There’s this

And then there’s this

Now…has Cleese become a Muggeridge or Stockwood? Or is he still Cleese while the interviewer is a credulous point-missing inquisitor?

When Michael met Malcolm.

There’s bit where Cleese says he knew Palin was steaming. I like that because I’ve heard Palin talking about how furious he was – he did a book talk and signing here a couple of decades ago, and someone must have asked about the Muggeridge encounter: he became quite energetic about how foul Muggeridge was and how angry it made him.

John Dickson is a historian, an actual practicing working credentialed historian, with a PhD in Ancient History from Macquarie University and a visiting scholar gig at Oxford, yet he wrote this absurdity.

A survey found that only 49% of Australians say “Jesus was a real person who actually lived.” You mean 51% don’t?! The horror!

But, frankly, this new survey is also bad news for historical literacy. This reported majority view is not shared by the overwhelming consensus of university historians specialising in the Roman and Jewish worlds of the first century. If Jesus is a “mythical or fictional character”, that news has not yet reached the standard compendiums of secular historical scholarship.

Take the famous single-volume Oxford Classical Dictionary. Every classicist has it on their bookshelf. It summarises scholarship on all things Greek and Roman in just over 1,700 pages. There is a multiple page entry on the origins of Christianity that begins with an assessment of what may be reliably known about Jesus of Nazareth. Readers will discover that no doubts at all are raised about the basic facts of Jesus’s life and death.

But Professor Dickson doesn’t tell us what he considers the basic facts.

Or take the much larger Cambridge Ancient History in 14 volumes. Volume 10 covers the “Augustan Period”, right about the time that Tiberius, Livia, Pliny the Elder, and — yes — Jesus all lived. It has a sizeable chapter on the birth of Christianity. The entry begins with a couple of pages outlining what is known of Jesus’ life and death, including his preaching of the kingdom of God, his fraternising with sinners, and so on. No doubts are raised about the authenticity of these core elements.

Cool; what’s hiding behind that “and so on”?

There was a time when I was quite interested in the historical Jesus question, and read a fair bit about it. If I remember correctly, secular historians consider it reasonable to think the biblical account starts from a real person, although some argue it’s all or almost all (as opposed to just mostly or half or whatever) myth. It’s textual stuff – what is this account based on, what are the sources, which came first, that kind of thing. Did Tacitus really talk about Jesus? Did Jesus walk to Sepphoris when the mood took him and thus get exposed to city life and Hellenistic culture? It’s interesting, and it’s not as cut and dried as Dickson makes it sound.

Just for one thing stories about god-men were a genre at the time, so the fact that there’s a collection of stories about this one god-man isn’t particularly remarkable. It’s a bit like stories about men who metamorphose into women…

Not wanting to labour the point, but we could also turn to the compendium of Jewish history, the Cambridge History of Judaism in four volumes. Volume 3 covers the “Early Roman Period”. Several different chapters refer to Jesus in passing as an interesting figure of Jewish history. One chapter — 60 pages in length — focuses entirely on Jesus and is written by two leading scholars, neither of whom has qualms dismissing bits of the New Testament when they think the evidence is against it. The chapter offers a first-rate account of what experts currently think about the historical Jesus. His teaching, fame as a healer, openness to sinners, selection of “the twelve” (apostles), prophetic actions (like cleansing the temple), clashes with elites, and, of course, and his death on a cross are all treated as beyond reasonable doubt. The authors do not tackle the resurrection (unsurprisingly), but they do acknowledge, as a matter of historical fact, that the first disciples of Jesus “were absolutely convinced that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised and was Lord and that numerous of them were certain that he had appeared to them.”

Yes, and? Lots of people are absolutely convinced of lots of things that they’re wrong about. The fact that some guys 2000 years ago were absolutely convinced that another guy “was Lord” really doesn’t tell us anything much.

H/t Gnu Atheism

Festivities.

Idn that sweet.

No terfs allowed in the coop.

