Quotes of the week

The Government we have today campaigned on delivering tax cuts to the people. They said that if they were elected, they would increase after-tax pay for the squeezed middle by shifting income tax brackets.

And they won. So deliver they must.One thing this country would do well to have is a return to old-school political values. Values that see a newly elected government doing everything possible, despite the odds against it, to honour the promises it made to the electorate.

Delivery against those promises, alongside our overall wellbeing, should be the standard by which a government is judged. –  Bruce Cotterill

Restoring faith in government means that a government keeps the promises on which it was elected. It means a government that prioritises work on the things that matter most to the majority of the electorate. Those things in all likelihood are education, health, crime, transport, and equality of treatment under the law. – Bruce Cotterill

We need a government that delivers on the above while watching the cost base and ensuring that every dollar of taxpayer money spent is spent well.

The last Government prioritised reckless but headline-grabbing promises in terms of housing, poverty, crime and health. They then filled government offices with thousands of additional bureaucrats to give the impression that they were doing something. They increased taxes and borrowed millions to pay for it all. And they ultimately achieved very little.

Most of us would want the opposite.

So now we have a government with a well-publicised and transparent list of things to do, a list that is shared with the public, updated quarterly, and with items that are ticked off in a public manner along the way. They’re seeking to reduce the number of people working in government departments to get the country’s cost base down. And, they’re trying to keep their promise to reduce taxes. – Bruce Cotterill

At a time when both the media and our politicians have major issues of trust, both groups need to double down on recovering the confidence of the people. The best way to do that is for government to be transparent, to honour their promises, and for media to report their activities with accuracy and openness and without distortion. – Bruce Cotterill

We can argue that tax cuts are a stimulus, making it more difficult in an economy that’s fighting inflation. And we can argue that tax cuts rob money from worthwhile government initiatives. Both are good arguments. But we have to remember that the Government was voted in with a series of policies that included the changes to our taxes.

It’s what they promised to do. – Bruce Cotterill

Government is meant to be about the people who comprise a community rather than the politicians themselves. Tax cuts are for the people. In this case, those people will primarily be low- to middle-income earners, the people who work hard all day for modest returns. As “tax bracket creep” has evolved, these people have seen their modest pay increases subjected to increasing levels of taxation for years. These people are the Government’s “core business” and they need and deserve some relief.

Taxation should be about collecting the minimum amount of money from all taxpayers, in a manner that is fair and equitable, in order to enable the delivery of essential and desirable services, firstly for our people to prosper, and secondly, so that we play an appropriate role in the international community.

It may surprise many to learn that the Government is not in business for the various interest groups with an agenda to run or a cause to champion. More and more is being asked of our government. There are already too many things that government does that they shouldn’t. – Bruce Cotterill

Indeed, the quickest way for our Government to get back on top of matters financial is to get out of the things we shouldn’t be doing. We have government bureaucracies that get bigger and bigger every year. In this writer’s opinion, the cost of that bureaucracy is the single biggest issue facing the New Zealand economy. – Bruce Cotterill

The quest for efficiency across government will need to be a multi-term focus if we are to get our cost base back to something that is sustainable. – Bruce Cotterill

Good government is not about building bureaucracies that get bigger and more expensive every year. It is about getting outcomes for the society that government is intended to serve. Big bureaucracies fall into habits of doing business with each other. That is not how outcomes are generated. We need a better, simpler and less costly way.

Thankfully, it feels like we have a government that is focused on finding that better way. I get the impression that Luxon and Willis, despite the odds that are against them, are trying desperately hard to deliver on their promises while making government more efficient. – Bruce Cotterill

However, if we are to recover a level of trust in our parliamentary system, and the politicians who occupy the House on our behalf, those politicians must act in the interests of the people who put them there.

And that means that they must, without exception, deliver on the promises they make. – Bruce Cotterill

Ironically, the media they wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to expanding social justice. The challenge now, for these wise members of the academy, is to explain why the media they wanted is not what so many of its readers, listeners and viewers wanted. – Chris Trotter

All the “summits” in the world will avail their organisers nothing, if all they are willing to listen to are their own fears. – Chris Trotter

I found the term “at risk” in this connection both odd and significant. By “at risk of becoming” was meant, presumably, statistically more likely to become. It is a term taken from medical parlance: for example, doctors speak of obese people (or increasingly of “people with obesity” or even of “people living with obesity”) being at risk of becoming diabetic, or of people with high blood pressure being at risk of having a stroke or heart attack.

Criminality, and ultimately all human conduct whatsoever, is here conflated with disease, and thereby becomes a disease in itself. For example, I am at high risk of going into a bookshop and buying a book. I can no more help it than can a person with a family history of, say, gout, help having a higher-than-average chance of developing gout. Statistical chances rule the world, including the human world; besides which, for me at my age to buy more books is irrational, the sign both of a compulsion and an obsession—which, as everyone knows, are diseases. The only way that these diseases can be cured is for the government to give me so many books that I will no longer feel the compulsion to buy. –  Theodore Dalrymple 

Leniency is compassionate, severity cruel: such at any rate is the presumption of the intellectual middle classes, who, perhaps feeling guilty at their own good fortune, often inherited, by comparison with the classes from which criminals are usually drawn, find in making excuses for the latter, and in proposing lenient treatment of them, a way of demonstrating their generosity of spirit. I have rarely met such a person who has taken full cognisance of the fact that most of the victims of crime, as well as the perpetrators of it, are poor—relatively, that is. Most criminals are not great travellers: they rob, burgle and assault those around them, and since in the right circumstances they will readily admit that they have committed far more crimes than they have ever been accused of (borne out by, or compatible with, the fact that the police solve only a small proportion of crimes recorded by them), it follows that leniency is not necessarily compassionate, at least not if compassion is to be measured in part by its practical results and is not simply a warm, fuzzy feeling of self-congratulation at not being ungenerously punitive. – Theodore Dalrymple 

Welcome to another war of words between the greenies and the government over changes to the Resource Management Act.

With the poor old farmers stuck in the middle, just wanting the chance to be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to protecting the environment. And that’s what I think we should be doing.

You know how people have this concept of Mother Nature and how it’s all peace and love and milk and honey and bees buzzing and gentle rivers and all of that? It’s amazing, isn’t it, how quickly all that goes out the window if the milk and honey brigade don’t like something?   – John MacDonald

But, unlike climate activists and politicians, I’m willing to accept that things aren’t black and white. Which is why I think it’s time we just trusted farmers to do the right thing and let them get on with it.  – John MacDonald

Firstly, I’ve got friends who are farmers and every time I go and see them, I can see that they just want to do the right thing. But, instead, they’ve had governments and government departments behaving like helicopter parents and watching their every move just in case they do something wrong. And that’s nuts.

And secondly, show me a farmer who wants to poo in their own nest.

They don’t. And this is where the greenies lose it. Because if they think farmers want to destroy the natural environment on their properties for short-term financial gain, then they know nothing about how it all works.

Farms are businesses, yes. But they’re also assets. And why would anyone want to do anything to damage their asset? They wouldn’t.

And that’s why I think that, instead of pulling farmers to bits, we should be trusting them to do the right thing.   – John MacDonald

And if you think the Resource Management Act is how you sort out muppets, then you might want to think again. So, we can’t do anything about the muppets.  

What we can do, though, is say to the farmers who aren’t muppets, that we trust them to do the right thing – and leave them to it.  – John MacDonald

What’s happened today will shock a lot of people, because over the last few years we’ve got used to Prime Minsters just putting up with their ministers doing a bad job or behaving badly in public.

It took forever for Hipkins or Ardern to demote the under-performers, and they suffered for it – public opinion of them was tainted.

That is clearly not how Chris Luxon operates, and it’s a good thing.

Because who doesn’t want performance from the people that we pay to run the country? – Heather du Plessis-Allan

If the state does not spend more than it collects and does not issue (money), there is no inflation. This is not magic. – Javier Milei 

Surely we didn’t miss the irony on climate change?

On the day it’s announced we have reduced our emissions now for three years in a row, so good on us, the very next day Transpower, the people who get the electricity into your lounge, tell us yet again that this Winter has issues and peak load and demand might be problematic.  – Mike Hosking

Here is a simple rule of thumb; to not have enough power in 2024 is simply not good enough and it should be seen as an abdication of responsibility. 

The reason we don’t have enough is quite openly admitted. It’s because the renewables are not voluminous enough and not reliable enough to cover the growing demand. 

The transition hasn’t transitioned to the point where we can largely leave fossils behind. 

So, here’s the line for me. Save the planet all you want, even if it is futile given China and India aren’t as interested. But don’t get so hell bent about it that the heater isn’t on in July when its -3 degrees. That’s not a first world country and it’s not a first world approach.  – Mike Hosking

If we don’t have enough power now, how do we power EV’s? How do we power generative AI, the so-called future? It’s a future that requires 10x more power than a Google search.

Talk about cart before the horse.

When we still struggle Winter in, Winter out to do the basics we have allowed ideology to hijack reality.

That is not the future, of the future.  – Mike Hosking

My view is that the State should have nothing to do with broadcasting. The recent optics surrounding the Public Interest Journalism Fund which has given rise to the perception – I emphasise perception – that media were promoting Government messaging has done enormous damage to the media as an institution. It is best that the State cuts its ties with broadcasting in the interests of broadcasters and indeed its own interests. – David Harvey

I would put it like this: while increased wealth above a certain level is not guaranteed to increase happiness, or what is now routinely called human flourishing, attempts to limit wealth to that level are almost guaranteed to result in increased human unhappiness. –  Theodore Dalrymple

I take it that this implies that equality of opportunity is, or would be, a desirable goal: but on the contrary, it seems to me to be a terrible one, among the most terrible that could well be imagined. This is despite the fact that almost no one has a word to say against it. Equality of opportunity is as morally untouchable as grandmothers or kindness to animals. – Theodore Dalrymple

The formal equality of opportunity that we already have is the only form of it that is not inherently tyrannical. Nor is it real, actual equality of opportunity, since the life chances of people born in different circumstances are very different. This fact is not at all an argument against it, however, when one considers what real, actual equality of opportunity would entail.

In the first place, the complete absence of opportunity, provided it were evenly spread, would satisfy the demand for equality of opportunity. Perhaps it could never be entirely equal (someone would have to suppress all that opportunity, after all), but there is little doubt that, by comparison with our present situation, overall equality of opportunity would be increased by the maximal suppression of opportunity.

It is hardly to be supposed that anyone, except an aspiring totalitarian dictator, would want such a thing.  – Theodore Dalrymple

But how does inequality of opportunity arise? The first and most obvious cause is in genetic endowment. Differing genetic endowment is unfair, but not unjust. For example, I should like to have been born more handsome than I was, but there is no one I can blame for this unfortunate fact, and nothing that I can do about it. What goes for looks goes for other attributes too numerous to mention.

There is no way this genetic unfairness can be abolished, except by universal cloning to ensure that all start with the same genetic endowment. From the point of equality of opportunity, it does not matter whether that endowment is good or bad, for everyone would be in the same genetic boat. – Theodore Dalrymple

It is certainly not fair that some people are born into nurturing environments and others into the very opposite. Moreover, it is possible that if environments could be to some degree equalised, marginal differences would become more important. The only way to avoid the unfairness caused by environmental differences is to make the environment in which children are raised (now clones, of course) absolutely identical in all respects, the equivalent of a battery farm. Only thus can the famous level playing field be achieved. Such an upbringing, of course, would make North Korea seem like a school for individuality. – Theodore Dalrymple

On the other hand, it ought to be possible to provide every child with opportunity, though not equal opportunity, for example by instituting good schools that nurture talent and build character. How this is best done is a matter of trial and error, and of experience. No system will ever be so perfect that “no child will be left behind,” to use the cant phrase. But while trying to provide opportunity for every child suggests practical solutions, aiming for something impossible like equality of opportunity supplies an excellent alibi for failure to do whatever is truly possible to give every child opportunity: for what is mere opportunity as a goal when compared to equality of opportunity? Have we no ambition? – Theodore Dalrymple

I have since been crystal clear about my concerns that women are being erased in this debate, and have always been clear that women do not have, nor have ever had, a penis. – Gillian Keegan

For several years, trans activist lobby groups pushed the use of phrases such as ‘trans women are women’ as a tactic to silence debate and fair questions about how gender self-identification clashes with women’s rights.

“Many didn’t recognise the dangers of these slogans early on, including politicians who doubtless thought they were simply supporting a good cause. It takes guts to publicly change your mind. Women’s rights and the safeguarding of children are serious issues that need to be addressed with clear and accurate language. – Maya Forstater

They say that because they believe women to be less than men. A woman is "reduced" to her biology if you recognize than women are female humans, but womanhood is somehow "elevated" when men claim it for themselves. It becomes "more" because they take it away from women.

— 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐬 (@therestofus5) April 25, 2024

Dawn begins each day. Sunrise speaks to the promise of a better day. From a long-ago battlefield to this morning’s promise, we must leave this ground dedicated to making our worlds better. Then the men buried here will not have died in vain.

Yet we live in a troubled world, the worst in memory.

We have emerged from a global pandemic a more divided world. Regional instabilities and the chaos they create threaten the security of too many.

So we must all do more. Demand more. And deliver more.  – Winston Peters

You will create your own memories and draw your own lessons from being here. But we must all come together, as people and as nations, to do more to honour those who paid with their lives. 

We must protect and care for our young. We must reject and resist those who seek to conquer and control. We must always seek the path of peace. 

Then, and only then, will the men buried here not have died in vain.  –  Winston Peters

Next ANZAC day I’d like to see the news cameras get out of the cities, and come experience an ANZAC service in Dargaville, or Taihape, or Lumsden. Because regardless of nonsense in Wellington, in rural New Zealand We Will Remember Them. – Mark Cameron

Divisiveness seems to be the new aim of the game. Race, political beliefs and religion are all motivators in separating our people. People are more concerned with being correct and proving a point… This is where we can learn more from our ancestors –

They stood as brothers to fight for us. They could see the purpose greater than themselves and put aside their petty arbitrary differences. It makes me wonder what could be accomplished if we could do the same? – Jared Lasike 

We don’t address racism by pretending white people can be black, nor is ableism solved by giving able-bodied people wheelchairs, so why are women and girls supposed to applaud their male imitators, centre them in language and hand over rights their foremothers fought for? 3/X

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 26, 2024

We stand up that weak arguments have their say so they can be shown to be weak arguments, and strong arguments have their say so they can be shown to be strong arguments. It’s a dangerous view that free speech needs to be held back from hurting minorities. The first thing free speech does is protect the minorities.

If we’re going to live in this idea that everyone gets to have a say, that in a democracy everyone gets to participate in society equally, then we’re going to have to accept that if you disagree with someone or you consider their perspective offensive, or harmful, or belligerent, they still get a say. We have to have confidence in the fact that society as a whole can discern error from truth. –  Jonathan Ayling

If students are not resilient enough or mature enough to be able to deal in ideas – even those that they find uncomfortable – then maybe they shouldn’t be at university. – Jonathan Ayling

"Paradoxically, the mere framing of this event has surfaced a depth of feeling and a polarisation of views on how we should proceed, that has made it challenging to even schedule a conversation about how to have challenging conversations." – Vice Chancellor Nic Smith

If we have…

— 🗣 Free Speech Union ✊ (@NZFreeSpeech) April 26, 2024

No man can become a woman. We need as a progressive society to be better at allowing individuals to be socially (because it’s society that’s dictating what is traditionally male/female characteristics) to be as masculine or feminine as they like. Again humans don’t change sex. – Sharron Davies

 

Govt clear ‘biological sex matters”

The UK”s National Health Service (NHS) has come to its senses:

The NHS is to crack down on transgender ideology in hospitals, with terms like “chestfeeding” set to be banned. . . 

Referring to “people who have ovaries” rather than “women” will also be prohibited under plans to ensure hospitals use clear language based on biological sex.

The new constitution will ban transgender women from being treated on single-sex female hospital wards to ensure women and girls receive “privacy and protection” in hospitals.

Patients will also be given the right to request that intimate care is carried out by someone of the same biological sex.

It follows concerns from patients about biological men being allowed in women’s hospital wards. NHS guidance has previously stated that trans patients could be placed in single-sex wards on the basis of the gender with which they identified.

Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, has backed calls for a public inquiry into the “pervasive influence” of transgender ideology in the NHS. . . 

A government source said: “The Government has been clear that biological sex matters, and women and girls are entitled to receive the protection and privacy they need in all healthcare settings.  . . .

Of course biological sex matters. How on earth did trans ideology prevail anywhere, let alone in hospitals where science and biology are critical?

How have the radical trans activists been able to force the acceptance of their assertion that trans men are women, have access to females spaces and participate in female sports categories?

And how have they been able to infect the health system to the extent of enabling disturbed children – many of them gay and/or autistic – to undergo medical and surgical procedures without the strict ethical approval and rigorous need for proof of efficacy that usually is required for life changing treatment?

Perhaps Damien Grant has part of the answer:

The debate over gender identity has gained in prominence in recent years and, to what will be my enduring shame, I chose not to confront it.

When you distil the serious complaint by those against the current gender-fluidity of modern culture, it is that the medicalisation of children’s gender dysphoria is wrong.

That puberty blockers, hormone treatments and gender-affirming surgery are a mistake. That we are damaging and potentially sterilising children because of an ideology. . . 

This sounds like something that happened in Nazi Germany last century, it should not be happening anywhere now.

Puberty is an essential aspect of human development. At the time the local Ministry of Health addressed puberty blockers and confidently asserted they were safe, reversible, and gave young people time to consider their identity. I see that advice has changed.

