Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Good relations between groups of staff.

…NHS Fife has a duty to foster good relations between groups of staff with different protected characteristics.

Yeah, but some groups are more equal than others.

Neither Upton nor Peggie should ever have been put in this position. It is the employer’s failing and NHS Fife has failed both.

I disagree. NHS Fife did not “put” Upton “in this position.” He put himself in that position all by himself. Upton chose to enter a female single sex space knowing he was male. NHS Fife permitted him to do so. That was not an accident. That was not a mistake. It was deliberate, on the part of both Upton and NHS. They are co-conspirators, or at least offender and enabler/apologist.

Sporting bodies which allow men to cheat against women are doing no disservice to the men who are cheating. Siding with cheating men, and persecuting women who complain is a violation of their duty of care to the women under their rules and regulations. Similarly, NHS Fife, by allowing Upton to enter women’s spaces, was not “failing” him, they were aiding and abetting him, because they took measures against Peggie. They were allowing his violation of boundaries, and he knew he was violating those boundaries, just as men in women’s sports know they’re cheating.

Just because the authorities let them cheat doesn’t let men off the hook for willingly taking advantage of the opportunity to cheat they’ve been handed. Their poor sportsmanship and taking of women’s places is still on them personally, however “inclusive” the sports federation might be. Would they feel that they’d been “failed” if they were allowed to compete against children, stealing all their awards and risking injury? Would they be absolved from their own opportunism in this case? No. Well the same goes for Upton. He knew what he was doing when he did it; he took advantage, in a predatory way, of a loophole opened to him by authorities who should have known better, who were failing to meet and uphold their legal and moral obligations to the women they betrayed, then punished.

How about another analogy. It is no defence of your actions if a misguided or corrupt police officer or police department tells you it’s okay to break into somebody’s house. It’s still wrong, supposed “official” “permission” or “inclusion” notwithstanding. He wasn’t yet eligible for even the flimsy, fictional, figleaf of a GRC, so however mistakenly supportive the current laws are, he did not even clear their offensively ridiculous low bar of acceptance.

Jane McClenachan in the Morning Star on the Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife tribunal:

This is a case that should never have happened and responsibility lies with the Scottish government, the NHS and the trade unions.

Their collective disregard for women’s rights has been made public. Inaccurate guidance issued by all of these organisations advises that individuals can choose which single-sex facilities they wish to use according to their gender identity. This mistaken position is set out in model trans equality policies produced by trade unions.

In point of fact, the Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Regulation 1992 requires employers to provide separate changing rooms and toilets for male and female staff.

NHS Fife has failed to do so. Its workplace policy is not compliant, and it did not conduct an Equality Impact Assessment. The tribunal also heard that Upton began transitioning only 18 months ago, meaning he is ineligible for a gender recognition certificate. Legally he is male and as such must be treated like any other male employee.

Furthermore, under the Public Sector Equality Duty, NHS Fife has a duty to foster good relations between groups of staff with different protected characteristics. Neither Upton nor Peggie should ever have been put in this position. It is the employer’s failing and NHS Fife has failed both.

And why? Because trans ideology dictates that trans always gets to ignore other rights, especially women’s rights.

The NHS trade unions surely have questions to answer. They sign off employment policies at national and at local NHS board level. They are experts in employment and equalities law, employ legal officers and have access to specialist legal advice. Their role is to scrutinise employment policies and hold employers to account for their responsibilities. So, what happened here? Are their full-time and lay officers misinformed about the law? Or is this indicative of institutional capture?

The main health unions, Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unison and Unite, claim to support the Equality Act including the protected characteristic of sex, while also having policies supporting self-ID of sex and the belief that “transwomen are women.” They deny that there is any conflict with women’s rights. Indeed, against the backdrop of the Peggie case, Unison’s women’s conference endorsed a motion stating exactly that.

Which is completely absurd. It’s like saying there’s no conflict between workers’ rights and bosses’ rights – which, come to think of it, is apt enough when you recall that Upton is of the boss class and Peggie is of the worker one. Whither intersectionality now eh?