Rex Murphy on The Uninvited:

Who was not invited to participate in the Harry Potter 20th anniversary special? Why, the very woman, who in the most difficult of circumstances, and by the power of her own will and invention, brought the entire phenomenon into existence. She was effectively blacklisted from the celebration of what she created while three pretentious and above all blasphemously ungrateful actors held the spotlight, and further — I’m looking for an elegant verb — dumped on the woman who made them. Made them, almost as completely as she made Harry Potter.

…

Last year when certain authorities began promoting the phrase “people who menstruate” as a replacement for a term familiar since the birth of language and the emergence of conscious life (that would be “woman”), Rowling mocked it. Which is the only both correct and necessary response to these faddish idiocies. Very recently — you will find this hard to believe — when the Scottish police issued a guidance that rapes could be recorded as being carried out by a woman if the perpetrator “identifies as female,” Rowling gave that lunacy an apt Orwell-inspired response: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.”

What if the perpetrator identifies as a five-year-old girl with a pacifier in her mouth?

Now there’s a headline.

Tesla, bowing to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

Great god almighty. As if people don’t already drive insanely enough.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the internet so the function called “Passenger Play” will be locked and won’t work while vehicles are in motion.

Meaning that currently drivers can play video games while tailgating people going the speed limit in a downpour on a dark winter afternoon. Fabulous.

“The Vehicle Safety Act prohibits manufacturers from selling vehicles with defects posing unreasonable risks to safety, including technologies that distract drivers from driving safely,” NHTSA’s statement said.

But haha manufacturers pay no attention because it’s all just so much fun.

No [clap] No [clap] No [clap]

Meanwhile the National Organization for Women, like other national and global organizations for women, should be doing its job and focusing on women, not men who call themselves women and not trans people and not “non-binary” people. You don’t see labor unions dropping all their labor issues to say Respect [clap] the [clap] bosses [clap]. Why is it that women’s organizations are so eager to throw women overboard and “center” the concerns of male people instead?

Tory MP Caroline Nokes just wants to make the Gender Recognition Act kinder.

In order for an individual to have their acquired gender recognised, a person has to prove to a panel of strangers that they will never meet – the gender recognition panel – that they are either feminine or masculine. It has caused a great deal of concern in the transgender community that the panel, in effect, sits in judgment upon them and their transition. Who is anyone to decide whether someone is feminine or masculine enough?

Well, since you ask, why should whether someone is “feminine” or “masculine” be a matter for government at all? Why should it be officially “recognised”? Why should it even be mentioned?

It’s as if there were government panels to rule on how charismatic or repellent people are, and how extroverted or introverted they are, and how cheery or gloomy they are, and so on ad infinitum. Variations in personality should not be a government issue.

The problem of course is that the GRA isn’t about just “feminine” and “masculine” because it’s also about women and men. The process doesn’t just stamp men “feminine,” it stamps them women. That’s the issue. I think Nokes probably knows that perfectly well, but she’s hiding it.

Gender identity is no longer as rigid as it once was, thank goodness. Women wear trousers. Some of us choose to eschew makeup altogether, others only on some days. Hair can be long, or short, or shaved off. But there is no way of knowing whether the panel is making judgments based on outdated stereotypes because it is devoid of transparency.

Notice what she doesn’t say. Women wear trousers, yes, but do men wear skirts? The rules for women have loosened up in some ways (and tightened in others – like the law against having pubic hair) but the rules for men haven’t. Women get to step up to clothes coded for men but men don’t get to step down to clothes coded for women…unless they claim to be women, which seems a tad drastic.

We spent months speaking to trans rights and women’s rights groups and sought to strike a path that safeguarded the rights of both. They are not zero sum – both can be supported. 

No they can’t. They are zero sum in some instances – because of the way men who identify as women push them. Putting men in charge of rape crisis services? Including men on shortlists for women’s prizes? Calling men who rape women “she” in the newspapers and in court?

All I have ever sought is to make the GRA kinder, quicker and much more understanding of the needs of transgender people and the concerns of women’s rights groups.

And yet what she writes in this very piece shows that she puts the concerns of women’s rights group last by a long distance.

Meanwhile in Crouch End –

Because men who say they are women are infinitely more deserving and important and worthy of deference and “be kind” than mere women.