Why did I place faith in the pronouncements of the Ministry of Health? Given my inherent distrust of the state I am left with the uncomfortable conclusion that it was cowardice.

Seeing how others who waded into this topic had their careers and reputations damaged, it was preferable to hide behind an official declaration that the experts knew what they were doing than look closer and risk having to speak up.

Those others included people who lost their jobs and endured public shaming. Some were public figures like Graham Linehan and J.K. Rowling, some were medical professionals and some were concerned parents of children who were given life changing medical and surgical treatment without their parents knowledge. Many were ordinary people who knew that science matters and some things can’t change and one of those is biological sex.

The Cass Report has ended the ability to seek refuge in this sophistry. . . 

According to Cass, “the long term health impacts of hormone interventions is limited and needs to be better understood”. “Young people become particularly vulnerable at the point of transfer to adult services.”

She acknowledges hormone treatment for adults is “not without costs…” but is “…dramatically outweighed by the long-term benefits.”

Adults can give properly informed consent. Children can not.

The story for those under 18, and especially under 16, is different. Children on blockers will cease development while their friends continue and “…there are no good studies on the psychological, psychosexual and developmental impact of this period of divergence from peers”. . . 

Her report states: “Clinicians are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity.” . . .

She writes: “This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint. The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender related distress.”

However, “Some clinicians feel under pressure to support a medical pathway based on widespread reporting that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk. This conclusion was not supported by the above systematic review”. . . 

There will be other critiques but this report has reversed the burden of proof. If these treatments are safe and effective then the evidence needs to be presented and peer reviewed. 

Such evidence and peer reviews would be required for any other treatments and procedures.

Until they are maybe we should not treating people below the age of consent with powerful and unproven treatments.

Mostly the report has been received well and in the wake of its publication England and Scotland have joined the four Nordic nations in banning puberty blockers being prescribed to minors, although some hormone therapies are available for those over 16.

In New Zealand the Ministry of Health’s report on puberty blockers has been delayed in the wake of the Cass report.

Given the Ministry initially claimed that puberty blockers gave children an opportunity to consider their future, the following quote from the Cass report may prove disturbing: “Moreover, given that the vast majority of young people started on puberty blockers proceed from puberty blockers to masculinising/feminising hormones, there is no evidence that puberty blockers buy time to think, and some concern that they may change the trajectory of psychosexual and gender identity development.”

It is possible that we are looking at a major medical misadventure with a cohort of children having their lives compromised.

And too many of us, those with the opportunity and a platform, stood by and said nothing. Because we were afraid of the consequences, because if we did we’d feel compelled to say something, and to say something would come at a cost.

So we said nothing. Shame on us. Shame on me.

Radical trans activists and their followers have been very successful in silencing people.

One of their tactics is to label anyone who states biological facts, stands up for the safety and dignity of women, and/or their right to fair competition in sport as transphobic.

A few might be but most don’t have a problem with what adults do until they trample on other people’s rights, including those of women and children.

Adults can be who they choose to be and dress as they wish but they should not be influencing children and advocating for them to receive irreversible treatment.

Children with gender dysphoria need mental health support not medicine and surgery.

The MoH must accept the findings of the Cass report and follow the NHS which has stopped the routine prescribing of puberty blockers and cracked down on trans ideology in hospitals and it must also accept that biological sex matters.

And we must be prepared to speak out to ensure they do.

Quotes of the week

Children are real live human beings, they’re not objects. They’re not parcels that we can move around. They have feelings, they have significant ties. Children’s very survival depends on their emotional connections to adults.

I don’t want to be disrespectful, but it’s a simplistic belief that culture trumps all else. And so therefore it justifies the removal of these children from where they have been for two and a half years, and the movement to people who at this point in time are from a child’s perspective, strangers. – Nicola Atwool

Whenever any scheme aims or claims to be “world-class,” you may be sure that it is the brainchild of megalomaniac mediocrities. Alas, our world is full of them, they dominate public affairs. There is nothing wrong with mediocrity in itself, of course, because by definition there must be a lot of it, and we are most of us mediocre (at best) at most things. It is when mediocrity is combined with overweening ambition, as it increasingly is, that it becomes dangerous. – Theodore Dalrymple

If we allow our political debate to degenerate into name calling, fictitious comments and extremist language, our society will be poorer for it. Because, when our political leaders use inflammatory language over and over again, people begin to believe what is said. Those that don’t are desensitised to it, as it starts seeping in to other parts of life. – Bruce Cotterill 

There is no doubt that there are plenty of things that need to be said in this country. We should be thankful that people are prepared to enter the discussion. We all need to hear both sides of a story and we should be grateful that we live in a democracy that allows open debate.

But to be constructive, such debate needs to be respectful and the information delivered needs to be factual. Only then, will such discussions strengthen our democracy. Until then, the current behaviours will weaken it. – Bruce Cotterill 

Households below the sixth equivalised disposable income decile receive more in transfers than they pay in tax. The sixth decile is a wash. The top four deciles pay net tax, with the bulk of the burden on decile 10 households who each contribute about $75,000 per household more in tax than they receive in transfers and government-provided services.  – Eric Crampton

Protest has, particularly in recent years – and particularly led by the climate activists – gone from being peaceful marching and waving of placards and shouting to now including damage of property, kind of as a matter of course.

This is a big problem overseas with the climate activists throwing paint at valuable pieces of art on display. And here in New Zealand, it’s kind of being imported.You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if you don’t adequately punish something, it will be repeated.

You just have to be a human to know that because it’s human behaviour. – Heather du Plessis-Allan 

No woman is a cis woman. We’re not a subset of our own definition. We are adult human females. A transwomen is exactly that, a transwoman. A male who identifies as a transwoman based on a feeling not a reality of actual biological sex. Women don’t need or want a prefix

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) April 16, 2024

20 years of soft power, lobbies and corruption and we have a UN where Russia occupies the chair of Security Council, Iran chair of Disarmament, Saudi Arabia as chair of Gender Equality and Women’s Rights. – Artur Rehi

In a week where we learned we will need ten times the power we currently use just to search the net, given AI sucks up a shed load more power than your current Google search, it might be time to get a bit real about what makes the wheels turn. 

While we wait for solar and wind and whatever else to get approved and brought online, the simple truth remains we make most of our energy out of water (which is good), a bit out of hot stuff in the ground (which is pretty good). But we still need coal. 

Because we can’t really look for more coal the same way we haven’t been able to look for more oil, we got a bit stuck. So, we had the absurdity of importing coal from Indonesia. 

Not only was it coal, but it was coal not nearly as good as ours, thus defeating the entire purpose of saving the planet.  – Mike Hosking

On a trip to the Netherlands some years back I was struck by the absence of hills and mountains.  When travelling in the Netherlands you are almost entirely dependent on maps and road signs, as opposed to heading in the general direction of a landmark.  This is a disorienting experience for those used to terrain.

Values work similarly.  They orient us in certain directions, re-orient us when we are off-track, and assure us that, with due care, we will reach our destination.  They also give us some semi-objective concepts (or abstractions) of what it is to be decent. Values produce shame and feelings of guilt when we fall short.  This, in turn, generates inner conflict and ultimately the possibility of insight, and even of righteous action.

In my view, what is bugging young people most is that too many of them have a poorly defined, and sometimes utterly dysfunctional, sense of what it is to be decent … of right doing, of duty, and of responsibility.  Of course there are many exceptions, but as a general rule, I think that far too many young people (and maybe not so young people) are missing the values that serve as guardrails, that orient toward the good and fruitful, that bind relationships, that call us toward duty, order and sacrifice, and, most of all, perhaps paradoxically, enable us to feel OK.  –  Caleb Anderson

Young people are drifting.  They want freedom but, at a deeper level, not too much.  They want options but, at a deeper level, not too many.  

Young people kick at the metaphorical guardrails because, paradoxically, they need to know that the guardrails are there.  Thus at the deepest level, they yearn for a “thus far and no further” imperative.

But the guardrails for too many young people are no longer there, and the state has continued, at breathtaking speed, to devise substitutes. The message is that values are subordinate to feelings (and to equity and justice in and of themselves) … they are personal, evolving, contextual, negotiable, malleable and, ultimately, dispensable.  

This makes risk-taking that much more risky.  It creates anxiety and it creates anger.  Too many young people have been sold short.   – Caleb Anderson

Values are no longer the constants on which we can reliably depend, the glue that binds and unites.  The wisdom of generations, and of lessons hard learned, have been replaced by a void … a deep and dark void … and the result is a generation in freefall.

Consequently, we may have one of the most fragile, and least psychologically and socially integrated, generations in history, uncertain of direction and devoid of resilience. – Caleb Anderson

Research indicates that values, and the guilt they sometimes produce, are often promoters of pro-social behaviour.  Moral decisions seem to produce altruism.  Altruism strengthens relationships, grows a sense of worth, motivates toward action, and mitigates the introspection and uncertainty that are so often the root of mental illness and social dysfunction. 

This is the message that young people need to hear.  This is where we have failed them.  This is what parenting books, and the near tidal wave of state-sanctioned incursions into the jurisdiction of the home (and schools), can never achieve,

We (parents, schools, and society at large) need to love young people enough to tell them this, to model and teach values, to enforce (not negotiate) reasonable expectations, to exalt personal sacrifice over personal gain, and to live with the kickback … and to live with the fact that, for a time, they will not love us in return.

Personal sacrifice (something values demand) is the purest form of atonement …  our young people need to know this …  but it is also the thing to which contemporary society is so disinclined. – Caleb Anderson

I don't think it's nice to lock rapists in with female prisoners, allow mediocre males to participate in women's and girls' sport, or for women to get death and rape threats for speaking up for their rights. When you've stopped all that happening, we can talk 'nice.' pic.twitter.com/DRSSzQO9nO

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2024

I am a massive advocate of robust debate that might change your mind – that’s the best thing in the world,” French said. “But it’s impossible if what we’ve got to do is hunker back into our positions, defend them by spitting and being furious and then blaming and cancelling.

We’re all talking about inclusivity and favouring difference and all the rest of it. And that’s all great, I love the idea of that, but that’s not how we’re living.

We’re living the opposite of that – we’re massively intolerant, quick to blame, litigation, trolling and all of this dreadful stuff, which has got nothing to do with understanding how other human beings operate.

We are people who know we make mistakes, we know we have shortcomings, we know we have all this stuff, but because we are expected to present ourselves as perfect and only celebrate all the perfect things, it just wiped out any margin for error.

I genuinely think we’re being forced into corners where I can smell my own cowardice.

I don’t like that – I’ve never been cowardly, I hope – but I’m starting to be that, because I’m being circumspect about what I will support or not, in case it causes trouble.

You know, and even thinking about the timing of when I might say such a thing, or what might be cherry-picked out of this and lambasted against me.

As women, especially, that’s the last thing we should do is shut up. – Dawn French

The Tribunal summonsed the wrong woman, on the wrong issue, at the wrong time. No wonder some people think they’re past their use-by date. Perhaps they should be wound up for their own good. – David Seymour 

If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgivable. You are putting children at risk by doing that. – Hilary Cass

What dismays me is just how childish the debate can become. If I don’t agree with somebody then I’m called transphobic or a Terf [trans-exclusionary radical feminist]. – Hilary Cass

I’m much, much more upset and frustrated about all this disinformation than I am about the abuse. The thing that makes me seethe is the misinformation. – Hilary Cass

If the document called The NZ Curriculum was submitted as a Year 12 school project, it would fail. If you multiply the 308 staff by an average salary of $80,000, a conservative number given Wellington pay-scales, you get about $25,000,000 – yes $25 million dollars. Has the Kiwi Tax Payer been billed that amount of money year after year – that is, over $100 million – for 60 pages of PR, marketing and communications-inspired glossy pages of nothingness? – Robert MacCulloch

What is a woman?

What is a woman?

That is a question that few, if any, would have asked, and few, if any, would have had to think about a few years ago.

Now it’s a politically loaded question, and one which some find difficult to answer.

One who doesn’t is J.K. Rowling who nails it in this explanation to her critics:

You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes. I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes.

It’s irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not she’s carried a baby to term, irrelevant if she was born with a rare difference of sexual development that makes neither of the above possible, or if she’s aged beyond being able to produce viable eggs.

She is a woman and just as much a woman as the others. I don’t believe a woman is more or less of a woman for having sex with men, women, both or not wanting sex at all. I don’t think a woman is more or less of a woman for having a buzz cut and liking suits and ties, or wearing stilettos and mini dresses, for being black, white or brown, for being six feet tall or a little person, for being kind or cruel, angry or sad, loud or retiring.

She isn’t more of a woman for featuring in Playboy or being a surrendered wife, nor less of a woman for designing space rockets or taking up boxing.

What makes her a woman is the fact of being born in a body that, assuming nothing has gone wrong in her physical development (which, as stated above, still doesn’t stop her being a woman), is geared towards producing eggs as opposed to sperm, towards bearing as opposed to begetting children, and irrespective of whether she’s done either of those things, or ever wants to.

Womanhood isn’t a mystical state of being, nor is it measured by how well one apes sex stereotypes. We are not the creatures either porn or the Bible tell you we are. Femaleness is not, as trans woman Andrea Chu Long wrote, ‘an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes,’ nor are we God’s afterthought, sprung from Adam’s rib.

Women are provably subject to certain experiences because of our female bodies, including different forms of oppression, depending on the cultures in which we live.

When trans activists say ‘I thought you didn’t want to be defined by your biology,’ it’s a feeble and transparent attempt at linguistic sleight of hand.

Women don’t want to be limited, exploited, punished, or subject to other unjust treatment because of their biology, but our being female is indeed defined by our biology. It’s one material fact about us, like having freckles or disliking beetroot, neither of which are representative of our entire beings, either.

Women have billions of different personalities and life stories, which have nothing to do with our bodies, although we are likely to have had experiences men don’t and can’t, because we belong to our sex class.

Some people feel strongly that they should have been, or wish to be seen as, the sex class into which they weren’t born. Gender dysphoria is a real and very painful condition and I feel nothing but sympathy for anyone who suffers from it.

I want them to be free to dress and present themselves however they like and I want them to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen regarding housing, employment and personal safety. 

I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. I believe the ideology that preaches those tenets has caused, and continues to cause, very real harm to vulnerable people.

I am strongly against women’s and girls’ rights and protections being dismantled to accommodate trans-identified men, for the very simple reason that no study has ever demonstrated that trans-identified men don’t have exactly the same pattern of criminality as other men, and because, however they identify, men retain their advantages of speed and strength.

In other words, I think the safety and rights of girls and women are more important than those men’s desire for validation.

I sincerely hope that answers your questions. You may still disagree, but as I hope this shows, I’m more than happy to have this debate.

Standing up for women and girls is not transphobic.

It is possible to do that without fearing, or hating, trans people.

They have a right to dress how they wish and be who they want to be but those rights do’t trump others’ rights to dignity and safety.

People can change their appearance and their names, they can also mangle language by adopting  different pronouns, but they can’t  change biological reality.

No human can change sex. How you want to express your sexuality/personality in relation to society’s version of femininity or masculinity is your own unique personality – and is 100% 👍🏾 but…it’s NOT the reality of your biological sex. We must stop lying especially to kids.

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) April 11, 2024

Stating that isn’t hating any individuals or groups, it’s stating facts, as J.K. Rowling has done so well.

Quotes of the week

Conservatism is a difficult word to talk about in Britain, because people immediately think of the Tories. But I do think small-C conservatism is someone who has a fundamental understanding of loss, an understanding that to pull something down is easy, to build it back up again is extremely difficult. There is an innate need in us to rip shit down, and I’m personally more cautious in that respect without it being a whole political ideology that surrounds me. – Nick Cave

The concept that there are problems with the world we need to address, such as social justice; I’m totally down with that. However, I don’t agree with the methods that are used in order to reach this goal – shutting down people, cancelling people. There’s a lack of mercy, a lack of forgiveness. These go against what I fundamentally believe on a spiritual level, as much as anything. – Nick Cave

Making art is in itself the great expression of joy and optimism, in my view. That’s why we need it. Music, art, reminds us of our fundamental capacity to create beautiful things out of the fuckeries of life. – Nick Cave

We have become so used to seeing people get cancelled in the name of ‘social justice’ that we often lose sight of just how cruel and barbaric this practice really is. Reputations are ruined, livelihoods are destroyed and families are torn apart, usually just because someone has uttered an unfashionable opinion, or accidentally committed an un-PC faux pas.

Time and time again, we see how merciless the woke mob can be, even as it poses as compassionate. – Lauren Smith

Imagine living in a world where sitting in your own living room and saying “men can’t be women” could result in the police logging a “hate incident” against your name.

Imagine, too, that your legally protected right to express such an opinion counted for nothing because all that mattered was whether the person who heard you perceived it to be offensive.

If you live in Scotland, this is the world you will be living in as of Monday. And no, it’s not an April Fool’s prank by the Scottish Government, despite the date when it comes into force. – Gordon Rayner

The Telegraph has been told that Police Scotland – which has just announced it will no longer investigate certain low-level crimes – is diverting resources so it can investigate the expected influx of accusatory phone calls it will receive from those offended by other people’s opinions.

The force has promised to investigate every hate crime complaint it receives, and if the complainant (or victim, as they are officially referred to) insists they were upset by something they perceived to be a hate crime, it will be logged as a non-crime hate incident (NCHI) even if there is not a shred of evidence of any crime being committed.

Little wonder that women’s rights campaigners fear that the new law will be used by trans radicals to settle scores and silence anyone who dares to challenge their world view.  

