s issues”.

That, but even more basically, the very act of accepting such a nomination is a massive insult to women. Men who do that to women are misogynists to their core, so what the hell business does a Labour group have making a misogynist man their Women’s Officer?

This is useful, as an illustration of the broken thinking that got us here.

Hello? Anybody home? Children age 3 say a lot of things that are not purely factual/accurate. Children age 3 are not the first people we turn to when evaluating truth claims. Children age 3 are not aware of a sharp distinction between fantasy and reality. Children age 3 enjoy pretending to be a range of things: animals, toys, shrubbery, monsters, dragons, adventurers, cartoon characters and the like.

If your boy age 15 tells you he’s a girl there’s an issue. If your boy age 3 tells you he’s a girl you nod absent-mindedly and get on with your day.

Activists taunt women:

Trans rights activists have put forward a biological man to be the women’s officer for Labour’s LGBT+ group.

That is insult for the sake of insult. They know it’s an insult and that’s why they’re doing it. Insulting women is now a core principle of “LGBT+” groups.

The Labour Party has agreed to scrap its annual women’s conference, warning of a “significant risk of a legal challenge” if self-identified women are allowed to attend.

Excuse me? They’ve “agreed” to get rid of the women’s conference to make things easier for themselves at the expense of mere women?

The Trans Rights Alliance has put forward Steph Richards, a transgender woman in possession of a gender recognition certificate, as its candidate for women’s officer.

In a post on X, Labour LGB said: “Many people say that trans ideology is a men’s rights movement.

“The ‘Trans Alliance’ (seeking to take over the once-great LGBT+ Labour) has set out to prove this. Also breaking party rules by putting a man forward to be women’s officer.”

Breaking party rules and deliberately taunting women.

Richards told website LabourList: “I am legally female, other than in regards to the Equality Act and the Act does not apply to the position within LGBT+ Labour so I am thoroughly within my legal right and my moral right to be able to stand for this position.”

Like hell he is. There is no “moral right” for a man to stand for a position that’s explicitly for a woman. Talk of a man being “legally female” is just gibberish.

Peak trivialization achieved.

The question facing Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas at a news conference on Tuesday was whether he would call for an investigation into possible failures surrounding the deadly floods, which include a lack of state and local spending on flood control measures and warning systems.

To answer, Mr. Abbott said asking about blame was “the word choice of losers,” and then invoked a beloved Texas tradition — football — as he deflected questions about accountability for a disaster that has left at least 111 people dead and more than 170 missing.

“Every square inch of our state cares about football,” Mr. Abbott said, referring to the Friday night lights of high school fields and the state’s college and pro teams. “Every football team makes mistakes,” he added.

Extending the metaphor further, the governor said losing teams assigned blame while championship teams responded to mistakes by saying: “We got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again, that we win this game.”

Fucking hell. Lethal flooding is not a football game. It’s not like a football game. If you’re strolling in a national park and a bear comes rushing toward you you’re not facing an exciting sports challenge, you’re about the be the bear’s next meal. Distinctions of this type are really quite important.

Disaster preparedness is not like coaching football nor is it like playing football.

Mr. Abbott, a Republican, said the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature would be investigating the flash floods in Central Texas and discussing how to prevent their recurrence when state lawmakers meet for a special session later this month.

But he and other prominent Republicans have pushed back against critics who have called for investigations into unfilled staff positions at National Weather Service offices in Texas, or a lack of emergency warning systems along the Guadalupe River.

Well fine, let’s all just throw our hands in the air and trust in “God” to save us from fires and earthquakes and droughts and tornadoes. With all the money we save we can buy Trump another big airplane.

Brendan O’Neill mocks Owen “Babyface” Jones for trying to scold JK Rowling.

Jones is hopping mad. He’s even written a 1,300-word screed on what a rotter Rowling is, which I’m sure we can all agree is a perfectly normal response to a woman making a joke. His line of attack is that Rowling has been shamefully silent on the suffering of Palestinians. She claims to stand up for women, he says, yet she’s schtum on what is happening to women in Gaza.

His Rowlingphobic diatribe drips with haughty sexism. He bemoans her “useless obsessions”, by which he presumably means her valiant defence of the reality of sex and her financial backing of women and homosexuals who have been persecuted for their beliefs by either their bosses or the state. Sounds pretty useful to me, Owen.

He commands her: “End your silence.” Maybe he didn’t get the memo – men don’t get to tell women what to do anymore. Women are free to think and say whatever they please. Radical, I know!

Well, maybe men in general don’t get to tell women what to do, but of course OJ is an exception. Why? Because he’s so brilliant, so charismatic, so passionate yet wise.

Rowling’s bold defiance of the gender cult is a strike for the autonomy of all women. In contrast, the myopic Israelophobia of the whackjob Left fashions a ruthless hierarchy in which the pain of Palestinians counts for more than the pain of anyone else on earth.

What’s more, these faux-feminists zip their lips when women are being oppressed by Islamists. They cosplay as feminists at home, holding forth on the gender pay gap and whatnot. Yet they fall silent in the face of the Iranian regime’s mass murder of women who want more rights or the Taliban’s medieval subjugation of its female population.

Not to mention in the face of the Saudi regime, the Afghan regime, the Pakistani regime, and on and on. Fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” trumps solidarity with women every time.

Make them dig up turnips!

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday seemingly contradicted President Trump’s recent pledge to let immigrant farmworkers remain in the United States if their employers vouch for them. Instead, she put forth an insane scheme in which Medicaid recipients will replace deported farm laborers.

“There will be no amnesty,” Rollins said. “The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way. And we move the workforce towards automation and 100 percent American participation, which, again, with 34 million … able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”

That’s the ticket. Take away their health insurance and then drive them into the cotton fields. We should get some good songs out of it.

Ah yes, because everything three-year-olds say is true and accurate and not at all shaped by lack of information.

Paul Krugman on machismo and climate change:

There is, it turns out, a strong link between the manosphere — the online movement promoting “masculinity,” misogyny and opposition to feminism — and anti-environmentalism. For example, in 2023 Jordan Peterson convened a high-profile conference to declare that concerns about climate change are a “conspiracy run by narcissistic poseurs.”

If you think about it, this makes sense — not intellectually but emotionally. Don’t concern about the environment and advocacy of “clean energy” sound kind of, well, feminine? Real men burn stuff and don’t worry if the process is dirty.

The very word “clean” is horribly girly. Who wants to be clean when you can be dirty instead?

And manosphere-type attitudes are clearly widespread in MAGA. One of the main arguments Trump officials and supporters have made for tariffs is that they will bring back “manly” jobs in manufacturing. (They won’t, but that’s another story.) The same notion underlies the doomed attempt to revive the coal industry.

But here’s the thing: MAGA and the manosphere may hate clean energy, but they won’t be able to stop the rise of renewables. All they can do, possibly, is stop the rise of renewables in the United States. Other nations, China in particular, are making huge investments in wind and solar power, because they understand what Trump and his allies refuse to acknowledge — that this is the only way forward.

Whatever. China itself is girly. Look at the name! All those prissy flowered tea cups and pink soup bowls! Yuck! Real men stick an axe into something and chew their way around it.