Peggie’s trade union, the RCN refused to represent her. The Peggie case has placed trade unions in a highly unflattering spotlight before their majority female memberships. And this is not going away. A similar tribunal case involving a group of nurses in Darlington begins soon. It would be surprising if unions were not doing a pretty quick reassessment of their positions, as Labour has done — although more likely it might be a long wait. Both the Scottish TUC and Unite issued public statements condemning the Scottish Labour leadership for its about turn on the GRR (Scotland) Act.

The UK government blocked that Act, preventing self-ID becoming law in Scotland. The Peggie case illustrates what enforcement of the GRR Act would mean for women. For the political parties that voted the Act through at Holyrood in December 2023 and the trade unions that support it, the chickens are coming home to roost.

I look forward to the squawking.

Another Baltimore.

A major rescue operation was launched after a tanker laden with fuel and a cargo vessel collided in the North Sea off the East Yorkshire coast, with both vessels catching fire.

Great. Fabulous. Marine life and wildlife destroyed for miles around.

Maritime firm Crowley, which manages the tanker, said the vessel had suffered a ruptured cargo tank, adding crew had abandoned ship following “multiple explosions onboard”.

The vessels involved in the collision are the US-flagged Stena Immaculate tanker and the Solong, a Portuguese-flagged container ship, according to data from the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.

No news on the crew of the Solong.

According to MarineTraffic, the Stena Immaculate had travelled from the Greek port of Agioi Theodoroi and was anchored by the Humber Estuary. The Solong had been sailing from the Scottish port of Grangemouth to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.

I had been hoping the people who run these ships knew how to avoid crashing into each other.

Oh honestly.

Trump lets us know he thinks he’s Elvis.

In the early hours of Sunday the US president shared a photo on social media showing half his face and half of Presley’s in a post with no words.

And not just Elvis but young Elvis – young hot smoldering Elvis.

NB: there is no resemblance.

Even President Trump’s biggest fans might have been questioning whether he was feeling lonesome on Saturday night when he posted an image comparing himself to Elvis Presley.

Trump, 78, posted an image that showed half of his face and half of Presley’s in an update on his Truth Social platform. It was posted at about 1.30am on Sunday when the president was at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort.

Well what else is there to do at 1:30 am?

Hospital tells men to go right ahead and barge into women’s toilets.

A London hospital trust has told trans employees they can use the lavatories and changing rooms of their choice in a challenge to Wes Streeting.

Not to mention an insult and threat to women.

Why do we even have separate toilets and changing rooms for women and men? Oh that’s right, because some men enjoy sexually assaulting and intimidating women.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ trust’s new transgender equality policy tells all staff they must refer to everyone with the pronoun of their choice, even if they do not believe in gender ideology.

Seriously? Guy’s and St Thomas’s trust tell employees they have to memorize specialty pronouns for everyone they work with? Isn’t that a lot of extra mental work for no useful purpose?

It also advises managers not to disclose the trans status of a doctor or a nurse to patients, which campaigners fear could mean patients not being guaranteed intimate care by someone of the same sex.

To put it more bluntly (as journalism should, for the sake of clarity and understanding), it advises managers to put the frivolous demands of trans staffers ahead of the needs of patients. At this rate the patients will be told to get out of that bed so that the doctor can take a nice nap.

Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns at women’s rights charity Sex Matters, said: “With the Darlington nurses and Sandie Peggie cases under way, it’s inexplicable that Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust has just produced a new policy stating that staff who identify as transgender can access the facilities of the ‘gender’ they identify as.

“The leadership of Guy’s and St Thomas’ needs to get a grip, pull this new policy and start again if the trust is to avoid becoming the latest NHS trust to face costly legal action because of reality-denying absurd policies and practices.”

Reality-denying and threatening to women.

The trust’s transgender policy, seen by The Telegraph, was drawn up by equalities officers and LGBT members of staff.

Controversially, it recognises “non-binary” identities, which are not recognised in law.

And don’t mean anything.

On toilets and changing rooms, the guidance states: “Facilities: provide access to gender-appropriate facilities. Gender-neutral options will also be made available where possible.