If George Orwell was still around, he could perhaps write a book about it and call it Twenty Twenty-Four. – Gordon Rayner

Dr Michael Foran, lecturer in public law at the University of Glasgow, says the new legislation “brings the criminal law into your home” even when you are having private conversations. – Gordon Rayner

We are looking at an army of local spies potentially taking anonymous reports from other local spies and passing them on to the police. Some people are very gleeful about this and they’re going to report everyone they don’t like. It’s very Stasi and it’s absolute insanity. – Susan Smith

If you genuinely imagine I’d delete posts calling a man a man, so as not to be prosecuted under this ludicrous law, stand by for the mother of all April Fools’ jokes. – J.K. Rowling

Schools are running out of exercise books, library funding has been cut, so things that bring people together are being cut and the SNP seems to think that the way to build a more tolerant society is by calling the police. – Lucy Hunter Blackburn

I don’t have the political nous and youthful energy to take the establishment on. I like to earn the money that comes from corporate functions. And the last thing you want is someone from Human Resources running you through a police check before they book you. – Simon Evans

To say we should not presume male advantage in a sport unless we have specific data for that sport is like saying that just because most of the apples in a tree have fallen to the ground, one shouldn’t presume the remaining apples are also subject to gravity,” he said.

There is overwhelming evidence of male advantage from across different sports and there is little to be gained from demonstrating this again and again, sport by sport, – John Armstrong 

Cadbury, Iceland and other big firms seem to be bending over backwards to appease a community of the offended that does not really exist outside of their market research.

The end result of this is that various traditions are flattened into a beige corporate mush. The Easter holidays are still marked, with egg hunts and hot cross buns, but businesses go out of their way to deny any link to Christianity, as if the mere mention of the Christian faith were somehow offensive or exclusionary.

Most Britons of all faiths and none have no truck with this woke erasure of Easter. Attending a ‘multifaith search for seasonal treats over the early spring long weekend’ doesn’t sound like anyone’s idea of fun. The fear of causing offence is sucking all the colour out of the world. – Lauren Smith

Lawyers are a proxy for regulation. To get a feel for how destructive regulation is, you could maybe look at the number of lawmakers. Compared with the combined average of Denmark, Singapore, Norway, Ireland and Finland, New Zealand has 50% more Ministers, 156% more departments, and 280% more portfolios.*

Or you could simply measure the exploding number of pages of regulations and statute law over the years and guess at how that strangles enterprise. But that would barely do full justice to its stultifying effect either.  – Peter Cresswell

We don’t have the rule of law any more, but rule by lawyers. When Mencken wrote that in 1924, New Zealand had roughly one lawyer per 1,000 people. We now have nearly three times that number — and we’re less free, less safe, and our taxes have increased at least tenfold.

The number of lawyers in the country is a proxy for our level of (over)regulation, of the extent to which we’re being strangled by the grey ones. And look at how the blood suckers have grown, especially post-WWII. And they keep growing, with around 3% more of the bastards every year. – Peter Cresswell

Sometimes I wonder whether the true aim of modern “progressives”—progress toward what, one is tempted to ask—is to provoke such a strong and even violent reaction among conservatives and old-fashioned liberals that it would retrospectively justify their division of humanity into the woke, which is to say themselves, and the fascists, which is to say everyone else.

Another possible explanation is that they are satirists: that they want to see how far they can fool elites into accepting evident absurdities, thereby exposing those elites for the sheeplike nullities that they are.

With regret, I have come to the conclusion that they are in deadly earnest. I should here point out that earnestness is not the same thing as seriousness, indeed it tends to be destructive of it. Earnestness is to seriousness what sentimentality is to feeling: It is the straining after something that is not authentically felt or believed. – Theodore Dalrymple

The human mind being so subtle an instrument, it is possible that there is not a stark dichotomy between sincerity and having an eye to the main chance. One of the great advantages of wokeness is that it allows for both at the same time. A person can make a very decent career out of being passionately devoted to a cause, for causes these days pay very well, or can be made to do so. Doing good works and doing well have become entirely compatible.

Without going quite so far as Marx, who made of economic self-interest an epistemological principle, it is surely a fact of human nature or psychology that people tend to believe what it is in their interest to believe. It is in the interest of bureaucracies, for example, to believe that all group differences arise from the operation of prejudice and discrimination, to be corrected by—yes, themselves.

Moreover, once such a belief is adopted, it is defended as desperately as any population defends its city from a siege. How many of us give up a belief the first time we hear a valid argument against it? This is so even when nothing much is at stake, let alone when there is something as important as a livelihood.

Therefore, we are perfectly capable of persuading ourselves that something is so when we know it not to be so. Unfortunately, this seems to me more and more necessary for people to make any kind of career in the modern world. – Theodore Dalrymple

Although Ardern tried hard to divide Kiwis along every imaginable line for her own political benefit, an inescapable fact is that a profound cultural factor, way bigger than her, unites us all together. We have our roots in making our way through our own industry. When people started to migrate to NZ, whether indigenous or not, they had to depend on themselves, friends and family for survival. There was no welfare state back then. Out of this history, an important part of our culture became the “can-do” attitude – Kiwi ingenuity, the number 8 fencing-wire, practicality – taking calculated risks that many in the Old World had lost. – Robert MacCulloch

The job of politicians is not to make choices for people – their job is to set up a system of rules – create a level playing field – that allows us freedom to make our own decisions. We know what’s best for us, not them. Successes & failures follow from our choices. What we share, regardless of ethnicity, is that we don’t want to “look for light, hope & fulfillment” from politicians. Ardern should spend time at Harvard reading books – not teaching how to lead from her life experience in Morrinsville & Podium of Truth. Start with some philosophy about how government should protect fundamental rights & liberties, leaving people with the freedom & responsibility to carve their own path in life. – Robert MacCulloch

We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, – Christopher Luxon 

The critical thing is the Budget and getting the balance right in that Budget, because we could carry on doing things as they are, or we could go to full austerity mode,” Luxon told the Herald.

“We want to find the balance, actually – balancing wasteful spending so that we can protect frontline services, [while providing] tax relief and growing the economy. That’s the key thing that we need to land this quarter. – Christopher Luxon 

We don’t misgender them.

Trans people misgender themselves.

We just refuse to play along.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) April 2, 2024

In 2016 more than 40 per cent of the population here were revealed to be on the mooch — 40 per cent of households paying less tax than they receive in cash benefits, 3 per cent paying around a quarter all the income tax that supported them.

And now, in 2024, that Treasury “working paper” tells us that we’ve now officially passed an important milestone, which is this: More than half of all New Zealanders are on the mooch. 

More than half. Mooching off the other half.

More than half of this country’s population is now receiving more in government largesse than they pay in taxes, while an ever-diminishing percentage of the population if forced to pay for them. – Peter Cresswell

This is actually what inequality looks like — the productive being forced to fund the unproductive, unequally.

Measured this way however, it does obviously undeservedly impugn some honest folk on lower incomes, and many moochers and parasites on higher incomes because they’re sucking down government cash.

And at the same time it also fails to measure the various bureaucrats, bloodsuckers and parasites who work directly for government, or indirectly as a consultant or the like to help business-folk avoid being done over by government.

Yet it does show us that we’re ever closer to the day arriving that the poor bastard in the cartoon above becomes reality. – Peter Cresswell

We should not be criminalising people saying common sense things about biological sex, clearly that isn’t right.

We have a proud tradition of free speech. –  Rishi Sunak

I have little sympathy for those defacing the rainbow crossing in the same way I have little sympathy with those defacing the Treaty display, or throwing paint into the foyer of the Israeli embassy.

However, many progressive politicians and media are happy to be inconsistent. White paint on rainbow crossings is hateful. Fake blood in foyers is freedom. And that is what makes these progressives dangerous and fundamentally opposed to our values of liberty and democracy.

They believe in one law for them, and another for others they disagree with.

When they speak of freedom and rights, they only mean for them.

When the speak of the importance of protest, is is only for them.

When they talk of hate speech, it is only ever something that applies to others.

And democracy is only good when it delivers what they want.

While watching inconsistency is frustrating, particularly in our political and media landscape, there is one plus side – it exposes progressives for who they are to those wise enough to see it. – Simon O’Connor

51% of humans are biological females, they simply deserve their own category of sport, free from any person, who is not female. It’s not rocket science it’s not hard. Let’s be kind to that 51% because for the whole of the modern Olympic era they have not had anywhere near parity

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) April 3, 2024

Freedom is not the same as its exercise. I am free to say anything I like, but that is not to say that I do say anything that I like, or that I say the first thing that comes into my head. I could do so if I so wished, but I do not wish to do so. Nevertheless, the awareness of my freedom is a source of relief, pleasure or contentment to me, and even acts as some kind of moderating influence on me. That, perhaps, is why the attempts at censorship by the self-appointed police of political correctness, not legally-enforceable but nevertheless socially effective, so often call forth intemperate and sometimes downright disgusting explosions of outrage and opposition. It causes people to forget that it is not because someone forbids us from saying something that one ought to say it, nor does one attain the truth merely by saying something that is the opposite of a tenet of political correctness. To say something that offends may give us a moment of gratification, as a child or adolescent delights to say something that shocks the adults, but it is not the way to promote truth. Two oversimplifications do not make for a right understanding.

Censorship in the name of civility ends in its opposite. Civility, like tolerance, is a habit of the heart, and attempts at imposing it expunges it from the very place it ought to be. To change the metaphor slightly, legislation is a cuckoo in the nest. – Theodore Dalrymple

I hope every woman in Scotland who wishes to speak up for the reality and importance of biological sex will be reassured by this announcement, and I trust that all women – irrespective of profile or financial means – will be treated equally under the law. 

If they go after any woman for simply calling a man a man, I’ll repeat that woman’s words and they can charge us both at once. – J.K. Rowling

Thank you for your kindness ❤️🙏 My doctors are hopeful I can indeed heal my deep trauma. After trying many different therapies in vain, I've found that taking the piss out of people who come at me with faux concern is the most beneficial. That, and crystals. pic.twitter.com/At39vcHODC

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 3, 2024

The Establishment has regrouped. It is now known variously as the PMC (professional managerial class) the ABMs ( academic, business, media) the Lanyards etc. It includes most politicians and influential lawyers/judges. Its distinguishing attribute is class snobbery – particularly the use of piety about vogue/luxury beliefs to sniff out those to be “othered”. Its democratic constituency is heavily skewed toward women. They’re typically more class conscious/anxious than men. The Establisment use of legal power to abuse class privilege/enforce piety will provoke partisan (class) division. It will fuel the rise of Trump-like resistance politicians in most countries that are over-producing these poisonous elites. – Stephen Franks 

The Coalition Government is doing its best to ensure the country is colour blind. Hence the disestablishment of the Maori Health Authority and the co-governance of Three Waters Entities.

It’s about time. A country divided by race is a country with no future.

A country where some votes are of more value than others is not a country with a real democracy.

A country where local government is run by  appointments is no democracy either.- Peter Williams

Five of the biggest councils in New Zealand are pushing to increase their borrowing caps even higher! But a simple look at where the money is currently being spent will tell you that these councils haven't got a lack of money, they've got a lack of competence. pic.twitter.com/Hlm3YGn8IW

— New Zealand Taxpayers' Union (@TaxpayersUnion) April 3, 2024

New Zealand is a small nation with a unicameral Parliament and a unitary state. We had a prime minister determined to lead the way and all the political power needed to do so. That New Zealand did not not make substantial progress in those years suggests the improbability of future leaders succeeding where Ardern did not.

Moreover, the global context cannot be ignored. New Zealand’s efforts, however earnest, are but a fraction of what is required to address the climate crisis. Even if progress is made here, the primary emitters, with far larger carbon footprints, show little willingness to follow suit to the degree necessary.

So, the pragmatic path forward for New Zealand is to continue to pivot towards adaptation. This entails investing in infrastructure resilient to the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels and increased weather volatility. Before anything else, we need to be prepared for the inevitable consequences of a warming planet.

Building resilience may not be as inspiring a crusade for youngsters and the pied pipers of professional activism. But it is the more realistic course of action. And it will do more for future generations than demands for a miracle. – Liam Hehir

I am not like these two successful Māori in other ways as well, but what we share is an acknowledgement that there is no right or wrong way to be Māori. That ignoring the diversity within Māoridom only hurts and divides us further. 

We are not a hivemind, we share this wonderful culture and history, but we do not have to all see it the same way.  – Haimona Gray

This is the issue – who gets to be Māori in the media is so deeply gate kept that the Māori experience is filtered through a lens so coloured by political bias and privilege that it bears no resemblance to the real views of many Māori.

This wouldn’t be a problem if there was a diversity of opinions shown, but the regularity of Simon Wilson or Martyn Bradbury appearances highlight the sad reality that these are media pitching a singular point of view. One that is not Māori, just aristocratic.

That’s the way these gatekeepers want to keep it.  – Haimona Gray

 Grant Robertson wrecked the Government’s books in just two years, in 2022 and 2023, after Covid was behind us.

No one can explain why Labour kept borrowing even after Covid, spending over $30 billion more in 2023 than during the lockdowns. – Matthew Hooton

No longer is this just a strike about the climate – it is now also about toi tu te tiriti, it is about freeing Palestine, ending the fast-track approvals bill, keeping the ban on oil and gas, and lowering the voting age to 16.

It’s about everything, basically. Everything except the most important thing they could be doing as children… learning.  – Heather du Plessis-Allan

 I am not sure if Scotland has a big enough prison to put all the women in who will not call rapists “she”, who will not deny biology, who are sick of being harassed for not thinking that the sterilisation of gay children is a good idea.

We think these things not out of any hatred of trans people but because we want to protect vulnerable women and give children time to decide who they want to be. We don’t want to lie to them about changing sex, when it is gruelling and actually not possible. – Suzanne Moore

Here was a lesson in solidarity, in sisterhood and the simple but incendiary power of saying no.

Much of this fight has been about just that. Women saying no and women having boundaries and that is why the liberal left has been so fundamentally useless with their blurry “be kind” mantras, which mean be kind only to men. Or anyone who claims a minority identity. – Suzanne Moore

The age of “no debate” is truly over. This is good for women and, of course, for free speech. Many were against these dumb hate crime laws, which were once again the SNP parading its so-called progressive values while undermining Scotland’s proud Enlightenment history and its notion of freedom of belief. This fuzzy but authoritarian legislation now lays bleeding because of one stupendous woman.  – Suzanne Moore

She walks it like she talks it, gives fabulous parties and most unforgivably has tremendous fun. For this alone she should probably be burnt at the stake.

This is a woman who knows how to use social media more effectively than almost anyone. Elon is probably begging for a tutorial.

At a do the other night I was chatting to an actual rockstar and he said, “I will tell you who IS a f–king rockstar … JK Rowling”.

Ain’t that the truth? – Suzanne Moore

Left unchallenged and unanswered was whether the sheer size of the initial monetary stimulus was too big (almost certainly), whether given that size it was incumbent on the bank to respond more quickly when it was clear we were in a supply shock or a series of supply shocks rather than a demand shock. Other overlooked points included whether people not in the bank had shown the “amazing foresight” he claimed was absent, whether the stimulus itself caused an asset price bubble which left some people high and dry, and whether the structure of the stimulus was too inflexible and too inclined to encourage banks to lend money to people who could ill-afford that borrowing.

The interview got me reflecting again about just how many of our current problems are caused by our response to the pandemic, and how much we need a proper inquiry into the actions of decision-makers during that time.

Every day there are signs of the post-pandemic economic grind. Our collective and substantial loss of purchasing power. The numbers of businesses, charities and sports teams quietly going broke because their balance sheets were so weakened through the pandemic that they can’t cope with the current recession. The large number of house-for-sale signs and the very few sold stickers as house owners struggle to come to terms with the shrinking value of their biggest asset. It’s a long tail of bent and broken dreams.

And it’s not just the economy. Many of our current societal ills are either directly caused or exacerbated by pandemic-era decisions. – Steven Joyce

We need a proper inquiry into all of this so that we learn what there is to learn for the next pandemic, before those lessons are forgotten.

There are plenty of people who want to consign Covid times to the dustbin of history, but the actions taken then keep coming back to haunt us.

It may have been that all of the decisions of the time were unavoidable and couldn’t have been done any other way, but surely we owe it to ourselves to ask the questions. This thing has cost us tens of billions of dollars in our collective wealth and blighted many people’s lives. It seems to me we have sufficient cause to be intellectually curious about the answers, even before we consider the likelihood of experiencing another pandemic in the future. After all, even key ministers of that time are now prepared to accept that the second Auckland lockdown went on too long. – Steven Joyce

One of the key questions the inquiry needs to answer is whether allowing the Covid health response to trump everything else throughout the pandemic period was the best course of action, or whether we could have preserved life without going to the extremes we did or for as long as we did. Was there a better decision-making process than just handing the keys to the director general of health? And did the panic of the time sacrifice calm rational decision-making? After all, once that panic passed, we suddenly got a lot more sanguine about Covid hospitalisations and even deaths.

Getting Blakely to mark his own homework and that of his profession will be about as effective as getting a Reserve Bank Governor to mark his own monetary policy work. The passive “fireside chat” approach the current inquiry has taken to date does nothing to dispel the theory that Blakely is too close to be objective. – Steven Joyce

If we don’t properly revamp this inquiry, then we might as well shut it down. But it’s important that we don’t. We owe it to ourselves to have a good uncomfortable look at what happened and what we might do differently next time. After all, that is how we learn. – Steven Joyce

The Fourth Labour government ultimately imploded over the unresolved tensions between the cautious Lange and the aggressive Douglas; and they were all in the same party. Luxon’s challenge isn’t exactly analogous, but the similarities are too significant to ignore.