This is a novel way for shops to go about things.

Bookstores deciding which books are well written and thus to be sold and which are not and thus to be unavailable to customers. What a fantastic customer service! Apparently they read all the books themselves to save the buying public time.

Pedophile who Identifies as a 5-Year-Old Girl

A 60-year-old pedophile who claims to identify as a 5-year-old girl was found to have been in breach of his child sexual harm prevention order after he approached two little girls and kissed them.

Janiel Verainer, of Chatham, UK, was found by the court to have breached a sexual harm order imposed in 2016 after he was found kissing a small girl outside of a cafe in Thanet, UK. At the time, child sexual exploitation images were also found on Verainer’s devices. Verainer was sentenced to 15 months in prison, and the sexual harm prevention order – one requiring he stay away from all children – was implemented.

But he did it again: he approached two little girls and kissed them.

During the hearing for his violation, Verainer was dressed like an elf, wearing a green and red dress, red and white thigh-high stockings, and a festive sweater. He was allegedly sucking his thumb throughout.

At a previous hearing he sucked on a pacifier.

You know the punchline – the court Respected His Pronouns.

Via Sackbut

We always have to be kinder. Kinder and kinder and kinder and kinder. There’s never enough. No one bother about being kinder to us though. We’re just old boots.

Trans rights are a major part of the remit of [Tory MP Caroline] Nokes and her committee, which is currently undertaking the inquiry into the government’s response to Gender Recognition Act reform. (May’s government held a long consultation on updating the GRA and committed to introducing those reforms, which were later shelved by Johnson’s administration.) The committee hearings are extraordinarily sensitive, empathetic and detailed sessions with some of the leading figures on both sides of this debate, one of the most bitter in the current political landscape. 

Nokes, in ways that largely go unnoticed, quietly encourages a lot of support and kindness towards trans people. 

Why trans people in particular? The most visible and audible ones are male. Why do they need so much support and kindness? Especially from women?

“These are people who have the worst experience of the health service, they, as young people, have a really rough time in education, they then end up in a relationship where they’re the victim of domestic abuse. You sort of look at it and think we have to make the system kinder to trans people, and instead of focusing on having a massive row about what constitutes a woman, and whether we’re going to refer to a pregnant person as a woman or not, can we not please just be a little bit kinder to people and work out how we can make life easier for trans people?”

Instead of making sure we don’t lose the meaning of the word “woman”??? No we fucking cannot, and why in hell are you asking?

“When we’ve become so much more tolerant about so many aspects of life, it just seems to be really, really awful that we can’t be more understanding, and everybody the whole time wants to drag it back to sort of the lowest common denominator and to wheel out, you know, the one example they can find of a trans woman who’s attacked someone. Please, you know, we can be kinder than that. We can be nicer than that.”

Jesus, point missed by a mile. It’s not primarily about trans women who attack someone, it’s about opportunistic men who can claim to be trans to get access to vulnerable women. What about being kind to those women for a second?

“I have a massive problem with the whole sort of ‘cancel culture’,” she adds. “He who shouts loudest is not always right. And I think that we as a society have lost the ability to debate issues and views without resorting to abuse, and people just wanting to destroy others because they happen not to agree with them.”

You mean like Owen Jones, Jolyon Maugham, Gregor Murray? Tell them to “be kind” why doncha.

No, that’s not true.

That’s a man.

And humans can’t “have sex” with dogs. The man didn’t “have sex with an Alsation”; he abused a dog.

This is not our crime.

I don’t think so.

I don’t think it’s daft or purist or obstinate or stupid to dislike customized pronouns. It’s maybe somewhat stupid or wrong to tell off other people for using them, but I think we have good reasons for objecting to them in general.

For one thing they condition us, as is the plan. If we say it we start to believe it, involuntarily. I don’t want to be conditioned to believe it.

For another it’s a falsehood, and not the minor personal kind to save people’s feelings but the major public kind to convince us of a general falsehood. I just don’t think we should be pressured to comply.

And on a more trivial level it’s just irritating and stupid and tedious, and extra effort to remember.