“Transgender people are accommodated according to the gender they identify with, rather than sex registered at birth, regardless of where they are on the transition journey.”

The guidance states that “everyone is addressed using the names and pronouns that they request at that moment in time”.

“At that moment in time” – so it can change from moment to moment, eh? Well that won’t be inconvenient at all. Nobody will use that rule to torment colleagues.

A spokesman for Guy’s and St Thomas’ said: “Transgender staff, like all our staff, deserve to be treated with kindness and respect in line with our Trust values. As an inclusive employer, it is important we ensure everyone is supported regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Including women who don’t want to share toilets with or be examined by men?

Tsssss, no, of course not. That would never do.

Well, we all know how this is going to go.

Shaping the Century: 25 brilliant Irish women in 2025

Ireland has no shortage of brilliant women: decision-makers, entrepreneurs, sports people, artists and activists who have inspired others and served to change lives.

…

2007: Lydia Foy

Often it is individuals who make a large contribution to changing legal history in Ireland. In 1993, transgender Kildare woman Lydia Foy sought a new birth certificate with her female gender. She was refused, and brought High Court proceedings in 1997. While her claim was rejected in 2002, in 2007 the case was brought back to court and the judge found that her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated. This significant result was initially appealed, and in the end it took until 2014 for Foy to settle her action against the State, which pledged to introduce a Gender Recognition Act. This was enacted into Irish law in 2015 and meant that such an onerous legal journey would no longer be necessary for other Irish trans people.

And that no article about women would fail to inclood a man.

Trump and Musk are slashing services, and meanwhile Trump costs us millions every time he takes his lardy ass down to Florida, which is nearly every damn weekend.

It has become a familiar routine for the Palm Beach county sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, and his deputies. Almost every Tuesday in recent weeks, the Federal Aviation Administration has posted to its website a formal “notice to airmen” advising of upcoming flight restrictions over south Florida, signaling once again to those who must protect him that Donald Trump is on his way to Mar-a-Lago for another weekend of golf.

The president is at his waterfront mansion again this weekend, his sixth visit to Florida and the beloved golf courses he owns since his 20 January inauguration.

His increasingly frequent and disruptive trips home are fast becoming a drain on county resources, obligating Bradshaw to put helicopters in the air, extra manpower on the ground, and boats on both sides of Trump’s opulent mansion sandwiched between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway almost continuously.

And this is a county, remember – not a state, let alone the feds, but just a county. Their pot of money is not infinite.

The Palm Beach bill, high as it is, pales against the federal costs of indulging the commander-in-chief’s wanderlust. That’s included his multimillion-dollar trip to the Super Bowl in New Orleans last month, and an appearance at Nascar’s Daytona 500 weeks later, which critics saw as little more than an extravagant and expensive photo op.

Whenever he wishes to roam, the presidential airliner Air Force One is fueled up and fully staffed, racking up an hourly operational cost approaching $200,000, according to a 2022 air force assessment.

How interesting that DOGE seems not to fuss about these here operational costs.

The most recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, meanwhile, calculated in 2019 that federal agencies spent an average of $13.6m on each of four Trump odysseys to Mar-a-Lago that it audited during his first term in office, with a chunk of that money going straight into Trump’s pocket.

In 2017, he spent four of the first seven weekends immediately after his inauguration golfing in Florida; this year the tally is already at six.

A big chunk of that money goes into Trump’s pocket. It’s a fabulous scam – he gets to vacation and he gets to pocket all the money from putting up his entourage at his hotel.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said he had similar concerns, pointing to evidence of Trump excessively overcharging the Secret Service to stay at his properties during his first administration.

“As much as the waste of taxpayer resources for excessive vacationing is, there’s the self-enrichment from the payments made to Mar-a-Lago by agents who were there to provide security,” he said.

All this while he’s busy impoverishing millions of us.

Ah there it is.

It’s odd that an adult academic either doesn’t grasp this, or pretends not to grasp it.