May the radicals prevail. – Damien Grant

 

Quotes of the week

I want to start by reiterating that I believe we all have the same dream for the health system: we all want to address health inequities, we all want to shorten waiting lists, and we all want a workforce that isn’t overstretched and that has the right skills to respond effectively to all our diverse populations.

Even though this particular version of the dream with the Māori Health Authority is coming to an end, as Minister I want to paint a new one, one that is outcomes-focused, driven by need, and with decisions made closer to the home and hapū.

This Government is totally focused on outcomes. The question we ask about any policy is: will it improve outcomes? Will it mean people get better care? Will it mean people get faster care? Will it mean people will get the care that suits their circumstances, including cultural competency? – Shane Reti

My dream for the health system isn’t about bureaucratic structures and endless plans and reports; it’s about identifying need and responding to it.

One of the fundamental differences in approach to health is enabled by this legislation: this Government believes that decisions should be made closer to the community, to the home and the hapū. Local circumstances require local solutions rather than national bureaucracies. – Shane Reti

Primary and community healthcare is most people’s gateway to the health system. When we get this right, we’ll be supporting New Zealanders to stay in good health for longer wherever they are, whoever they are, and whatever their health needs are. – Shane Reti

For health: we can choose form or function; I choose function.

We can choose activism or actions; I choose actions.

We can choose outrage or outcomes; I choose outcomes. – Shane Reti

Confidence is no longer going backwards, but it’s still in the gutter. – Wayne Langford

On the surface, DEI sounds like a nice concept to bring in a variety of employees, and treat everyone fairly. Perhaps it does do these things sometimes, but it’s also harsh and unforgiving, with parameters of ‘correct’ behaviour and speech which are ever narrowing. It gives managers free reign to formerly admonish or punish staff like Emma, an ex-Ministry of Transport employee, who dared to express a different belief to what was deemed the only acceptable one to have. DEI encourages staff to lay complaints against each other for minor offences they should be able to weather, and creates a gag effect on the expression and exchange of ideas, in the event an incorrect thing is said. There are many employees who don’t like the negativity that DEI can create in the workplace, but are too afraid of repercussions to speak up about it there. –

So, this is the direction New Zealand’s Reserve Bank is going in. I don’t anticipate it will have a problem filling the DEI Advisor vacancy, unless some sensible person who is a position to do so puts the brakes on it. The salary for this role isn’t stated, but I don’t count on it being peanuts.

Nor do I expect that DEI, whether in the Reserve Bank or elsewhere, will ever be the Utopia it’s determinedly portrayed as, or anything close to it. From what I’m hearing, the chasm between that and how it plays out in real life is vast. But, our entire public service, including the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, continue to embed it. You’d think, of any organisation, our central bank would be able to spot an investment which wasn’t living up to its hype, wouldn’t you? – Katrina Biggs

It doesn’t matter who our Prime Minister is or what party they represent. If we are to value the office of the Prime Minister, then we should value the support structure that exists around them. That means their security, housing and transport arrangements. The fact that two of those matters cannot be relied on is not acceptable in a first world country. – Bruce Cotterill

While we will always differ in terms of who our Prime Minister is, or what party they represent, we should be respectful of the office and ensure that our country is well presented to the international marketplace that we rely on for our economic survival.

But we’re majoring in minor things here. The location of the Prime Ministerial residence or the aircraft on which he travels are neither here nor there. What I care about is whether he is doing a good job. And right now the list of priorities is long and complex. For the time being at least, Ministerial housing and Defence Force planes are a long way down that list. But we should recognise the need to ensure that our PM, and indeed all of our representatives, have the infrastructure and the support that they require to enable them to function to the best of their ability. – Bruce Cotterill

In a mistaken belief, developing from the 1950s onwards, that the best thing society could do to assist the disadvantaged was to give them money and help with housing, my generation and subsequent ones eventually created a world bereft of the basic need all people have to look after themselves. Instead, we created a huge sense of entitlement. “The world owes us a living” seems to be today’s catch-cry.  Sir Apirana Ngata predicted that Maori would be particularly susceptible to such a message and likely to skimp on education and hard work, succumbing instead to a world of idleness, boredom, and eventually mayhem. – Michael Basssett

These days, commitment is an unknown virtue, replaced, in too many cases, by violence from mum’s current bed-mate. – Michael Basssett

The mother who put her best foot forward in the 1970s, more often these days adopts a “why me worry” approach. – Michael Basssett

Collectively, society has failed far too many young children, especially Maori, by paying easy money and expecting, despite advice, that there would be no adverse outcomes. Today’s young criminals have to be apprehended; but doing no more than locking them up is no solution. There have to be alternatives that incentivise them to go straight. – Michael Basssett

It’s one thing to deal with today’s problem youth. Much work is also needed on the welfare system to reduce the growing legions of troublemakers in the pipeline. We need sticks and carrots. – Michael Basssett

Iwi leaders, many of them benefiting from tax-free trusts and vocal about Maori entitlement, need to be obliged to get more involved with their dysfunctional Maori children instead of endlessly calling for more money from the rest of us. Now we are in the post-tribal settlement era Maori leaders need to show they intend to assist their tamariki and rangatahiand not just criticise non-Maori.

Whatever, it will be a long process weaning people off excessive welfare dependency. Remember, it’s taken more than 50 years to get here so there is no overnight fix. – Michael Basssett

Politics is often a choice between a bad option and one that is worse. – Richard Prebble

Governments are poor at picking winners. Projects regarded as significant may be lemons, and those regarded as insignificant may be acorns.

We have an infrastructure crisis. Doing nothing is not an option.

My suggestion is that after a limited timeframe, the fast-track planning legislation should expire. This will incentivise the Government to draft and pass planning laws that do allow projects large and small to be approved in a timely and efficient manner. – Richard Prebble

The impact of having planning laws that can be used to block needed infrastructure is enormous.

In my experience, Auckland’s traffic congestion is worse than New York’s. Auckland’s gridlock is not an accident. The city’s planners planned it. – Richard Prebble

A cost-benefit analysis is a way of taking politics out of decision-making. But, no matter how much cheaper a bus lane is, it cannot alter the fact Auckland needs more roads. You cannot take freight on a bus. The journey from Botany to the airport can take longer than the flight to Wellington. – Richard Prebble

Traffic congestion is not inevitable, it is a choice.

As we wait for the perfect plan, Auckland continues to gridlock. – Richard Prebble

I did not wait for the technology before implementing road user charges, so trucks pay their full cost of using the road. If every motorist paid their full cost of using the road, we can fund and maintain a modern roading network.

Pass the empowering legislation and the geeks will find a way to collect the charges. – Richard Prebble

Devastated and bewildered that my embrace of inclusive language has angered its most enthusiastic devotees, so let's just say:

Happy Mother's Day to all females who've raised children. 💐❤️ https://t.co/OawEAORPJP

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 10, 2024

The expansion of Human Rights, without a parallel expansion of Human Responsibilities, is why the liberalism of our modern age has descended and degraded into mere libertinism.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) March 13, 2024

It feels like Golriz’s lawyer is trying to make the media the bad guys here. The bad guy in this case is the one who stood in court yesterday and pleaded guilty.

I feel sorry for Golriz, I genuinely do. I feel sorry that this is the turn her life has taken, it must be incredibly hard to deal with.

But this is the consequence of her actions, tough as it is- unwelcome media attention included. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

The slogan in Wellington is to “lean back” as the spending-cut bus rolls past, before business as usual returns in 2025.

The bureaucracy has no intention of allowing a mere Government to butcher it. To the contrary, it plans to kill the Government with death by a thousand cuts. – Matthew Hooton 

Too many 20-something cub reporters in other media can’t comprehend that increasing funding for a government programme doesn’t necessarily improve the quality or quantity of the service, and nor does a cut necessarily reduce either. – Matthew Hooton 

At the moment Falls Dam is around empty, meaning that what is coming out is virtually what is coming in. The flow at the most common measuring point will be just around 900 litres per second.

It is on the verge of having only domestic and stock water, with none available for irrigation. If it doesn’t rain, and only domestic and stock water continue to be taken, it will keep reducing. It turns out that councillors in the ORC cannot require the river to be happy and healthy and higher flowing, even if we knew what makes a river happy. It would be as useful to pray or do a rain dance.

Instead of councillors fighting with the government, they would be better to attempt to reach agreement about what actually can be achieved. They could stop pretending if they were good stewards they could create water from nothing.

Only dams and rain create river flow. No amount of reports or virtuous councillors, even with the support of opposition members of Parliament, will change the evidence-based reality.  – Hilary Calvert

You see, I’m a writer by profession. All my life, for more than fifty years, I have been folding words. My novels have been translated into 40 languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Chinese, Esperanto… and many others.

Now, with great pleasure, without using too many expressions, I sincerely and with all the strength of my soul send all the brainless “intellectuals” interested in my position go to ass. In fact, very soon you will all be there without me. – Dina Rubina

Talent, skill, brains, determination, acumen, experience, these are the measures of value, that’s why they say age is but a number.   – Mike Hosking

There is a fundamental dishonesty in the language of politics in the 21st century. Liberal buzzwords disguise authoritarian crusades. The old language of equality is marshalled to the cause of devastating women’s rights. Gay-friendly slogans are used to justify the grotesque policy of putting young gays on a metaphorical rack in order that their supposedly faulty sex might be corrected. Tyranny is snuck in under a banner of ‘freedom’. Enough is enough. Liberty and equality must be defended from their fake champions. – Brendan O’Neill 

The idea that there is such a thing as ‘trans children’ is central to their movement. Rather than acknowledge that, for some men, there is a sexual driver behind the desire to identify as a woman, and that there might be nefarious reasons for their desire to shimmy into women’s spaces, the trans movement wants us to believe there have always been a minority of people who are innately trans, from birth. In practice, the idea of the ‘trans child’ is a fig leaf for the fetishes of adult men. The children who are encouraged to transition, and who suffer hideous side-effects from drugs like puberty blockers, are merely collateral damage. – Jo Bartosch

It’s tempting to think that a country loses its press freedoms when laws are passed that limit free speech and the government starts locking up journalists. But that’s not the only way it happens. And it’s not what is happening now, in the UK, where editors and journalists have issued their own gagging orders.

Not every newspaper. Not every media outlet. But enough, and importantly, our state broadcaster and media of record, the BBC, has gagged its own journalists on certain issues.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with Gender Identity Ideology and so called “gender affirming healthcare”. – Claire Loneragan

We have grown to expect that journalists will be brave. They go into war zones, they uncover wrongdoing in the criminal underworld and corporate boardrooms, and in doing so many put themselves in real physical danger. Having the backing of their editors and fellow journalist gives them courage, because they know their actions will be held up as important and morally right.

That is not true for those who dare to speak out against Gender Identity Ideology. – Claire Loneragan

All of this matters because a free press is one of the pillars of democracy. We would notice if the government was to pass a law curbing press freedom. But the poisonous influence of groupthink has taken hold almost unchallenged, and all to shore up the lie that men are women if they say they are.

If your aim was to undermine our western liberal way of life, it would be a very effective way to get started. – Claire Loneragan

I don’t claim to be an expert in tikanga, but usually you are meant to be a good host to your manuhiri, your guests, and I think one or two students failed at that, so by a te ao Māori lens, they weren’t doing a very good job. – David Seymour

Think of the engineering, the effort in installing and de-constructing her stage, the thousands of hours invested in getting the stadium ready; all to create a brief euphoria. Transience contributes to the joy.

Nothing tangible produced, no advance in economic well-being, no improvement in any measurable metric that means anything; and that is the point. Engaging in things only for the joy it brings us is the best part of being human. – Damien Grant

Transgenderism is the ultimate expression of The Patriarchy because it’s men redefining what a woman is, then forcing women out of women only places and roles.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) March 16, 2024

Did you see the one about . . .?

Politics should be about the best person for the job – Mike Hosking

. . . It’s at this point I want to ask what I would argue is a slightly more important question than whether gender balance is important – would you rather have gender for gender’s sake, or competence?

Is a Government there to govern in a way that progresses the country, and therefore is broadly popular, or are they there to be able to meet markers like gender or race?

Has Labour’s excellence at gender provided us with a Government and a country we are proud of?

It’s important to point out, in case the angsty are getting a bit exercised, this Government’s performance is not necessarily gender related. In other words, just because they are useless and where they are in the polls isn’t because they promoted their fair share of women.

But the point is, the more you focus on artificiality i.e needing to balance the ledger or the colour or the background or the social input, the less you are focusing on the real issue – who is the best to do the job?

What we so desperately need in this country, now more than ever, is excellence.

We need excellence and experience and performance. What shape, size, gender or height someone is, is a long way down the totem pole.

Just give me some winners.

Nightmare on Molesworth Street – JC :

Labour is going to lose this election in the opposite way to its last result. In three years, this bunch of misfits are on track to turn a stunning win into an equally stunning loss. If you want proof I suggest you read Mike Munro’s article in the Weekend Herald. The article epitomises the lack of political awareness of this bunch that call themselves a government. In six years in office they have not produced a shred of evidence they have the slightest idea of what is needed to sustain New Zealand as a first-world country.

When it comes to the economy they appear to know only three words: borrow, tax and spend. Maybe four. Hope must be in there somewhere. That is not the way to dig yourself out of an economic hole you alone have created. Due to the policies of this government, more people than ever are on ‘struggle street’. There is no point speaking in glowing terms about low employment numbers when you have skewed the numbers to get the result you want.

Adding the jobseeker numbers to the unemployment figures gives you a more accurate number. Another example of misleading the public on numbers is the savings you get when removing GST from fruit and vegetables. It will not be $5 a week: more like $1.50 – if you’re lucky. I have not read of one economist who agrees with it. Not to worry: Mike Munro writes that the families who will most appreciate cheaper GST-free food couldn’t care less about what economists think.

Right there, in his own words, is the nub of Labour’s problem. It’s the government arrogance of ‘we know best’, when the truth is they haven’t got a clue. I must pause, though, to give Grant Robertson a plaudit, because he did understand and gave due warning to his party of the consequences of going down this road. But the Boy from the Hutt wasn’t interested. He was mesmerised by the measly $5 (or infinitesimal $1.50). . . 

Labour then brought out their transport policy, adding 12 cents a litre over three years to petrol. Now the core Labour voters on struggle street will find themselves struggling even more. In one fell swoop, or perhaps in this case foul swoop, Labour have more than wiped out the minuscule GST savings. The people they are supposed to be representing are being clobbered every time their MPs wag their tongues. . . 

Not to be outdone by penalising and ripping off their core vote, Labour decided last Friday to have a go at those who do listen to economists: the farmers. Ignoring the fact these people are already in dire straits due to lower agriculture prices, they hit them with a climate change tax. I’ll give them credit for getting the day right – all shocking political policies are released on a Friday. But why now, just weeks out from an election? Is this some sort of political kamikaze exercise? The country can’t endure another three years of this.

As I mentioned in my previous article, you wouldn’t want these imbeciles strategising a war. October 14 is going to be the ‘night of the long knives’ for Labour. They may not be, metaphorically speaking, killed off (or blown up), but they’ll most certainly be removed from office. It does not make any sense to entrust the running of a country to people who demonstrate such blatant ignorance of what is required to achieve successful outcomes. It’s not borrow, tax and spend – it’s getting people into work and thereby increasing productivity. . .

Cancelling our comedy show proves our point – Andrew Doyle :

Five years ago, Andy Shaw and I set up a monthly comedy night in London called Comedy Unleashed. Our objective was to challenge what we perceived to be the groupthink that was developing within the industry. Promoters, television commissioners, critics, even comedians themselves, had begun to turn on acts who failed to convey the “correct” political opinions, and many fellow comics confessed to me that they had begun to self-censor for the sake of their careers.  

And so we launched a night which would encourage innovative and free-thinking acts, where we might cultivate a comedy-literate audience who understood that the art form cannot exist without the potential to cause offence. Not that the acts we booked necessarily had to be offensive; rather, they would be free to tease the limitations of the audience’s tolerance should they wish. The only condition was that they should be funny.  

This year we decided to make an appearance at the trade fair known as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We liaised with a local promoter and booked a venue in Leith, on the outskirts of the city. The bill was to include Bruce Devlin, Mary Bourke, Dominic Frisby, Alistair Williams and the co-creator of the classic sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd, Graham Linehan.  

Graham has been considered controversial for holding a range of beliefs. Most notably: that human beings cannot change sex, that women deserve the right to single-sex spaces and the chance to compete fairly in sports, that feminists such as J.K. Rowling should not have to put up with rape and death threats for stating biological facts, and that gay and autistic children ought not to be medicalised and put onto a pathway to sterilisation. What a monster. 

Those who claim that “cancel culture does not exist” will struggle to explain how it is that one of the most successful sitcom writers of all time now cannot work in the comedy industry, and why his musical adaptation of Father Ted has been effectively held hostage by the rights holders, Hat Trick Productions.  

Given that we knew our show would sell out, we did not advertise Graham in advance, preferring instead to tease the audience with the prospect of a “surprise cancelled comedian”.  With the show just a few days away, we finally announced his appearance, and within 24 hours the venue, Leith Arches, had posted a statement on Instagram stating that they “DO NOT suppprt [sic] this comedian, or his views and he WILL NOT be allowed to perform at our venue and is CANCELLED from Thursdays [sic] comedy show with immediate effect”. 

