Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Great alternatives

    So Trump makes it very clear that he imposes tariffs not for some sort of credible economic reason but for his personal jollies. He imposes tariffs because he likes to.

    On the day the Supreme Court ruled against a broad swath of President Trump’s tariffs, he was visibly angry — and determined to enact more tariffs anyway.

    “Other alternatives will now be used to replace the ones that the court incorrectly rejected,” he said at a White House press briefing on Feb. 20. “We have alternatives, great alternatives.”

    Tariffs are fun, dammit! They’re a perk of the job, like riding around in the presidenty car and flying around in Air Force One and knocking down buildings.

    But regardless of the politics, the president is fond of tariffs — he regularly calls tariff his favorite word in stump speeches. Indeed, the president’s criticism of free trade deals such as NAFTA and willingness to entertain protectionist policies instead was part of the populist pitch that initially got him elected in 2016.

    Since then, he has shown that he likes the policy in part because it helps him strong-arm other countries into giving concessions on trade deals.

    That sentence could have ended at “other countries”. He likes bullying. He loves bullying. He loves bullying individuals, and getting to bully whole countries is his happy place. Bullies love their work.

  • Speaking directly

    Merched Cymru on Facebook:

    The Charity Commission has now confirmed it’s speaking directly to Amnesty UK’s trustees as part of its formal compliance case, moving well past the “internal review” stage Amnesty itself keeps citing. JK Rowling cuts straight through Amnesty’s own defence: if the report was withdrawn because of its “language,” why did Amnesty express the exact same beliefs, in the same language, months earlier in the report The Times uncovered?

    Beira’s Place staff have received threats and abuse since publication, and the service saw a 600% spike in traffic from people entirely outside its intended remit. This is the practical cost of being publicly branded “anti-rights” by a body with Amnesty’s reach, regardless of how quickly the report came down afterwards.

    Also, charities didn’t need to wait for a code of practice to start complying with a Supreme Court ruling that’s been settled law for over a year, as For Women Scotland make clear. The Charity Commission has now said that exactly, in writing, to the whole sector – which includes Amnesty.

    It’s almost as if trans ideology is all about taking away the rights women have fought for since always.

  • But what are they?

    Actual literal Members of Parliament talking this childish let’s pretend drivel.

    What are trans rights? Trans people have human rights; no one says otherwise. What rights are specific to trans people? Kindly spell them out so that we can see how ridiculous the claim is – and, more seriously, so that we can indeed “debate” whether or not they are rights, and why. If you think men have a right to take over women’s organizations and prizes and jobs and spaces by saying “I am a woman” then kindly explain why you think that, and how the hell you ever got elected to Parliament.

  • They’ve made a formal complaint

    Jolyon Maugham is again using other people’s money to bully women who defend women’s rights.

    We’ve made a formal complaint to the Charity Commission and the government, citing 46 examples of offensive transphobia

    Ahhh “offensive” – but offensive to whom, my dear chap? It’s not offensive to everyone. Are you quite sure it’s offensive to more than a handful of misinformed or deranged people?

    Content warning: transphobic hate

    According to Jolyon, that is. Other onlookers think the “hate” is coming more from Jolyon than from his targets.

    The anti-trans charity Sex Matters are spreading hate – so we’ve sent a formal complaint to the Charity Commission and raised our concerns with the government.

    Using social media and the rightwing press, Sex Matters, their staff, and their trustees keep pumping out hateful, dehumanising narratives about trans people. Charities should work in the public interest, and in return they benefit from tax breaks. But there’s nothing charitable about transphobia. 

    No they don’t. He’s just lying. He has a very distorted idea of what trans ideology is and an even more distorted idea of the views of people who reject trans ideology. It’s in no way “dehumanising” to say that men cannot be women. You know why? Because women are human and so are men, despite the fact that they are what they are and not something else.

    Our complaint includes 46 incidents of inappropriate and offensive conduct – which we’ve presented to the regulator. Taken together, we believe these amount to misconduct and mismanagement of the charity. This simply isn’t how charities should behave.