On the other hand…it’s trickier for a journalist, because Singal can’t just use the real pronouns as the default, in a normal no-problem way. His not using them would send all kinds of messages, which he won’t want to send in a piece of journalism. We’ve been boxed into a no-win situation here.

Jolyon Maugham, aka The Good Law Project, continues his bullying of the LGB Alliance.

The Tribunal has agreed to hear our arguments as to why the LGB so-called Alliance (LGBA) should not have been given charitable status and why their activities are not those of a charity. This means Mermaids, the claimant in the case, will have the opportunity to present the facts in full. The hearing will take place in May 2022.

…

To be registered as a charity, an organisation must be established exclusively for purposes which the law recognises as charitable, and it must pursue them in a way which gives rise to tangible benefits that outweigh any associated harms. We don’t believe that legal threshold has been met.

Naturally he doesn’t, because he doesn’t think women have any rights which men who identify as women are bound to respect.

On Today this morning:

James Kirkup thanks Harry Miller and Fair Cop.

He talked to Harry almost three years ago about what the cops had done.

After all, he’d broken no law, and even the police force involved confirmed that. Instead, he was contacted and a record was made of his conduct under rules around ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs). These were introduced after the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, with the intention of giving the police a means of tracking behaviour that, while not crossing the threshold of a crime, gave a fair indication that a person’s actions were likely to escalate to full-blown crime.

Aaaaand does that apply to gender critical tweets? Are gender critical opinion-havers likely to commit full-blown crimes?

Of course not.

What happened next was a legal campaign lasting almost three years that has seen not just Humberside Police’s treatment of Miller ruled unlawful last year, but the whole NCHI regime called into question by the Court of Appeal.

That latter ruling came this week and would have been bigger news were it not for the Covid blight. In short, the Court accepted Miller’s argument that rules on the use of NCHIs set by the College of Policing for individual constabularies were too broad and blunt. The application of those rules cast the net for hate incidents too widely, and thus risks a ‘chilling effect… on the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression’.

The college is now revising those rules, hopefully returning the hate-incident regime to its original, narrow and valid purpose. Ministers may change the law too, via the Policing Bill now in the House of Lords. There is talk of tens of thousands of NHCIs being stricken from the record. Harry Miller v The College of Policing is therefore a big deal, important for the way we conduct ourselves as a society and the way we deal with difficult, contested ideas.

The subject was discussed in the House of Lords last month, too.

My point is that the failures of the NCHI regime were plain to see, especially to the politicians, lawyers and officials who are supposed to make sure that stupid policies get fixed, or at least, get made a bit less stupid. But it wasn’t those people who fixed the NCHI regime and its chilling effect on free speech. It was Harry Miller and his fellow campaigners from the Fair Cop group he founded: Sarah Phillimore, a barrister, and Rob Jessel, a writer.

They didn’t have to, he says, they could have had a quiet life, he says, but they did it anyway.

Harry Miller and his friends didn’t have to have that fight. But they did. They fought and they won. They corrected a wrong, and made public policy better. There isn’t much positive news these days, but that really is a good story.

You’re darn tootin’, as Helen Joyce put it.

Genius.

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Gregor Murray three days ago:

Gregor Murray two days ago:

He means (he clarifies in a later tweet) that the Scouts deleted his Office account, not that he did it.

In short he had a tantrum and “resigned” on Twitter, and the Scouts said Okbye and deleted his removed his access to the account, and now he’s pretending to be concerned about the fallout for The Children.

Yes it’s Maya’s fault that he resigned in a huff on Twitter. Definitely.

A fossil of a dinosaur about to hatch.

Scientists have announced the discovery of a perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo that was preparing to hatch from its egg, just like a chicken.

Perfectly preserved skeleton, that is.

The researchers say it’s 66 million years old or more.

The discovery has also given researchers a greater understanding of the link between dinosaurs and modern birds. The fossil shows the embryo was in a curled position known as “tucking”, which is a behaviour seen in birds shortly before they hatch.

And the James Webb telescope lifts off tomorrow.