The histrionics didn’t stop there. “We are an inclusive venue,” the statement continued, “and will not allow such views to violate our space.” The venue later deleted the post and replaced it with one that was marginally more literate.  

Quite how a venue can claim to be “inclusive” when it excludes performers who do not subscribe to the ideology of its staff is anyone’s guess. Those who complained to the venue could simply have refrained from buying a ticket. Instead, they sought to prevent the audience members of a sold-out show from making their own decisions. 

It is for this reason that we are determined to find an alternative venue. The Fringe has always been known for controversial performances, but whereas the protests used to come from the Christian Right, they now seem to be driven by the identitarian Left. These are the same Pharisees, only now they wear rainbow-coloured garb. 

All is not well in the comedy industry. Last year Jerry Sadowitz had his show pulled by the Pleasance Theatre. This year it is the turn of Graham Linehan. These moves represent precisely the kind of authoritarian thinking that led to the creation of Comedy Unleashed in the first place. So although we regret the cancellation of our show, at least these activists have proved our point. 

The rise and rise of trans McCarthyism – Brendan O’Neill :

t’s been a bad week for the ‘cancel culture is a myth’ lobby. For those woke bros of the pretend left who squawk ‘It’s not cancel culture, it’s consequences culture!’ every time someone is punished for their beliefs. Women hounded from their jobs, blacklisted by university campuses, set upon by heaving mobs of feral misogynists, all for the thoughtcrime of knowing men are not women, and still the censorship apologists say: ‘Cancel culture isn’t real.’ ‘This isn’t a witch hunt, it’s just God’s consequences’, these petty tyrants would have said in Salem.

The cancellation deniers were mugged by truth this week. First we had the extraordinary sight of the good people of Comedy Unleashed traipsing around Edinburgh to try to find a venue for their comedy night. Their line-up included Graham Linehan, you see, and his insistence that people with penises are men, not women, makes him a public enemy to the woke Joe McCarthys. Not one but two venues cancelled – yes, cancelled – these thoughtcriminals of comedy. Eventually they had to perform their set on the street, outside the Scottish parliament, a grim snapshot of the decline and fall of Enlightened Scotland.

Then we had the shaming of David Greig. The blacklisting of Linehan and friends is an incredibly important moment in cancel culture, but I hope it doesn’t overshadow the Stasi-style humiliation suffered by Greig for his wrongthink. He is one of Scotland’s best-known playwrights. His works have been performed everywhere from the National Theatre to the Royal Shakespeare Company. And this week he fell victim to the culture of denunciation, the frenzy for finger-pointing, that swirls through woke circles. He was snitched on, exposed, shamed, and pressured to recant his profane and wicked thoughts. What did he do? He liked two tweets posted by ‘TERFs’.

His ‘careless and harmful’ Twitter behaviour – as he himself described it in the timorous apology extracted from him by the mob – involved pressing like on the following tweets: ‘Lads and lasses in the trenches fighting the gender madness – what is the best (very recent) example you can think of that shows how we have won this crazy war?’ And: ‘If you are a 16-year-old autistic girl who says someone looks like a lesbian you will be arrested and held in custody, but if you are a 26-year-old man who punches a woman twice at a women’s rights rally, you will just be cautioned.’

That latter tweet was contrasting the surreal overreaction of woke cops in West Yorkshire to a teenage girl who said one of their officers looked like her ‘lesbian nana’ and the slap on the wrist given to a 26-year-old trans activist – a bloke, natch – who allegedly punched a 54-year-old feminist in the head and arm last month. . .

Greig was swiftly outed as a ‘transphobe’, which is to modern culture what being a Communist was to 1950s Hollywood. Chillingly, it was a fellow creator – an artist called Rosie Aspinall Priest – who publicly denounced him. She shared the sinful material he approved of, accusing him of ‘openly liking transphobic tweets’. ‘Really awful things on display here’, she said – what, giving the thumbs-up to a tweet criticising Aberdeen police for not treating the punching of a woman more seriously? Greig’s ‘likes’ – or his thoughts, which is really what we’re talking about here – ‘do not align with the values inherent within Scotland’s theatre sector’, decreed Ms Priest.

Twitter (I’m still not ready to call it X, Elon) started buzzing with chat about Greig’s likecrimes, and soon he shut down his own Twitter account. Twitter’s no country for men who support women’s rights. Such was the pressure on Greig that he felt obliged to write an apologetic letter to staff at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, where he is artistic director.  . .

The shaming of David Greig might seem a small affair, certainly in comparison with the chattering-class bloodsport of going after Graham Linehan. But it matters, because it shows how cruel cancel culture has become. It has all the ingredients of cultural despotism. The denunciation of Greig by a fellow artist brings to mind the ‘culture of denunciation’ that pertained in the GDR. There, too, in the words of the historian Robert Gellately, ‘oppositional persons’ were frequently denounced as ‘enemies’ of the common good, and this culture of grassing had ‘devastating effects, particularly on writers and poets’. That Greig was reprimanded for mere likes on Twitter confirms that even giving fleeting approval to ‘oppositional’ thought can land you in trouble now. One doesn’t even have to speak in order to sin, far less write a manifesto – a murmur of agreement with wrongthink is enough to see you condemned and chastened.

And that Greig’s chief speechcrime was to align himself with women who think other women should not be punched in the head and arm points to the moral contortionism and outright linguistic deceit in the trans ideology. Supporting women, feminism itself, is now branded ‘transphobia’, confirming that perfectly reasonable beliefs are being reimagined as bigotries and maladies under the yoke of wokeness. Every tyranny in history has depicted oppositional thought not only as ‘wrong’ or ‘destabilising’, but as immoral, proof of a polluted mind, and liable to pollute other minds, too. So it is under trans McCarthyism: gender-critical thinking is treated as an abnormal fear whose expression must be tightly policed and sometimes outright censored.

Trans McCarthyism really is the only way to describe it. Blacklisting is back, not of Commies this time, but of people who think women are real. We all know the big names who’ve been hounded by the phobia-hunters: Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater, Allison Bailey, Kellie-Jay Keen. And there are others. Indeed, any writer, comic or actor who gets even close to expressing a gender-critical view is ruthlessly pounced on. Actress Amanda Abbington, for saying men can’t breastfeed. Davina McCall, for describing a pro-JK Rowling podcast as ‘interesting’. Macy Gray, for saying men who cut off their bits are not women. Author Gillian Philip, for expressing solidarity with JK Rowling. And of course Rowling herself, whose name has been scrubbed from museums of popular culture and schools and even certain versions of her books. And now David Greig. He’s been put on notice. Only silence will save him now.

‘Are you now or have you ever been a believer in biological sex?’ – that’s what the new authoritarians ask, without having to ask it. Say yes and you’re out, as surely as Dalton Trumbo and others were out of Hollywood when their Communist sympathies were uncovered. Artistic freedom and open discussion must be saved from the trundles of this new ideology that would have us believe that men can be women, and 2 + 2 = 5.

Humourless scolds have taken over comedy – Simon Evans :

. . . If the aim of booking Linehan – not merely well-loved but almost peerlessly adored for his sitcom work – was to demonstrate that powerful, partisan forces had seized control of the Fringe, then it has plainly worked. Mere mention of his name, before he uttered a single word on stage, provoked complete reverse peristalsis. He was ejected from the system before the possibility of digesting what he had to say could begin. He didn’t even get the benefit of the doubt accorded to Sadowitz, who at least got to perform his show once before the plug was pulled. Those who demanded Linehan be cancelled have perfectly demonstrated what comedy is now up against.

And let us be clear, Linehan has been canned for holding views that, however intemperately they have on occasion been expressed in the furnace of social media, are broadly shared by the majority of the population and are well-evidenced in biology. He has also made specific, since proven allegations of abuse and malpractice by medical professionals on a scale it would be difficult to exaggerate. For all of this, he has already paid an enormous price, in terms of his health, family life and professional opportunities.

It all feels desperately sad. I suspect the vast majority of us just want to go back the days of Father Ted, of Jenny Eclair and Lily Savage and The League of Gentlemen, of robust and vulgar and joyful humour and a genuinely inclusive, forgiving atmosphere. But a tiny handful of humourless scolds will not let it lie. The pricks.

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

It’s impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you fail by default.  – J.K. Rowling

Did you see the one about . . . ?

Sex lies and the census – Natasha Hamilton-Hart :

StatsNZ, the government’s official statistics agency, apparently thinks that humans can change sex. It tells us in its report on the new questions in the 2023 census that:

Sex is based on a person’s sex characteristics, such as their chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. While typically based upon the sex characteristics observed and recorded at birth or infancy, a person’s sex can change over the course of their lifetime and may differ from their sex recorded at birth.

The glaring error in this statement is of course the claim that a person’s sex can change. We all know humans cannot change sex. Our grandmothers knew it, and their grandmothers before them. I suspect the earliest humans knew this. A standard child development textbook will tell you that human children grasp the immutability of sex roughly by the time they reach primary school (page 535 of the eighth edition, if you are curious). If you are wondering whether ‘the science’ has changed, it has not. You don’t need to take my word for it. Here’s Professor Robert Winston, a specialist in human reproduction with an illustrious career: ‘I will say this categorically that you cannot change your sex.’

The other error by StatsNZ is to reduce sex to ‘sex characteristics.’ Not only is this circular, it opens the door to a misperception that chromosomes simply are sex: XX for female and XY for male. Taking this view would imply that people with nontypical chromosomes – XXX females for example, or XXY males – are some kind of ‘intersex’ or sex other than male or female. This is what StatsNZ gets close to implying, with its new question on ‘variations of sex characteristics.’ In fact, it is more accurate to say that, in humans, specific genes drive sex differentiation into one of two genetic developmental pathways that produce male or female reproductive systems. In particular, the presence of an SRY gene sets an embryo down a male developmental pathway. SRY stands for Sex-determining Region Y; this gene is almost always on the Y chromosome. So sex is a matter of what kind reproductive system an individual has.

It follows that people with nontypical chromosomes are all either male or female. A man with Klinefelter syndrome has XXY chromosomes. He is most definitely male. Similarly, a girl born with only one X chromosome has Turner syndrome. As Britain’s NHS notes, it is a female-only genetic disorder. Women with Turner syndrome will in almost all cases be infertile and most will need particular healthcare in order to live a healthy life. It is insulting and cruel, as well as inaccurate, to imply that people with such disorders or variations of sexual differentiation (often abbreviated as DSDs) are something other than male or female.

So, our government’s statistics agency is either lying to us or is inexcusably ignorant. Sure, most people probably get through life without knowing the details of DSDs or even the precise relationship between chromosomes and sex. But we all know that humans cannot change sex. And a government agency that has gone to great lengths to include questions on sex, gender identity and DSDs in its census questionnaire ­– but makes such elementary mistakes – is either grossly incompetent or worse.

Do the lies matter? Lies and damned statistics

I am going to call obvious false claims ‘lies’, even though probably nobody at StatsNZ consciously intends to deceive. Humans find ways to manage the cognitive dissonance that occurs when there is gap between what they know to be true and what they are actually saying – we can predict they will sustain illusions in order to avoid the negative feelings that come with consciously lying. But right now I am not so interested in how the officials at StatsNZ live with themselves, but rather with what happens when authorities make obviously false statements.

A lying government statistics agency is a problem. It matters, first, for the accuracy and usefulness of the statistics collected and disseminated. StatsNZ is introducing these new census questions as part of its ‘gender first’ reporting policy. This policy means that data on ‘males’ and ‘females’ will ordinarily be based on a person’s subjective gender identity rather than his or her sex. This is more than an irritation for people who don’t have a gender identity – who don’t particularly feel an affinity for gender stereotypes and regard themselves simply as being either male or female, regardless of dress, habits or feelings. I don’t have a gender identity any more than I have a species identity. I am human, regardless of how I think or feel about it.

The real problem, however, is not that people like me are irritated. The real problem is the loss of integrity in the census data and all the other official sources of data that either use census data or adopt the StatsNZ guidance on how to gather data. That includes data on male-female income gaps, educational achievement and any other type of data you can think of where there is a legitimate reason to report results by sex. As argued by Professor Alice Sullivan, a leading social scientist, conflating sex and gender in official statistics is a bad thing to do. Neglecting to gather sex-specific data, already a problem, is particularly harmful to women.

To be sure, the absolute numbers of those reporting a gender that differs from their sex will be small. In the UK’s most recent census, only 0.2% of the those responding to the gender identity question reported a ‘trans man’ or ‘trans woman’ identity, and a minuscule 0.06% identified as non-binary. But in areas where sex ratios are hugely imbalanced – for example, male-female differences in the prison population or patterns of sexual offending – even small numbers will substantially distort official figures. Even when the numbers are small, deliberately introducing a policy that defines basic categories in misleading ways is still wrong.

StatsNZ might claim that, by asking about sex and gender, it is not conflating the two. But it is. First, by giving an inaccurate and misleading definition of sex, as something that can change over a person’s lifetime. Second, a gender-by-default reporting policy means that data relating to sex will end up mixed in the reported data on gender. Questions answered on basis of sex are going to be reported, in most cases, as referring to gender. StatsNZ will do this through matching census data with administrative data and by imputation, although they are still officially consulting on exactly how they will do this.

When the state lies: the erosion of trust

We lose trust in agencies that lie. We know they are lying and we also know that they must, at some level of consciousness, know they are lying. And the only possible reason for this insistence on lying is a decision to put political expedience or ideology ahead of the truth.

When public agencies chose to lie in this way, they invite something worse than ridicule: profound mistrust. Once a public authority is known to lie out of expedience or pressures for conformity, all of its claims potentially come under suspicion. Why believe a government agency or a public scientist about climate records, if they can’t even get sex in humans right? Why believe the health ministry about the safety of vaccines, if the same agency claims that men can get pregnant?

Once a public authority is known to lie out of expedience or pressures for conformity, all of its claims potentially come under suspicion.

Truth matters. The world’s climate either is or is not changing as a result of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Either vaccines save lives or they don’t. The sum of our knowledge on both of these things remains incomplete, of course, and will be added to and revised over time. And no doubt there are many complexities: room for caveats and nuances. But unless you are willing to abandon the idea of truth entirely, not all claims about climate change and vaccines can be equally true.

And for those who care about truth, trust matters. I think there is overwhelming evidence to conclude that the climate is changing as a result of human activity, but what I believe on this issue is entirely dependent on my trust in public authorities and the credibility of scientists. I am not any kind of atmospheric scientist, so I rely on these people to tell the truth. Just as I rely on the work of research scientists and statisticians in order to form a view on the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Credible, trustworthy sources of information and analysis are vital for democracy and good public policy.

Credible, trustworthy sources of information and analysis are vital for democracy and good public policy. We’ve seen much handwringing about misinformation and disinformation, about how some people are disastrously ready to believe conspiracy theories and junk science. About how false and misleading information can be put to work to undermine attempts to solve real problems, from public health to climate change. About how extreme and deliberate lies can threaten democratic institutions.

There is no easy fix for these problems. Censoring misinformation is unlikely to work and will often in fact undermine trust, or even play into the hands of those responsible for deliberate disinformation.

Public agencies could at least avoid making things worse. They could stop lying.

We don’t like what you say or how you say it – Theodore Dalrymple:

Dr. Michael Joyner, an exercise physiologist at the Mayo Clinic, has been admonished by the clinic in part for having suggested in public that testosterone gives transgender women a lasting and unfair advantage when they compete in sports against ordinary women.

He has been threatened with dismissal if he doesn’t desist from making such remarks in public: He’s henceforth only to say what the “communications” department of the clinic permits him to say.

A few years ago, Joyner’s suggestion would have been regarded as so banal that it would have been regarded as not worth making. It would have been as if an astrophysicist had suggested that the world went round the sun. But we live in strange times: Obvious truths have become dangerous to those who utter them. If the truth doesn’t accord with “our values,” as the Mayo Clinic puts it, so much the worse for truth. . . 

Then, came the threat: “Failure to comply with the expectations outlined above or any additional validated complaints from any staff, including, but not limited to, the issues noted above, or any form of retaliation will result in termination of employment.”

This is the language of the true apparatchik who, in other times, and circumstances, would have risen high in the hierarchy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. What Mantilla meant was: We don’t like what you say or how you say it. From now on, say only what we permit you to say. If you disobey, we will sack you.

One of the “validated complaints” to which Mantilla refers seems to have come from the LGBT “community”—that is to say, some member of it who uses the taking of offense as a justification for suppressing the right to free speech. An LGBT “advocate” told a Rochester, Minnesota, television channel that Joyner’s language was “at best insensitive, at worst transphobic.”

The truth of a statement is a defense against an accusation of libel, but not, apparently, against an accusation of causing offense. The latter, of course, is in the mind of the offended: I am offended if I say I am, and I am the sole judge in my own case. Therefore, either all speech that could offend someone—which is to say all speech beyond good morning and goodnight—ought to be suppressed, or alternatively, some people, but not others, have the right to suppress the speech of those who offend them.

What, then, of equality under the law?

About 30 years ago, I wrote an article that offended a well-organized pressure group. This pressure group wrote an angry letter to the CEO of the hospital in which I was working (in Britain’s fundamentally socialist health care system, be it remembered), calling for my dismissal.

The executive wrote back that he was sorry that what I had written upset them, but it was a free country, and I could write what I liked.

This was an answer with no ifs and buts. It quite clearly terminated the correspondence and indicated that there was no point in continuing it. To do the complainants justice, they took the hint, and no more was heard of them. The CEO (who was of an age to remember the war against one of the worst dictatorships in history) didn’t go into the question of whether what I wrote was right or wrong. As far as he was concerned, I had the right to my opinion and to express it in public, and that was the end of the matter.