    We know from long and tedious experience that none of it is misconduct. We know that Maugham thinks non-adherence to trans dogma is wicked, but we also know that trans dogma is idiotic and not worth the attention of sane adults.

    We think Sex Matters are breaking charity law, going beyond anything that could be deemed charitable. They target individuals, offensively conflate trans people with predators and fetishists, and seem set on dehumanising an already vulnerable minority.

    Oops. What? They “seem” set on blah blah blah? Dude that’s just admitting that you’re making it all up. You can’t use the judicial system to punish people because they “seem” (according to you) to be doing blah blah blah. Pro tip: they don’t “seem” it to the rest of us. The rest of us=everyone minus about 50 irritable fools.

    We also found evidence of Sex Matters insinuating that trans people are dangerous predators and fetishists. In a 2024 speech, director of advocacy Helen Joyce said that trans women being allowed to use women’s communal changing rooms was “a state-sanctioned sex crime – voyeurism and indecent exposure”.

    Because it is. You can’t allow men to get naked in women’s changing rooms without its being a crime against women. See also: squaring the circle.

  • Widethpwead outwage

    How is this so mainstreamed? Why is Yahoo Sports on Team Men Can Be Women?

    Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham has decided to use her platform to speak out on a hot-button political issue, and predictably, it has sparked widespread outrage from fans.

    During a recent interview with ESPN, Cunningham spoke out against transgender women competing in women’s sport, eliciting quite a strong response from fans and media.

    And by “quite a strong response” this clumsy male writer means a disapproving response.

    During a recent interview with ESPN, Cunningham was asked about the “MAGA Barbie” nickname she has recently been given. While Cunningham says that label is a projection, given that she is a white girl from Missouri, she did go on to speak out on how to “protect women’s sports.”

    Why the scare-quotes, clumsy male writer? Why shouldn’t she go on to talk about protecting women’s sports? Do women just obviously not deserve to have women’s sports?

    Needless to say, this is a pretty strong stand from Cunningham, but she received a lot of criticism as a result.

    No actually it’s not needless to say. It’s also not needless to explain your ardent though inarticulate disapproval.

    His effort to explain is demonstrated by quoting a few stupid cliche-riddled jibes from random people and leaving it at that. Playground whispers for putative adults.

  • 46 examples

    A “campaign”…

    The Good Law Project (GLP) has started a campaign against Sex Matters, saying that it has identified “46 examples” of Sex Matters “spewing hate”, including “harassment and discrimination”, which it says “breaks charity law”. It says it has submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission.

    Or it could just go after them with hammers.

    Sex Matters was founded as a human-rights charity to create space for debate and understanding of laws and rights concerning sex and gender identity. We think that there are conflicts of rights and that it should be possible to talk about them openly and freely. We believe that this is how everyone’s rights can be protected, and institutions can be held to account.

    …

    GLP has not published its complaint or shared its 46 examples with us but it has published a selection of quotes and links on its website. When we looked at what it had identified as “inappropriate and offensive” conduct it was simply a set of examples of us pointing out the serious harms done by those promoting gender identity.

    They include a powerful and insightful speech given by Sex Matters’ director of advocacy, Helen Joyce, at the Genspect Bigger Picture conference in September 2024, where she argued that the new belief system based on gender self-ID has co-opted and corrupted the language of rights  and is harming women, children and vulnerable people, and breaking medical and scientific thinking.

    True, true, and true. Let’s hope the Charity Commission knows truth when it sees it.

  • Question, discuss, disagree

    It gets even worse.

  • Open conversation

    Ahhh yes good old free speech, the kind where we get to threaten to hit you on the head with a hammer 21 times, which makes you dead.

    STAND WITH HEATHER HERBERT

    STAND FOR OPEN CONVERSATION

    Yes, because it’s “conversation” to hope that a woman beaten to death with hammer blows to the head had “a very painful death”. I love conversations like that, don’t you?

    Meanwhile, of course, we’re forbidden to say that men are not women, and if we go ahead and say it, we risk being beaten to death with hammer blows to the head.