Laws are laws, but not all laws are good laws. There is such a thing as civil disobedience. Trump is issuing executive orders as a dog sheds fleas, but he can’t change reality. He can’t move Greenland to somewhere between Oklahoma and Arkansas. He can’t make Musk’s latest rocket unexplode. Sally Hines can’t make men into women by citing a law.

The rage, it choketh.

A man who gets it.

Sebastian Coe will demand urgent talks with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to stop “pond life” abusing female sports stars with impunity if he becomes International Olympic Committee president.

Speaking after a week in which Emma Raducanu spoke about not being able “see the ball through tears” after being approached by a stalker, and Eilish McColgan faced a blizzard of hate after posting a video of her running on social media, Lord Coe pledged to create a taskforce to find better ways to protect female athletes.

…

Asked what he made of comments posted on Facebook, Instagram and X attacking women, the World Athletics president, who is among the favourites for the IOC presidential election on 20 March, replied: “It’s pond life. I’ve spoken to many female athletes about it. And some of the stuff that the American shot putter Raven Saunders told me made me want to cry. We’ve got to do more.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if frothing hatred of women were just not a thing?

The dear dear Guardian.

Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order

Incarcerated trans women report being groped by male guards and suicidal thoughts: ‘I’m punished for existing’

Oh yes?

Now consider what women could report when men turn up in their prisons. Groping possibly at all? Staring? Peering? Rape? Violence of all kinds?

“I’m just continuing to be punished for existing,” said Whitney, a 31-year-old trans woman who was transferred from a women’s facility to a men’s prison this week. The BOP changed her records from “female” to “male”, records show. In messages before her transfer, she said she felt like a “pawn in others’ political games”. The Guardian is not using her full name due to concerns about retaliation.

But what about the women in prisons alongside trans women? What about their fears and worries? What about violence against them? Why is the Graun so much more worried about men who pretend to be women than about women themselves? Real women, with their smaller bones? Why does it not occur to the Guardian that putting men in women’s prisons is grossly unfair to women???

There’s a lot more of the same crap, and of course it never once occurs to the “journalists” that men in women’s prisons are a danger to women.

Oh ffs.

The full photo:

Sista. That’s pretty much how I “present” except that I don’t wear earrings and I don’t wear glasses except when reading or online-babbling. I don’t have those nice curls at the top of the head, either. The woman at the desk, too – much the same.

That is not “transitioning.” Jeans have been for both sexes for decades, men can have long hair and women can have short hair, both sexes can wear earrings, yadda yadda yadda.

Willoughby is such a reactionary.

Inside the Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed With Elon Musk

Aka King Kong v Godzilla v all of us.

Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Mr. Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the chain saw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination.

“Chain saw approach” is too mild. It’s more like carpet bombing.

In a post on social media after the meeting, Mr. Trump said the next phase of his plan to cut the federal work force would be conducted with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” — a clear reference to Mr. Musk’s scorched-earth approach.

Derp. That’s like burning down 75% of Manhattan and then deciding to burn it down more politely. Musk’s approach was obviously destructive and childishly sloppy reckless dangerous bad. Obviously from the very beginning.

Just moments before the blowup with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr. Musk.

Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?

Oh so they’ve noticed that firing air traffic controllers has its downsides? All too literally?

At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.

The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.

And then they all made mudpies and threw them around the room.

What is the point of announcing tariffs and then promptly delaying them? Other than making yourself look like a clueless buffoon?

Canada’s initial retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. will remain in place despite President Donald Trump postponing 25% tariffs on many imports from Canada for a month, two senior Canadian government officials said.

Trump said Thursday that he has postponed 25% tariffs on many goods from Canada and Mexico for a month, amid widespread fears of a broader trade war.

Why? Why do that? What can possibly be the point? Does he think they’ll be welcome in a month?

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier Thursday that he expects Canada and the U.S. to be in a trade war for the foreseeable future after having what he called a colorful but constructive call with Trump on Wednesday.

A senior Canadian government official said the call became heated and Trump used profanity when Trump complained about protections in Canada’s dairy industry. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the call, said Trudeau did not use profanity.