This was only 30 years ago. How the world has changed since then! I doubt that there’s a CEO in any hospital in the world now who would write with such clarity and concision in defense of freedom of opinion. A chief executive would more likely obfuscate, snivel, euphemize, soft-soap, grovel, dissemble, and otherwise mislead, rather than come straight out with it, as my CEO of the time did. . . 

Anyone who has read anything about the culture of denunciation that existed in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or Vichy France will recognize the atmosphere that Mantilla, consciously or not, seems to want to create or to serve at the Mayo Clinic. Mere tittle-tattle can now be the ruination of a person’s career.

Of course, Mantilla isn’t alone, far from it: Attachment to freedom of speech is very loose or inexistent in many institutions nowadays, strangely enough in institutions of the highly educated, in which one might have expected attachment to freedom to be the strongest.

But the granting of freedom to those with whom we disagree doesn’t come naturally: It requires self-control, for the inclination to suppress the opinion of others exists within most of us. It’s this inclination that must itself be suppressed if freedom is to survive, and unfortunately, it’s the well-educated who can, and now do, best rationalize arguments for not suppressing their own inclination to censor and suppress.

Schools need a reality check – Stephanie Davies-Arai :

A recorded conversation between a teacher and two pupils at a school in Rye has caused quite a stir in the national media after being posted on Twitter this week. The girls were called “despicable” for believing there are only two sexes and for refusing to believe that a girl is really a cat. The 13 year-olds were reprimanded for “questioning the child’s identity”.

Although it’s not clear whether there actually was a cat-identified girl in that school — the administration is denying it — a subsequent investigation by The Telegraph did reveal examples of children in schools identifying as “furries”, including one pupil who meows in answer to teachers’ questions rather than responding in English. In one school, pupils are allowed to flout uniform rules by wearing cat ears in order to express their “true self”.

We should not be surprised. It is alarming that teachers don’t seem to know how to deal with this issue when it arises, but the reasons are obvious. When identity politics is embedded in schools, how can you affirm one childhood “identity” but not another? When personal identity overrides reality for one characteristic (sex) how can it not override reality in another (species)? . . .

Denial of physical reality has been going on in schools for some time now. Once we disrupt reality for children, anything goes. How can we expect children to confidently distinguish between feelings and reality once they are told by teachers that a girl in their class is now a boy?

Schools have been led to believe “affirmation” is the only legitimate way to respond to the boy who identifies as a girl. However, “gender affirmation” just means “sex denial”. Calling a boy a girl is not “affirming his gender identity” but denying his biological sex. Whatever activists may claim, the definition of the word “girl” is not “a subjective identity”, but “a young female human being”. . .

The move away from objective reality and into the world of subjective identity is reflected in the ever expanding acronym that began with “LGB” and has since morphed into “LGBTQ+” and more. . .

Where gender identity ideology erases the distinction between the sexes, the Queer Theory on which it is based is about destabilising reality and disrupting all boundaries, including between adult and child. This is why we have seen the spread of drag queen story time and age-inappropriate Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) resources in schools, including adult fetish, kink and BDSM material. It is why we have external RSE providers whose aim is to “smash cis-heteronormativity” and “queer the primary classroom”.

It is the job of every other child in the school to socially transition a classmate

Adult men dressed in “human-pup” fetish gear have been a fixture at Pride parades for a good few years now (and have been photographed encouraging little children to join in their “play”), yet primary schools are falling over themselves to celebrate Pride Month with seemingly no idea what it has come to represent. Certainly it is not gay rights.

This is the world of Furry Fandom, one branch of the ever-expanding TQ+ “community” that children in schools are now identifying into. It’s the perfect marriage between adult male fetish and innocent childhood passion, the perfect boundary-breaker between adult and child. As happened when “transgender” expanded into non-binary gender identities, we can expect animal identities to spread through schools.

As is the case with “gender identity”, identifying as an animal could be an adolescent mask to cover up underlying anxieties, including not wanting to grow up. In both cases, it is the magic word “identity” that stymies teachers, who have been trained to believe they must validate a child’s identity above all. In her interim report on the Tavistock gender clinic, Dr Hilary Cass warned of “diagnostic overshadowing” where underlying problems are missed or ignored when clinicians rush to affirm a child’s identity. The same thing is happening in schools.

Teachers also have the words “Diversity and Inclusion” ringing in their ears whenever they are called on to respond to a child’s identity expression. The holy trio of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) has been elevated to such an extent in schools that it has effectively become a replacement for the Equality Act. No wonder teachers are afraid to do anything other than celebrate any new “diversity” in the classroom, when heaven forbid they fail to include it.

Leaked Department for Education (DfE) forthcoming draft trans guidance suggests that schools will still be able to socially transition children in cases where the parent agrees. This spectacularly misses the point. First, you might as well just hand all schools over to activist parents. Second, a child does not socially transition themselves, or use their own “preferred pronouns”. It is the job of every other child in the school to socially transition a classmate.

Hilary Cass called social transition an active intervention that could have significant effects on a child’s psychological development. It is not an appropriate task for children to actively intervene in the psychological treatment of another child, and no individual parent or school has the right to demand it. Likewise a doctor who recommends social transition for a child (as many “gender doctors” will) has no authority to proscribe the behaviour of children who are not his patients.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether the school is telling children that there is one boy in the school who is a girl or there are twenty; it is the denial of reality that children are learning. We are seeing the results of this destabilisation of reality for this generation in various manifestations, of which “furries” is only the most recent and most sensational. The long-term psychological harms we don’t yet know.

The DfE has one decision to make. Should schools teach children (through the RSE curriculum or by transitioning a child) that subjective identity is real and objective reality is false? If the answer is yes, we can expect many more confused children who can’t distinguish between feelings and reality, with many more different genders, nationalities and species proliferating in schools.

Why Pride lost the public – Bridget Phetasy :

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably witnessed the backlash to Pride. There have been mass boycotts of Bud Light after the beer company partnered with trans woman and TikTok influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, sending her a custom can to celebrate her first year of “girlhood.” Target was next to come under fire for its Pride display targeting children and their “tuck-friendly” bathing suits for women. 

This set the stage for the most divisive Pride month in some time. First, the boycotts. Then videos of angry parents at school boards went viral. Conservative radio hosts and commentators vowed to make Pride “toxic” to brands. But it’s not just conservatives who are pushing back; according to a recent Gallup poll, even Democrats have seen a drop in the acceptance of same-sex relations.

Which begs the question: what happened to Pride? After decades of progress for gay rights, growing acceptance of gay marriage and the normalization of same-sex relationships, Pride is unexpectedly political again. Why? . . 

“The core reason for the backlash is pretty simple: children,” Andrew Sullivan explains. “The attempt to indoctrinate children in gender ideology and to trans them on the verge of puberty has changed the debate. Start indoctrinating and transing children… and you will re-energize one of the oldest homophobic tropes there is: ‘gays are child molesters.’”

Glenn Greenwald largely agrees: “What destroyed the culture war consensus was their cynical and self-interested decision to transform the LGBT cause into one that no longer focused on the autonomy of adult Americans to live freely — which most people support — but instead to demand the right to influence and indoctrinate other people’s children.”

“They are calling them ‘trans kids’ and medicalizing them at an early age. Lying about puberty blockers. Lying about young girls getting irreversible surgery and so on,” says trans man Buck Angel.

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriages, and with bipartisan support it seemed there was a consensus on this one culture war issue, as well as broad support for the legal rights of trans adults to be free from discrimination. The war was largely won. But rather than shutting up shop or refocusing their efforts on parts of the world where gay and lesbian people faced serious discrimination, activists and NGOs moved onto the transgender issue. . . 

An average person will likely refer to this shift as “woke” and wonder how “the trans stuff” is suddenly everywhere, all at once. Parents are baffled when three out of four of their twelve-year-old daughter’s friend group “identify” as boys or, even more confusingly, nonbinary. People started putting pronouns in their social media bios, on their work résumés and in their email signatures. Biological men are competing in women’s sports and being placed in women’s prisons. In medical magazines and birthing classes, women are suddenly referred to by dehumanizing terms such as “birthing persons” and “uterus havers.”

“It’s like a new enforced public holiday thing and people smell a rat,” says Douglas Murray. “The wiser people realize that something weird is being smuggled in. This isn’t just like, ‘don’t beat up your gay neighbor.’ It’s like ‘there is no such thing as gender.’ ‘There is no such thing as sex.’”

We’ve arrived here thanks to a confluence of forces. Perpetual victimhood pushed by activist groups that need a reason to exist and continue collecting money. The corporatization of Pride. The hijacking of the movement by gender ideology.

“You can’t dress toddlers up in extreme political propaganda while lecturing the parents on committing child abuse for not transitioning their kids and expect everyone to keep quiet,” trans writer Chad Felix Greene tells me. . . 

“What changed is that LGBT activist groups could not afford to obtain victory,” Greenwald says. “When activist groups win, their reason for existing, and their large budgets and salaries, dry up. They always have to push debates into whatever places Americans resist. They also have to be losing, have a claim to victimhood, a reason to assert that they are righting the bigotry of Americans.”

“It’s so tragic because we’ve reached this moment when gay people have finally won mainstream acceptance for the first time in, like, 2,000 years of history,” Kirchick said. “It’s OK to be gay pretty much everywhere in America — and there are obviously pockets where it’s still a problem, I’m not gonna deny that — but majorities of Republicans support gay marriage. I’ve seen it in my own life as a thirty-nine-year-old gay man: it’s a lot easier to be gay now than it was six years ago. And just when we’ve reached this moment, these activists have decided, in our name as gay people, to just piss off America and to make them think that we are a threat to their children.” . . 

At the heart of the problem is the fact that LGBT was never the package deal that most people consider it to be. “LGBT people don’t exist,” says Sullivan. “We’re very different from each other.”

Generally speaking, it’s “the Ts and the Qs” that insist it’s all or nothing. Trans activists demand acquiescence to all their demands no matter how insane and pseudo-scientific, push to allow men in women’s shelters and allow kids to be put on puberty hormones or you’re committing genocide. People are are increasingly saying, “OK — it’s nothing then.”

“I think gays and women in general are bearing the brunt of the gender ideology nonsense,” Murray said. “And it has itself piggybacked like some kind of parasitic entity onto gay rights.”

“Gender identity ideology is essentially anti-gay,” said Doyle. “Gay rights were secured through the recognition that a minority of people are instinctively orientated towards members of their own sex. Gender identity ideology seeks to break down the very notion of biological sex and claim that it is unimportant.”

Underneath the rainbow facade are illiberal forces such as “queer theory” that have been eroding the classically liberal foundation of the original civil rights movement that won gay and trans folks the rights they have now. We’ve gone from “love is love” to trans women insisting if a lesbian doesn’t want to suck their lady dick, they’re a fascist. 

If you’re confused, that’s the point; confusion and contradiction are features, not bugs. In order to understand how this happened, and why, you need specialized knowledge. The average person can’t explain exactly what’s going on, because it’s nonsensical, you can only intuit it; but call it out and you’re dubbed a bigot — and so you retreat, keeping your head down while the gender borg marches on. . . 

“It was once ‘live-and-let-live’ said Sullivan, “Now it’s ‘embrace the ideology — or else.’”

Herein lies the problem with Pride. You can no longer opt out of the ideology. The trans activism changed everything. It is coercive. It is everywhere. Big Tech acts as an enforcer, in conjunction with the state, policing language, pronouns, exacting punishments for refusing to repeat the mantras “trans women are women” and “gender-affirming care is reproductive freedom.”

“I know many gay activists from yesteryear who are coming out of retirement to address this new anti-gay movement which has usurped Pride,” said Doyle. “It doesn’t help that all criticism of Pride is interpreted as homophobic or transphobic. These are important conversations. Like most culture-war issues, we need to stop thinking of this in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’. These things are irrelevant. There are left-wing gay people and right-wing gay people — and all of them are harmed by Pride in its current form.” . . 

Yet the decoupling has begun and it seems to be the only way to navigate our way out of this moment without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. #LGBwithouttheTQ and the #LGB have been trending on Twitter almost every day in June. Even if people don’t understand the forces at work, I think most Americans are smart enough to make the distinction between their gay loved ones and friends and some of the more insane gender stuff.

Like most things, this requires nuance. “You have to say, ‘we respect the rights of adults to undergo a gender transition,’” says Kirchick. “And ‘we want full equality and non-discrimination for transgender people in society, but there are real live debates about at what age it’s appropriate to administer these sorts of medical treatment to kids.’”

“Keep biological sex as a central characteristic in the law and culture,” Sullivan says. “Gender can be added, but can’t replace.”

“I think many LGBT people see this mess but are scared to lose friends and community if they speak up,” said Angel. “But it’s our duty as LGBT members to call this out. To show the world that these people are not a representation of us.”

The witch trials of Davina McCall – Brendan O’Neill :

It was more often than not ‘loud and opinionated women’ who were targeted by witchfinders, wrote John Putnam Demos, the great Yale historian of America’s 17th-century meltdown over witches. And so it is today. Nothing riles the right-thinking mob of our own era more than a woman with an opinion, especially if it’s an opinion that runs dangerously counter to their own. Exhibit A: the flapping hysteria that followed Davina McCall’s mild, polite expression of a point of view at the weekend.

Ms McCall, TV host and menopause-awareness campaigner, caused Twitter to suffer a fit of the vapours not by telling an off-colour joke or posting an obscene image or engaging in ‘hate speech’, but by putting up an 11-word review of a podcast. Seriously. The transsexual adult-film actor Buck Angel tweeted a link to The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a pod series hosted by the Westboro Baptist escapee turned voice of reason, Megan Phelps-Roper. And McCall chimed in. ‘This really is a very interesting and balanced podcast x highly recommend’, she said. Ready the torches, dust down the witch’s scold – a woman has expressed an unsanctioned thought.

For the speechcrime of describing a podcast as ‘balanced’, McCall was denounced as a TERF. ‘Christ, she’s one of them’, cried a thousand men who think they’re women. The witches of 17th-century New England were accused of ‘entertaining Satan’, said Putnam Demos; McCall’s offence is to entertain Joanne Rowling, the great she-devil of the woke era, the morally fallen woman about whom no favourable opinion may be expressed. The poor women of Salem were supposedly seen consorting with the devil. Davina made the moral error of consorting with Rowling, of failing to damn her as an unspeakable bigot in the fashion of the digital mob. . . 

You do wonder what goes through the minds of the Gen Z hacks who write this crap. One minute you’re at journalism school learning about the Pentagon Papers, the next you’re urgently filing copy because a woman called a podcast ‘balanced’.

Those ‘anti-trans pundits’ are the usual suspects, the kind of women who stalk the fever dreams of the alphabet bros at sites like Pink News. Kellie-Jay Keen, for instance, aka Posie Parker, who kindly tweeted in response to Ms McCall: ‘Do not back down… we’ll support you.’ First an unsanctioned opinion, now an unsanctioned act of solidarity? Is there no end to the brazenness of these errant women? The aim of the cynical lumping together of McCall’s intellectual curiosity with other people’s supposed ‘anti-trans’ activism was as clear as it was sinister – to signal to McCall that if she ever again expresses a positive thought about Ms Rowling, she will be unpersoned as thoroughly as Keen and other ‘loud and opinionated women’ have been. Davina has been put on notice. The guillotine of cancellation dangles precariously over her. Silence, witch.

Note the typically Orwellian abuse of language. ‘Anti-trans’, they say, about women who are actually ‘pro-women’. The rebranding of women’s rights campaigning as anti-trans agitation, and feminism as hate speech, and belief in biology as bigotry, is one of the grimmest achievements of the linguistic manipulators of the trans lobby. It creates a situation where anyone who says ‘I think women should have their own spaces’ can be instantly denounced as a destroyer of identities, eraser of souls. Where even saying a podcast is ‘balanced’ can become a suspect utterance, leading to a written warning from the self-styled guardians of correct-think. . . 

What’s going on here? Maybe ‘transwomen’ have so thoroughly imbibed the sexist, surface-driven idea of what a woman is that they think they have to behave like dainty, fainting wallflowers to prove their ‘womanhood’. ‘See how weak I am – told you I was a lady!’ There is a delicious irony in the fact that men who masquerade as women are wailing over an opinion they don’t like, while real women will just calmly read McCall’s tweet and think to themselves: ‘Interesting. I’ll have a listen to that pod.’ It’s almost as if the trans set’s caricature of womanhood is just that: a caricature. Fellas, no amount of Victorian-style hankie-sniffing will disguise the fact that you have more testosterone than sense.

Here’s what you couldn’t make up: a woman expresses interest in a podcast about the witch trials of JK Rowling, and then she herself is threatened with a witch trial. The demonisation of Ms McCall only proves she is right to be curious about the maltreatment of women who raise questions about aspects of the trans ideology. Maybe there’ll be a pod series in the future called ‘The Witch Trials of Davina McCall’. I hope it’s balanced.

Where are our universities heading ? – David Lillis, John Raine, Peter Schwerdtfeger :

A perfect storm is hitting our university sector right now. Current social-justice political activism is an aggravating factor in the present extreme financial difficulties our universities are experiencing. They will have welcomed the announcement on 27th June by the Minister of Education to inject $128 million into the tertiary education sector, but this is just a drop of water on a hot stone. A full review of the tertiary education sector funding model is long overdue. The current situation raises a long-term risk to the operational health and international reputation of our universities. This risk has in turn been intensified by the very slow post-Covid restart to international student business. What needs to be done to restore the sector to full health?