  • Civil servants face being sanctioned

    It’s like being in nursery school. “Now, Doreen, if Bobby likes to pretend to be a tiger it’s unkind to tell him he’s not a tiger.”

    Civil servants face being sanctioned if they fail to use the preferred name or gender of a transgender colleague, leaked Whitehall guidance has revealed.

    The guidance, labelled “official sensitive” and created by the Cabinet Office, said calling a colleague by the incorrect pronouns could lead to them being disciplined.

    Oh come on. In the Civil Service??? Isn’t it time to grow up now? The Civil Service is serious business, and adults pretending to be something they’re not and trying to force others to play along is not serious business. It’s utterly childish and it’s downright embarrassing to watch all these putative fellow adults trying to force others to play the silly game. You want grownups for grownup work!

    The document outlines how fellow civil servants should treat transgender colleagues at work and includes warnings that “deliberate dead naming or misgendering to deny, mock or invalidate” a trans person would be investigated as potential misconduct.

    But there is no “dead naming” or “misgendering” – there’s only pretending.

    The leaked guidance said that it should be established whether a civil servant intentionally called someone by their pre-transition name or referred to them by the incorrect gender because of “a neurodivergent condition or memory issue”.

    It doesn’t matter. Employers should not be mandating this kind of lying and games-playing. Everybody should grow up.

  • He would say legitimate

    And there’s always Maugham.

  • More than 20?

    Real question.

    Ann Widdecombe was hit 21 times.

  • A longtime critic

    No no no we must not have energy efficiency!!

    The Trump administration is dismantling a wide array of federal energy-efficiency programs at the same time that war in Iran is raising oil prices, climate change is fueling record heat that is driving up demand for air conditioning and new data centers are straining America’s electricity supply.

    Wtf for? Is it bad to have energy efficiency? Is it good to waste energy?

    Trump has been a longtime critic of energy conservation rules, saying they limit consumer choice and ruin appliances. Over the past year, the administration has proposed rescinding requirements that manufacturers make washing machines and other appliances that use less electricity and water. The government has relaxed fuel-economy rules for new cars and trucks and criticized state building codes meant to curb energy use. Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill last year phased out tax breaks for homeowners who upgraded insulation or bought more efficient water heaters.

    I think Trump has Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

  • So much for respect and rights

    Speaking of rights for particular groups, it’s crucial to prevent women from having any such rights.

    JK Rowling has said she is willing to “help with legal costs” after an event organised by the Women’s Rights Network group was cancelled by Féile an Phobail.

    The west Belfast festival organisers posted a public statement on social media saying the Respect, Rights & Reality event, which was part of the Féile programme, had been withdrawn as it was “promoting campaigns against rights for the transgender community”.

    Of course it wasn’t doing that, but if it had been, what would that tell us about rights for the trannsgenner communninee? If some or all putative rights of the transgenner communninee are in conflict with women’s rights, is there some obvious reason women just have to put up with it?

    Yesterday, Féile issued a statement about the event, writing: “An event application was submitted to this year’s Féile programme by a group called the Women’s Rights Network.

    Féile an Phobail was unaware from the initial submission that this event would promote campaigns against rights for the transgender community.

    Féile an Phobail takes pride in standing up for those who are marginalised and attacked.

    Unless they’re women. If they’re women, obviously they have no right to have rights. We are very progressive.

    The Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Network is described as a cross-community volunteer organisation and on their website say they are dedicated to defending the “sex-based rights of women and girls through advocacy, education, and community engagement.”

    Not allowed. Sorry. (Not actually sorry.) Women and girls are the oppressors; men pretending to be women are the oppressed.

    A statement from the Women’s Rights Network said: “Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland is shocked and deeply disappointed that Féile an Phobail has cancelled our event, Respect, Rights & Reality, after previously accepting it into this year’s programme.

    “Our event was a discussion on women’s sex-based rights. That was made clear to Féile when our application was submitted.

    “This decision follows an organised online campaign against the event. That campaign included misogynistic, abusive and, in our view, threatening rhetoric directed at women associated with it. No organisation that values free speech should allow intimidation to determine which voices are heard.”