Now there’s a surprise – Trudeau is not as childish and out of control as Trump is.

It seems the Darlington cops think women are not allowed to meet up without men. I think their grasp of the law may be a little bit off.

The Independent reports:

Labour grandee Baroness Harriet Harman has been made the new UK special envoy for women and girls.

The former minister will “co-ordinate efforts across the globe” to push for the protection of rights over reproductive health, access to education and freedom from gender-based violence, the Foreign Office said.

…

Baroness Harman said: “Over the last decades we have made tremendous strides towards ending women’s inequality. But the job is far from done.  Women and girls are still not equal, and many still face oppression, violence and discrimination. It’s a great honour to have been appointed UK Special Envoy For Women and Girls and look forward to driving this important work.”

But does she really want to end women’s inequality? Does she in fact even know what women are?

Happening now –

Cops hassling women for having a meeting on International Women’s Day.

Apparently the Council summoned the cops.

Kennedy’s woo infects the CDC:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links.

In other news, NASA is planning a large study into the potential flatness of the earth.

The CDC’s move comes amid one of the largest measles outbreaks the U.S. has seen in the past decade, with more than 200 cases and two deaths in Texas and New Mexico. The outbreak has been fueled by declining vaccination rates in parts of the United States where parents have been falsely persuaded that such shots do more harm than good.

Kennedy, whose role includes authority over the CDC, has long sowed doubt over the safety of the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). In a cabinet meeting last week, Kennedy initially downplayed news that a school-aged child had died of measles in Texas, the first such death in a decade, calling such outbreaks ordinary and failing to mention the role of vaccination to prevent measles.

In other words Kennedy is a reckless self-involved idiot who thinks he knows better than the people who have actual medical training and that it’s just fine for him scare people away from getting vaccinated. Let the dangerous disease run rampant!

That’s the way to do it: smash everything in sight and then pause to decide to take a more nuanced approach.

President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet in person on Thursday to deliver a message: You’re in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk.

According to two administration officials, Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was also in the room.

…

The president’s message represents the first significant move to narrow Musk’s mandate. According to Trump’s new guidance, DOGE and its staff should play an advisory role — but Cabinet secretaries should make final decisions on personnel, policy and the pacing of implementation.

Now he tells them. The government looks like Stepney at the height of the Blitz and now he tells them Musk doesn’t get to drop bombs.

Musk joined the conversation and indicated he was on board with Trump’s directive. According to one person familiar with the meeting, Musk acknowledged that DOGE had made some missteps — a message he shared earlier this week with members of Congress.

Yeah missteps, that’s what they were – missteps wearing boots the size of a container ship.

Trump stressed that he wants to keep good people in government and not to eject capable federal workers en masse.

Well that’s odd, seeing as how it’s what he’s been doing for the last several weeks.

Trump posted about the meeting on Truth Social after this story posted, promising to hold similar meetings every two weeks.

“As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” he wrote. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’ The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.”

That fucking imbecile. He’s telling this as if we’re the ones who didn’t know it, when his little South African buddy used the hatchet and the axe and the nuclear weapon on the entire civil service for weeks on end.

The president later told reporters he wants Cabinet members to “keep all the people you want, everybody that you need.”

But he also said he wanted cuts, and that Musk would remain a power center: “If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

You can keep all the people you want, but you can’t keep all the people you want. You can keep your legs, but Elon will chop them off. You can keep your children, but Elon will slice them up. You can keep your house, but Elon will burn it down.

Trump’s side hustle of trying to annex Canada:

When U.S. President Donald Trump last spoke with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump pointed to a 1908 treaty as apparent ammunition to support his threats of a tariff war and his envisioned takeover of Canada.

Trump’s reference to the 116-year-old treaty regarding the Canada-U.S. border reportedly took Trudeau and his office by surprise, sending staff searching for the pact online as the leaders spoke on the phone. That’s not a surprise. The treaty is somewhat obscure in terms of the historical relationship between the former British colonies that became Canada and the United States of America.

Spoiler: it nowhere says the US gets to swallow Canada.