The USA Kalven Report of 1967 [1] noted that the university’s mission is the:  “discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge”, and that it has: “…..a great and unique role to play in fostering the development of social and political values in a society”. However, the Report emphasises the vital need for neutrality. “The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic”.

The first of four fundamental principles in the 1988 European Bologna Accord on the role of universities [2] reaffirms: “The university is an autonomous institution at the heart of societies differently organised because of geography and historical heritage; it produces, examines, appraises, and hands down culture by research and teaching. To meet the need of the world around it, its research and teaching must be morally and intellectually independent of all political authority and economic power.”

Unfortunately, New Zealand universities, while dependent on Government for funding, are losing sight of this need for intellectual independence of the institution itself from all political authority. 

Misplaced Social Justice Activism . . 

Social justice activism is potentially damaging to the New Zealand university system and society as a whole (see the recent article by Peter Winsley [3]). University students must, of course, be free to study and debate social justice issues, but it is the place of the State, the courts, and charities to deliver social justice, not the university itself. Universities should be places of open enquiry in the quest for evidence-based truth and of open debate on matters of controversy, but not institutions where subjective experience or an ideological view is presented as an unarguable truth and becomes indoctrination.

While the tertiary education sector should be supporting equity and diversity initiatives, for example, by bringing matauranga Māori into taught specialist programmes, either alone or where it complements other knowledge, universities now appear to be competing to be the most Te Tiriti-led, and without a clear definition of what such a position actually means. At the risk of being marginalised, academics are now also pressured not to criticise the adoption of Te Ao Māori (Māori language, respect and acknowledgement of Māori customs and protocols, and embracing the Māori story and identity).

We must also bring more Māori and Pasifika through our universities, and more ultimately into academic positions, although recent work by Lillis [4] has demonstrated that allegations of systemic bias and racism in university appointments and promotions are untrue and that minority groups (Māori and Pasifika) are employed in roughly similar percentages as predicted by doctoral completions.

Lillis [5] has also questioned whether it is wise expenditure of taxpayers’ money for universities to promote or mandate widespread use of Māori language when it is not used outside New Zealand and is spoken fluently by only 3% of New Zealanders. Moreover, the language cannot be easily adapted to many areas in the sciences.

Te Tiriti-led changes, along with wider social justice activism and identity politics, are leading to our universities to become politicised and losing their standing as trusted homes and protectors of freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and impartial and objective discourse. These ideals are critical for international teaching and research credibility in a modern university, and social justice objectives must not dilute academic merit as the key criterion of student learning and research success.

A Decline in our International Standing?

In recent world rankings, New Zealand universities have all been in the top 500. It will be impossible to maintain this status in a climate where an ethnocentric or social justice activist culture has given rise to a narrower, inward focus. Under such a system our graduates would become less employable internationally. International students, particularly from our largest markets, China and India, would look elsewhere to find politically neutral universities with a broad curriculum unaffected by the adoption of a local indigenous cultural character, or a distinct political stance on gender and identity issues.

A further consequence of reduced international student interest in New Zealand would be a consequential loss to our research and high-technology industry sectors. International PhD students make up the majority of PhDs in science and engineering in several of our universities, and their loss for well over two years due to the Covid-19 border closure has meant a reduction in capability flowing to short or long-term employment in New Zealand, and a reduction in new intellectual property from research and technology transfer into start-up businesses.

Our universities have long enjoyed strong international research reputations but can ill afford to adopt a cultural position that reduces the breadth of their international appeal and, ultimately, their credibility. International research partners will look askance at changes that move New Zealand away from a key focus on international research collaboration, particularly in areas such as science, where Government ministries are promoting parity of matauranga Māori with modern world science; a move that is already well under way in our early childhood, primary and secondary education. An international group, including Schwerdtfeger [6], have documented ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology in science internationally, and to replace merit with non-scientific, politically motivated criteria. Many academics are uncomfortable with the direction that is now being taken but are afraid to speak out for fear of loss of promotion prospects, disciplinary action, being labelled racist, or even finding their names on one of the current redundancy lists.

The Costs of Social Justice Compliance and a Falling Funding Base

Cultural reshaping of New Zealand universities will exacerbate current financial pressures through costs of additional staff appointed to dedicated roles, and courses that may not pay their way but meet a compliance goal. Universities have been funded partly through student fees since 1990, and since then have operated under increasing financial pressure as increases in Government funding have fallen around 40% below the cumulative CPI increase. Much student fee income has gone into greatly expanded central services such as marketing, communications, business and community outreach, student learning support and pastoral care, and equity and diversity staffing. Government control over student fee increases have also meant that these fees, despite being onerous on the students, have not kept pace with inflation. This problem has partly been the driver behind the pursuit of international fee-paying enrolments.

This situation is compounded by the much larger percentage of Government expenditure on tertiary education going into student support (44%), rather than university operations, in New Zealand, compared with the OECD average of 17% (dated figures, but likely still valid). In 2012, academic salaries were about 20% behind Australia, and employer superannuation contributions are far higher in Australia. It is hard to get most recent figures, but the situation will not have improved since then. Overall, the financial pressures are now sufficient to seriously compromise the ability of our universities to deliver a broad range of high-quality teaching and research programmes, and to attract top academic staff from overseas.

Universities are major contributors to their regional GDP, for example 2.4% in Auckland and 6.3% in Otago. Apart from the graduate capability launched into public and private sector employment each year, the wider economic benefits universities bring are vital for New Zealand. With just under 183,000 students in 2021 (14% international; 36% postgraduate), the university system is a large industry with a sector spend of $4.2Bn in 2019, and has grown to depend heavily on international students to meet both operating costs and the TEC annual 3% surplus target. It is no surprise that with domestic enrolments down in 2023, and international enrolments still painfully rebuilding, New Zealand’s eight universities are facing staff cuts in order to remain viable.

International Students – an Economic Imperative

In early 2020, there was a complete shutdown of all the country’s $1.5Bn ($5Bn if wider economic benefits are included) international student business, except for on-line enrolments and students already in New Zealand. The country has been slow to rebuild international enrolments towards the 19% of total enrolments figure in 2019, and was not fully open until late 2022. Government had no interest in permitting Covid-19 quarantine in student hostels 2020 – 2021, and was inattentive to possibilities offered by the creation of dedicated student quarantine facilities. The situation has been made worse by the loss of capability in Immigration New Zealand, which became a major bottleneck in processing student visas to enable us to compete more effectively with others ahead in the market such as the USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia, all who opened up much more quickly and incentivised their international student operations post-Covid.

International enrolments are essential for the financial viability, cultural enrichment, and international connectedness of our universities, for business and professional connections built by international graduates, for our research efforts, and for the wider economy. These enrolments are now picking up again, but we must ensure they are a robust part of university business in the future.

Recommendations for Refocusing and Vitalising our Universities.

How do we turn all of this around? Possible actions are:

Incentivise freedom of speech and political neutrality. It is not the remit or responsibility of the university to be the kind and conscionable face of the State, or of any political party. For that we have the justice system and Government agencies. Government does not own our universities but, of course, is a major funder. It could influence internal policy by strong encouragement of freedom of speech, and by rewarding an absence of social justice politics driving programmes and staff behaviours. This could occur through, for example, targeted funding around best practice in the neutral role of “critic and conscience of society” and/or international teaching and research relevance. While social justice issues should be widely debated, a university’s operating culture should not be driven by social justice political agendas.

Carry out an internationally benchmarked review of university funding and reset base student funding levels, with a higher proportion of government funding supporting institutional operations. The level of student fees for the various programme categories will also have to be reviewed. Conversely, we would ideally deliver fees-free degree education, but if this is not possible, then access to university education could be ensured for students of limited means by funding targeted, need-based scholarships. Internally, universities should refocus a greater proportion of expenditure on core teaching and research.

Re-focus the Performance Based Research Fund back from its recently increased social justice focus to a renewed emphasis on research excellence and relevance.

Reboot Immigration New Zealand to ensure that ample, properly trained capability is present to deliver a speedy and effective international student visa service. Finance Education New Zealand and universities for an intensive and extended marketing campaign in key overseas source countries for international enrolments.

Generate an agreement between the eight universities around commitment to maintaining international standing. This initiative would require statements around adhering to the liberal epistemology in science, resisting moves to give equivalence in science studies to indigenous or minority “ways of knowing”, and removing unnecessary restrictions to teaching and research, thus ensuring international connectedness in research, and respect for multiple viewpoints while holding to a politically neutral position on all subjects.

Conclusions

New Zealand must not aspire to being an inward-looking Pacific ethnostate, a direction that seems to have been fostered by the present Government. It is vital that, for their future international credibility, our universities, on a viable financial footing, return to being completely apolitical and resist the changes that are being wrought by social justice activism. University decisions and actions in relation to teaching, research and outreach should be based on merit and not on identity.

The health, and international engagement and reputation, of our university sector are critical to the functioning of our society and economy. Universities must build a renewed focus on broad, non-politically aligned programme offerings, science teaching and research, reflecting the best of current international knowledge, and freedom of speech, protected so that opposing philosophical views are debated but proponents of a counterview are not cancelled.

In this article we have addressed only three issues. Several other factors are also critical to the future of our universities, including maintaining curriculum relevance and high academic standards, the presence of private sector tertiary education organisations, international on-line degree offerings, the increase in local on-line delivery of programmes, and related course assessment issues and the growing presence of artificial intelligence as research and writing tool. All of these actions require agile and forward-looking universities, free from the damaging diversion of radical post-modern social justice activism.

There used to be a word

There used to be a word for adult human females.

Man: no definition needed.
Non-man (formerly known as woman):
a being definable only by reference to the male. An absence, a vacuum where there's no man-ness. pic.twitter.com/cpSaSR2Vfg

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 13, 2023

This isn’t tolerance of gender dysphoria it’s misogamy, as a lot of trans activism is.

Did you see the one about?

New Zealand’s totalitarian mentality – Bruce Logan :

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has claimed, “the first move the totalitarian mentality makes is to stop free-minded, open scholarship in pursuit of truth”.

Right now in New Zealand a totalitarian mentality in thrall to hate speech legislation is looking like the architect of bondage. Hate speech legislation is the tribal designer’s major tool as the diversity, inclusion and equity trinity (DIE) becomes Aotearoa’s civil religion; a religion that demands submission; mind first, body second. Hate speech legislation is necessary to punish the blasphemy of unbelief.

“Free-minded open scholarship” is not possible in the “decolonialising Aotearoa” because freedom is grounded in the existence of permanent and objective truth ordering the material world. DIE, instinctively suspicious of scientific method with its concept of falsifiability, would rewrite history to ideological fashion.

The difference between “free-minded open scholarship” and “the totalitarian mentality” images the difference between child and adult. The child insists that the world should accommodate his or her desire. A wise adult knows better. For example, the free minded rational scholar believes everyone profits by learning to adapt to an ordered world.

The totalitarian mentality, like a petulant child, depends entirely on the authority of the subjective (my feelings) for its supremacy. It must always be able to adjust truth to pursue its own ends. Indeed the ends will justify the means. The cult of fluid sexual identity is the most pervasive contemporary example.

That’s why cancelling the dissenter is essential. Convinced of its own self-righteousness DIE must permit no criticism. To do so would be to admit that the authority of its submission to subjectivism is flawed. DIE’s house of cards would be exposed as a parody of itself. The rest of us would see, what we already suspect but are not allowed to say, that it is a description of a fantasy that, in order to survive, must be imposed by the state on all citizens.

So civil religion preaches its own irrefutable strategically positioned doctrine of cultural pluralism, that creator of “designer tribalism”. The redeemed believe that their salvation will be found in the cultural medication of DIE. It has its own indoctrinating priesthood of bureaucrats, dissent is the unforgivable sin. Even if an unbeliever confesses his or her trespasses atonement must yield to the totalitarian’s pleasure.

The civil religion is aptly labelled DIE because that’s exactly what it will bring about; a seedy kind of justice and the accelerating decay of democracy: an end to freedom of religious expression and speech. The demand for hate speech legislation is nourished by the self-righteous politics of politicised identity. Poisoned by subjectivism it must be protected by the bureau of increasing regulation.

The faithful believer embraces regulation; indeed, it is regulation that shapes public morality and the new social order demanded by the civil religion; the church of cultural relativism and the state in cahoots.

The demand for hate speech legislation camouflages the true nature of “social justice”, that uniform state redistributor of society’s advantages and disadvantages; about getting people what the state says they should have and not about anyone getting what he or she might deserve.

Hate speech legislation is social justice’s camouflaged bullet-proof vest. It hides under the canopy of the “common good”. Aristotle might have known what that is but in a decaying civilisation seduced by the poison of subjectivism who decides what the common good might be. Certainly not the common man or common woman.

Ultimately the common good must collapse into total state control. Having lost the conviction of a shared permanent and transcendent public truth vital to social harmony the “common good” can only be achieved by faithfully practising the religion of DIE. Ironically DIE’s fulfilment of individual desire and reinforcement of its fantasies, will be snowed under by the onset of an everlasting totalitarian winter. 

‘Liberal’ thought police echo Salem witch trials – Hadley Freeman :

. . . Sometimes an accusation is so ludicrous that addressing it feels like trying to hold an eel in your hands: the harder you grip, the more it slips from your grasp and entwines around your body until you fall on your face. The hardest crime to disprove is a thoughtcrime, as George Orwell called it, and it’s striking how many women have been accused of it over the past half-dozen years, always about gender. In Channel 4’s upcoming documentary Gender Wars, the feminist academic Kathleen Stock is repeatedly accused of hating trans people, endangering trans people and doubting trans people’s right to exist, and her denials merely confirm her guilt in the eyes of her detractors. “Being in the same room as Dr Stock and hearing her say the things she says, when I know the meaning she has behind them, it just feels aggressive against me,” one Cambridge student says. Even if you say the right words, they know you’re thinking the wrong thoughts.

If you’ve quietly longed to stick it to women for years, especially middle-aged ones, then this has been a boom time for you. I’ve watched so-called liberal men chinstroke over which women should be allowed to speak in public. JK Rowling? Certainly not. The Scottish politician Joanna Cherry? Best not. One author friend was dropped by her agent not for anything she’d actually written but because of a general sense that she might have thought wrong thoughts about the gender argument. A manager at a publishing house tweeted last week that people in the book industry will be “called out” just for following “GC people” — gender-critical people, aka those who understand there are two biological sexes. In 2020 more than 300 Guardian employees signed a letter complaining about a “pattern of publishing transphobic content”. The letter didn’t specify what that content was, but a strikingly well-briefed Buzzfeed article said it was “in response to a column by Suzanne Moore” that had argued for the protection of women’s rights. What, precisely, in this column was transphobic was not specified. Just make the vague accusation and let it settle like a stink. Soon after that, Moore left the paper.

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is 70 years old this year, and it’s devastating how prescient it still feels, even though it is set 330 years ago during the Salem witch trials, the ultimate tale of women and thoughtcrime. The play was a parable about America’s then most recent foray into prosecuting thoughtcrime, McCarthyism, when anyone suspected of communism was damned. One character says that “witchcraft is . . . an invisible crime, is it not? . . . Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself, granted? Therefore we must rely on her victims — and they do testify, the children certainly do testify.”

The children will keep testifying. Let us hope more adults can do what the EHRC did last week: find the backbone to stand up to them.

The silencing and vilification of women and girls – Edie Wyatt :

The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem has issued a statement voicing concerns about the silencing and vilification of women and girls who are attempting to engage in debate about the human rights of women and girls.

Ms Alsalem said that ‘women and girls who emphasise the specific needs of women born female and who call for and engage in discussions around the definitions of sex gender and gender identity and the interaction of rights’ should be able to ‘express themselves and their concerns on these issues in safety and in dignity’.

It shouldn’t be an astounding statement, but it is, and at a time when the Australian government is ramping up censorship toward the very people Reem Alsalem is refereeing to, gender-critical activists. . . 

Reem Alsalem said that she is concerned about the reprisals women face for speaking on this issue such as ‘censorship, legal harassment, loss of jobs, loss of income, removal from social media platforms, speaking engagements and the refusal to publish research conclusions and articles’. I now know dozens of women in Australia who have faced these kinds of reprisals because they refuse to yield the factual definition of sex.

Women like Jasmine speak up because they can’t turn from what they see. In the world of breastfeeding, the inclusion of gender identity ideology in women’s support infrastructure, is leading to the assumption that male people can produce milk suitable for an infant, and these males should be supported in the pursuit of feeding an infant from their body by the entirety of the medical profession, including birth and lactation specialists. Apart from the coercion that is required to implement such a practice, the process by which endocrinologists are getting human males to exude a substance from their nipples, seems to be ethically debased and scientifically unsupported. . . 

When I raised this issue on Twitter recently, a trans activist posted a study in response, as an argument for the support of men ‘chest-feeding’. It was called Case Report: Induced Lactation in a Transgender Woman and it involved experimentation on an adopted human infant.

Isidora Sanger, who is a medical doctor and author of Born in the Right Body, says that the study is not only unethical but ‘fraught with incomplete and misleading information, disingenuous analysis and undeclared conflict of interest’. In what could be a warning to health professionals in Australia, Sanger said the study is ‘an example of how transgender health clinics prioritise emotional needs of trans-identified males over the welfare of women and children’.

If what the women are saying in the censored tweets is true, endocrinologists could be conducting unaccountable experiments on human infants in this country, and there is not a news outlet in the nation that would cover this using actual words that mean what they say.