    Unless the intimidation is coming from the trans communninny.

    “Through this event women have sought to discuss their own rights. Feile has chosen to silence the voices of the very group that makes up half the population. Women are not a fringe interest group. We are half the population.”

    I keep saying this. We’re half the population and we’re the half that gestates the whole. Without women: extinction.

  • Must surely be moot

    How true.

    Certainly.

    Also, workers’ rights don’t exist.

    The rights of people with disabilities don’t exist.

    The rights of indigenous people don’t exist.

    Refugees’ rights don’t exist.

    There’s even a famous joke about this obvious error that dates from 1894. In translation:

    The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread. 

    Anatole France, Le Lys rouge.

    Note the good old pink blue and white flag next to this genius’s name.

  • Speaking of ideological capture…

    Sigh. History is not just a matter of saying “Look at these important men.” There is, in fact, quite a lot more to it than that.

    Republicans think otherwise. They want the Smithsonian to do some Great Men Worship, god damn it! That’s its job!

    House Democrats issued a rebuttal to the White House’s attack on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, arguing in a report that the Trump administration cherry-picked quotes, mangled basic facts and misstated who controls the institution — even as House Republicans escalate the fight by summoning the museum’s director to testify Tuesday.

    …

    Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, requested in a July 13 letter that Anthea Hartig, the American history museum’s director, testify Tuesday morning about what he called “the misuse of federal funds” to promote “divisive, politically tendentious revisions of American history.” The letter says the museum’s leaders “either lack an understanding of the Nation’s heritage or are determined to blatantly mischaracterize and disparage the American experiment.”

    The hearing follows the White House Domestic Policy Council’s July 4 report, “Saving America’s Story,” which accused the museum of “ideological capture” and cast Hartig — named more than 220 times in text and footnotes of the 162-page report — as “an activist advancing an ideological agenda.”

    The Democrats’ response, prepared by the minority on the House Administration Committee and reviewed by The Washington Post, argues the White House report contradicts itself, citing the White House’s claim that visitors “will find no major exhibit dedicated to the founding era or figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson” only to concede later that the museum features “remarkable artifacts like the desk Thomas Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s uniform” and the Star-Spangled Banner.

    This is just kindergarten stuff. There’s more to history than a parade of Great Men – a lot more. There’s more to history than can possibly stuffed into one museum, or a thousand museums, and there is nothing wrong with a museum of American history focusing on, for instance, social history as opposed to great man biography.

    Furthermore Trump has no jurisdiction over the Smithsonian.

    The White House’s lengthy report earlier this month drew a rebuttal from Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III and concern from the institution’s staff and alumni.

    “The Smithsonian was established as an independent institution precisely so no president could dictate how our nation’s story is told,” Morelle said in a statement. “Committee Democrats will continue defending that independence because no president gets to edit the American story.”

    And of all the people we don’t want editing the American story, Trump is the most.

  • Disinvite the women

    Yet another “No Feminists Allowed”:

    Féile an Phobail has cancelled an event it was due to hold during the festival.

    Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland (WRN NI), which describes itself as “putting the sex based needs of women and girls first” said that “féile has chosen to silence the voices of the very group that makes up half the population”.

    The event, Respect, Rights and Reality, was due to be held in August. Féile an Phobail said it had informed WRN NI that it was withdrawing their event.

    “Féile an Phobail was unaware from the initial submission that this event would promote campaigns against rights for the transgender community,” it said on social media.

    There it is again – that ill-advised assumption that putting the sex-based needs of girls first necessarily amounts to being against rights for the transgenner communniny.

    The event run by WRN NI was due to take place on 4 August and had a range of speakers, including Fiona McAnena from the Sex Matters organisation.

    Sex Matters was founded by Maya Forstater, who lost her job after saying that people cannot change their biological sex.

    She was later awarded compensation by an employment tribunal which ruled that Forstater experienced “direct discrimination” related to her beliefs.

    Forstater said Féile an Phobail were “discriminating” against WRN NI and Sex Matters.

    Yes, sneery BBC; that’s because they are “””discriminating””” against women and feminist organizations. Fuck off with your scare-quotes.

    In their statement, Féile an Phobail said it “takes pride in standing up for those who are marginalised and attacked”.

    No it doesn’t. It doesn’t take pride in standing up for women. It takes pride in not standing up for women – it takes pride in shunning women and withdrawing invitations to let women speak. Féile an Phobail treats women like the enemy. Féile an Phobail sucks.

  • Trump demanded

    Trump wants her to give him money. Of course he does.

    Trump on Tuesday demanded that writer E. Jean Carroll return the $5.6 million that a judge ordered him to pay her, according to reports.

    The president’s legal team was seeking an emergency injunction to order Carroll to give Trump back the payment that was issued on July 9 by a court-controlled escrow account, The Independent reported. Trump and his team have hoped that the Supreme Court could “grant him a legal Hail Mary and reverse the judgment, sending the money back to him.”

    A federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

    The money is not on its way back to him.

  • 21 times

    Warning: horror

    Ann Widdecombe, the right-wing British politician whose killing this month sent shock waves through the country’s political establishment, was struck 21 times on the head with a hammer during the fatal lunchtime attack, prosecutors said in a London court on Tuesday.

    …

    Ms. Widdecombe was sitting at a table at her home in the village of Haytor in southwest England on July 8, eating lunch, when a man entered her home and asked her, “Don’t suppose you have bank cards and ID?,” according to images from a security camera recovered by police who investigated the crime scene, prosecutors said. They did not say whether or how she responded.

    The man, wearing black gloves, then struck Ms. Widdecombe 21 times with the hammer before tipping her out of her chair onto the floor, taking her wallet and leaving, all within around two minutes, a prosecutor, Kashif Malik, said. He did not say anything about a potential motive.

    Hideous.

  • On desiccated river beds

    Oh, huh, what do you know, it turns out that climate change is an actual thing, not just a threat from those mean poopy-heads who science.

    Houseboats lie perched on desiccated riverbeds, receding water levels have left wide stretches of newly exposed riverbank and the shipping sector is bracing for trouble. The low-lying Netherlands is used to grappling with too much water; now it’s struggling with too little.

    On Thursday, the country declared an official water shortage, raising its national drought response to Level 2. “Due to persistent drought, less water is entering our country via rain and rivers, while the demand for water is rising,” the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management said in a statement.

    …

    The situation “is alarming, and I do not say that lightly,” said Hannah Cloke, Regius professor of meteorology and climate science at the University of Reading, in the UK. “The calendar is what worries me most. The Netherlands has declared an actual water shortage in mid-July,” she added. There’s plenty of summer left to run, and the forecasts show little hope of relief for weeks.

    This story is playing out across many parts of Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent. It is enduring a summer of rolling, brutal heat waves, drying up rivers and threatening water supplies. “This is not bad luck,” Cloke said. “The heat dries the soil, empties the rivers and drives up demand for water all at once. That is the fingerprint of a changing climate.”

    And changing not in a good way.

    It’s not just the Netherlands that’s suffering. The Rhine, a vital artery for European trade, also runs through Germany. Water levels in parts of the river have fallen so low that cargo ships have had to reduce their load and spread it across multiple vessels, increasing costs.

    In July, low water levels caused a river cruise ship to run aground on the Rhine in the city of Bonn. It took several hours for a freighter to pull the ship into deeper water.

    The Rhine’s water levels in Germany have risen over the past few days thanks to rain, but the danger isn’t over. “We have come back from the brink, with an improvement compared to the lowest water levels earlier this week, but much more rain is still needed,” one commodity trader told Reuters.

    In Hungary last week, near record lows on the Danube Riverleft cruise ships stranded off Budapest, denting the country’s tourism sector. Meanwhile in Romania over the weekend, the Danube plunged to its lowest level in 30 years, according to Reuters, disrupting shipping and leading to restrictions on irrigation.

    It’s almost as if the climate actually matters.

  • Camera hog

    Yeah, see…we don’t want men like Herbert barging in. We want them to go away and stay there.