The smoke and mirrors of ‘inclusive’, ‘queer’, and ‘diversity’, mask an unpalatable tale of misogyny and abuse of power that is told only when we are permitted to use words with correct meanings. The reality is that gender identity cannot survive without linguistic subterfuge and the broadscale censorship of women declaring their bodily needs and political interests. . . 

After being in this fight a few years, I can report that trans activists are some of the meanest, nastiest individuals I have ever encountered in my life, and no woman would pick a fight with them without serious consideration. The most aggressive of the activists, stripped of identity signifiers, are mostly straight white men.

We are facing a failure of democracy and a corruption of liberalism and a time when we have a chronic dearth of liberals. The recent problems with John Pesutto and the Victorian Liberals show just how quickly the testicles of the Australian Liberal man will shrink back into his body when he is threatened. It has become obvious that some Victorian Liberals are fleeing for safety in appeasement to gender identity ideology in the face of aggressive state power, or what we used to call tyranny. . . 

I hear political commentators regularly citing ‘the trans issue’ as a fringe or minor issue, but if the state can re-define the sex of our body, the role of a mother, and the purpose of a baby, and we are not permitted to critique that, we have already yielded essential liberties. Liberties that we need to politically organise and bring our requests to the state that we fund, to the liberal democratic state that is supposed to be accountable to the people, including women people.

Baroness Falkner is right to stand up to gender ideology – Joan Smith :

Exposing a lie sometimes has dramatic consequences. For years we’ve been told there’s no conflict between women’s rights and the demands of trans activists. If that were really the case, no one could possibly object to putting the word “biological” in front of “sex” in equality legislation, could they?

Nothing could be further from the truth, as the head of the UK’s equal rights watchdog, Kishwer, Baroness Falkner, has discovered. She has endured weeks of abuse since the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) wrote to the Government, proposing consideration of a technical amendment to the Equality Act 2010 to make it clear that sex means biological sex. 

Since then, all hell has broken loose. Falkner has been called a ‘“Nazi”, a particularly vicious slur given that her husband is German. She’s been attacked by a slew of Labour MPs, who’ve made the baseless accusation that she’s trying to take “rights and protections” away from trans people. Now it’s emerged that a group of employees at the EHRC has compiled a dossier of complaints against her, including “transphobia” and harassment. Falkner is said to be “heartbroken” about the allegations, which her supporters describe as a witch-hunt, but she’s standing her ground.  . . 

The organisation’s role in balancing the rights of various groups is evidently not understood by gender extremists, who appear to think their demands should have priority over everyone else’s. 

The attempt to oust Falkner shows how much is at stake. When trans activists claimed they weren’t trying to take anything away from women, they were telling an obvious untruth. Now everyone can see the reality for themselves, as convicted male sex offenders demand to be housed in women’s prisons and disabled women are called bigots for refusing intimate care from trans-identified males.

Adding the word “biological” to the Equality Act would achieve a very simple outcome, which is to confirm that the law means what we always thought it did. No one ever imagined, when the act was passed 13 years ago, that a group of women who share the protected characteristic of sex should include men who say their gender identity is female. If it did, it would mean the end of women-only spaces and services, which is why it is vital that the law should be clarified.

Another untruth is at risk of exposure here, however. Trans people in this country have the same rights as everyone else, which is right and proper. What activists are demanding is additional rights, which in this case compromises women’s rights to privacy and safety. And if the attack on Falkner shows anything, it’s the desperation of people with authoritarian views who fear they’re going to lose. 

What’s happening is a nasty, personal campaign against any woman who advocates strengthening the legal protections women already have. . . 

The tyranny of acceptance – Josephine Bartosch :

. . . The path between sexual abuse as a child and entering the sex industry as an adult is well trodden. Studies consistently show about three quarters of women in prostitution have been abused as girls and as many as a third were in local authority care. The same pattern is observable in the smaller group of men in the sex industry.

Robert was sexually abused as a boy, and as a young adult he was drawn into prostitution. He recalls that “being groomed can seem very empowering” because the child is the focus of adult attention. He adds “giving the victim a false sense of agency is part of the groomer’s toolkit”.

“It may set you into a way of thinking that sex is transactional, it removes the link between sex and love…. You become scared of seeing sex in the context of a loving relationship. It doesn’t make sense in that context. Again, this might not happen for everyone, but child sexual abuse and prostitution without doubt has contributed to this being the case for me.”

Reading Naqvi’s piece Robert reflects: “It’s interesting that the person at the centre of this article talks about pornography giving them a sense of power over men. But they [the male punters] are the ones who are gaining ephemeral and fleeting gratification, and the performer is losing something permanent.”

It should not take grisly “lived experience” such as Robert’s to illustrate the point that behind the magic words “agency” and “empowerment” lurks a bitter reality. Just as it’s easier to pretend women lie about male violence, it is ethically and socially cheaper to rebrand so-called “sex work” as a choice. And disturbingly, this seems to be part of a trend spanning academia and practice on the ground where behaviours like BDSM are increasingly being touted as a way for rape survivors to overcome trauma. 

The group EBSWA (Evidence-Based Social Work Alliance) is clear that “People who are used in the sex trade are exploited, disempowered and objectified.”  . . .

Questioning the choices of adults gives many people the moral “ick”. And it takes arrogance (guilty) and an unfashionable sense of morality to confidently tell a grown woman “no, what you are doing will hurt you more, and it will contribute to hurting others.” But this is not just about M’s story. It is about the creep of a new narrative that presents commercial sexual exploitation as a positive step in recovering from abuse and how BASW has colluded in this.

Previously, social workers were criticised for overlooking the pimps at school gates and around the care homes across England. Abusers were labelled boyfriends, the girls were understood to be exercising their agency. Judgment was reserved for those who dared to question whether the girls were equipped to consent. This approach was, and remains, easier than facing the true horror of the problem. But today, abusive men no longer need to wait outside for their prey. The pimp has been internalized as simply an expression of sexuality.

A porn-fed generation now struggles to understand mutuality and the emotional bond that sex can create. The result is not only the rebranding of abusive acts as love tokens, but also in the isolation felt by the men conditioned by pornography to see sex as an exercise in domination. It is in the entitlement of punters who believe that they can buy a sexual act. . . .

There is a place for judgment and stigma, and that place is not on people like M or Robert. It rests on the men who pay for a simulacrum of sex. The weight should also be felt by the social workers and indeed journalists who enable them. Over recent years there’s been a flurry of questionable stories about women making money on Only Fans, but these “heartwarming” tales are not ethically neutral, and it doesn’t take an expert in trauma to recognise that.

There is no triumph in M’s story. Perhaps the last words should be offered to Robert, who warns:

A time may come when your sexuality becomes something very precious to you, rather than a means to an end. And having given it away for money, you’ve said to yourself that it’s a commodity rather than a gift to share with someone you love and trust. That’s not to say that having sold it, you can’t give it again in a healthy way in the future. But shame, guilt, self-hatred…these are the emotions you’ll likely have to deal with. Or not. You can’t really tell.

 

Did you see the one about. . . .

There’s a new type of cultural mafia in town. If we don’t stand up to them, free speech will cease to exist – Sarah Vine :

. . . We like to kid ourselves we live in more civilised times, but the truth is these days we all have that metaphorical gun to our heads. There is a new kind of cultural mafia in town, one that styles itself as kind and caring and compassionate and socially sophisticated — but which is, in fact, just as ruthless, just as determined, to bend us to its will.

Every day, in all sorts of ways, they make us offers we can’t refuse, and we find ourselves being asked to say and think things that are manifestly not true.

And so we agree that women can have penises (Lib Dem leader Ed Davey maintained in a radio interview on LBC today that this was ‘quite clear’). And that men can give birth. We applaud as people with thighs like tree-trunks and Adam’s apples accept first prize in female sporting competitions, dwarfing their exhausted and bemused rivals.

We do our best not to flinch as biological males get paid untold sums to advertise tampons and sports bras. We stand back as children are given puberty-blocking hormones and encouraged to mutilate their bodies. We allow convicted rapists to inveigle themselves into women’s prisons.

We watch in silence as those whose views or behaviours don’t comply with the dogma of the impeccably woke are defenestrated, their words and actions twisted out of all proportion.

We nod as our books and plays and comedy sketches are re-written, excised of nuance, purged of meaningful, thoughtful, original or — God forbid — humorous content. We accept our history being re-written out of context and time, sacrifice our heroes to the modern cult of victimhood and blame.

What else can we do? We see the threat, take the hint, keep our heads down. We play the game. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We’ve seen what happens to those who don’t, and it’s not pretty. Most people can’t afford to lose their jobs, their livelihoods, their reputations.

When the woke mafia comes for you, they mean business, helped by the fact that they have skilfully infiltrated pretty much every institution in the land. Schools, universities, arts organisations, public bodies, the civil service, the law, medicine, certain sectors of the media. You name it, they own it. Or if they don’t, they know someone who does.

And you never quite know who they are, which one of your colleagues or friends is going to be the one taking notes, recording your mistakes, totting up your infractions. They are the smiling assassins, the ones who cry discrimination, all the while singling out their targets for elimination.

If what you say or believe runs counter to their beliefs, they will come for you. Not in an open and honest way, not by engaging in a debate, or attempting to challenge you intellectually, but by means of intimidation. They will undermine your reputation, cast you as a monster, unleash the mob.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Dominic Raab, the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting Susan Hussey, JK Rowling . . . the list is endless. Their latest target is Baroness Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a woman whose only ‘fault’, as far as I can see, was backing legal reforms guarding the rights of biological women in single-sex spaces.

Isn’t it because of her stance — one shared by many women, including myself — that she has been targeted by the woke mob? Her ideology runs counter to theirs, and so she must be removed. . . 

It takes courage to stand up to the mob, and not everyone has it. Not everyone has Rowling’s deep pockets, or Braverman’s thick skin. Not everyone can cope with having their reputation destroyed, their livelihoods stolen, their words and actions twisted beyond measure. Especially when, as in the case of Falkner, she is simply trying to safeguard vulnerable women in places such as prisons and hospital wards.

But the truth is that if we don’t follow her example, and stand up to the threats of the woke mob, none of us will be safe. Freedom of expression will cease to exist, and we will have no choice but to believe what we are told, regardless of the reality staring us in the face.

Meaningful debate will be silenced, and we will be like my old friend standing in the earthquake zone, staring at the dust and ruins — and watching his integrity go up in smoke.

You can’t gaslight your way out of a problem by telling people it’s not happening – Kate Hawkesby :

. . . A fatal mistake governments make is when they deny stuff isn’t happening, especially stuff we see before our very eyes on a daily basis.

It’s like when the PM said there was no looting happening post the cyclone in Hawkes Bay, when very clearly everyone else knew it was going on. You can’t gaslight your way out of a problem by telling the people most affected by it, that it’s not happening. . . 

We probably all know somebody personally now who has been impacted by crime, even if it’s our local dairy.

And the crime’s more brazen these days, that’s one thing the Minister does accept. But when five of our police districts now have more gangs than police officers, we know we have a problem.

And even when the government reaches its 1800 new cops mark next month, the Police Association says that’s still not enough, it doesn’t make up for all those who’ve left – we need double that many more now.

You can’t argue with facts, and the stats say that ‘between 2017 and 2022, the number of serious assault reports increased by 121%, while reports of acts intended to cause injury went up by almost 30%.”

This is not a safe country anymore, and it seems the last person to wake up to this fact sadly, is the Police Minister herself.

Why King Charles must never apologise for the wrongs of history – Brendan O’Neill :

There are a fair few things I’d like to see King Charles apologise for. Those meddlesome ‘spidery letters’ he wrote to government ministers. His green doom and gloom. Prince Harry. But slavery? The British Empire? No. Never. Charles should utter not one word of contrition for those historical events. For if even he, the literal king, were to cave to the woke insistence that ‘the privileged’ must self-flagellate for the crimes of their forefathers, it would set a terrible precedent. It would represent the final victory of that jealous god of identity politics, with disastrous consequences for democracy. . . 

Kings and queens were bastards. They chopped off heads, imprisoned princes, taxed people to within an inch of their lives, conquered countries, put down rebellions. That Charles’s family tree is pock-marked with iffy people is literally the least startling thing about him.

But he still shouldn’t apologise for any of that stuff. For one simple reason: he didn’t do it. Charles has never owned a slave, sent ships in search of booty, put a wife on the chopping block. It is nearly 3,000 years since Ezekiel said, ‘The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father’. Now the noisy identitarians of the 21st century want to reverse all that. They far prefer God’s implacable rage in the Book of Exodus, in which He seethed: ‘[I] am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.’ That the woke are so infused with Old Testament fury, with such a severe urge to punish even the descendants of wrongdoers, confirms what a menacing and regressive movement theirs is. . . 

There is a distinctly therapeutic feel to the letter. The signatories are essentially entreating the king to recognise their pain – and to alleviate it, in all his graciousness, with words and maybe money. They want His Majesty to ‘acknowledge the horrific impacts’ and ‘legacy’ of the crimes of yesteryear. That is, soothe our historic hurt with your kingly validation.

This is one of the twisted ironies of the politics of apology: it can boost the moral authority of the person who’s being pressured to say sorry. The Indigenous campaigners are not only dragging the king – they’re also imbuing him with an almost godly power to lift them from the pit of generational despair. . . 

He seems instinctively to recognise that the fashion for contrition can benefit the elite. It expands his dominion, granting him jurisdiction not only in the concrete worlds of pomp and constitution, but also in the emotional world of easing the little people’s traumas.

We all laughed – well, I did, sorry – when Princess Diana said: ‘I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts.’ Yet now her husband, so long depicted as the yin to Di’s yang, might just embrace such a role. Charles is king, but it’s Diana’s world. I can envision a future royal tour in which Charles and Camilla sail the Earth validating the ‘pain and suffering’ of once-colonised peoples. It would be of a piece with the campaigning of the new Prince and Princess of Wales, Will and Kate, who are obsessed with the mental health of the plebs. If royal authority at home is increasingly justified in the Oprah-ite language of relieving the anguish of one’s subjects, why not overseas too? The identitarians don’t seem to realise that the thing they want – the king weeping for old wrongs – would be a new form of colonialism. Emotional colonialism. Where once monarchs sought to deliver foreigners from ignorance, now they’d deliver them from PTSD.

Elite empowerment is a key part of the showy penitence of the modern era. This is why so many political actors, from Tony Blair to the Vatican, enthusiastically seize every opportunity to let their lip wobble. . . 

All of these things are best understood not as genuine expressions of sorrow, but as arrogant displays of emotional literacy; as declarations that one has ascended to the plane of therapeutic correctness, and is thus fit to rule in the era of emotion.

Yet while the cult of contrition might be helpful to elites looking for new ways to justify their rule, it’s a disaster for the rest of us. It is divisive and anti-democratic. The woke rehabilitation of God’s jealous visitation of the crimes of the father on to the son is utterly destructive of public life. It is a form of racial collective guilt – and racial collective pain. All whites come to be seen as the morally stained sons and daughters of ancient crime, and all black, brown and Indigenous people are reduced to the morally scarred sons and daughters of those crimes. This depressing, deterministic creed turns us from equal citizens into either ‘the privileged’ or ‘the oppressed’, where the former must forever repent to the latter. . .

Such a debased spectacle would not be a challenge to monarchy at all. On the contrary, it would represent a kind of Battle of the Bloodlines, where two different versions of historically determined authority would be fighting it out for control of society – the historically determined divine right of King Charles vs the historically determined divine pain of the woke. My turn to apologise: sorry, but I prefer equality and democracy to the rule of any given identity.

 

 

 

Did you see the one about . . .

The implausible temperature assumptions that corrupt climate science and journalism – Chris Morrison :

Much of the alarmist climate science literature promoting the collectivist Net Zero political project, along with many doomsday scenarios highlighted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are corrupted with implausible data that almost nobody believes. This astonishing conclusion can reasonably be drawn from recent extensive research from the Clintel Foundation. This work identified the widespread use of data predicting unrealistic temperatures rises of 4-5°C in less than 80 years.

Clintel found that the IPCC makes extensive use of two pathways (scenarios of projected socioeconomic global changes up to the year 2100) that are “completely out of touch with reality” and that the UN-funded body then sprays the results all over its reports. The pathways called SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 make improbable claims of massive temperature rises that even the IPCC says are of “low likelihood”.  . . 

Bloomberg recently looked at how frequently each scenario appears in publications discoverable on Google Scholar. As shown in the graph above, the most extreme pathway is the most popular in the literature. In this sense, says Clintel, one might have concluded that the IPCC is simply doing its job and assessing and reporting the literature. It can also be suggested that the IPCC picks its lead authors and ignores science that runs contrary to the ‘correct’ political narrative. That is, it marks its own homework.

One result is that much of the climate panic that appears in mainstream media is tainted by the inappropriate use of these pathways. For example, last March the BBC ran a story claiming that Antarctic Ocean currents were heading for collapse. To drive home the scare, there was even a reference to the 2004 climate disaster film The Day After Tomorrow. The article was based on the work of scientists who claimed rapidly melting ice was causing a dramatic slowdown in deep ocean currents. In reality, the overall Antarctica ice sheet has seen little change for at least 70 years. Unsurprisingly, the scientists’ claims were based on computer models fed with RCP8.5 data – a fact missing from the BBC’s ridiculous story.

This captures how the system perpetuates itself. “If prominent leaders keep using this scenario and funding agencies keep funding research based on it, the use of this exaggerated scenario will continue for many years to come,” says the Clintel report. . . 

Professors Justin Ritchie and Roger Pielke Jr. provide some insights in their piece in Issues in Science and Technology titled How the Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality. They argue that a “failure of self-correction in science has compromised climate science’s ability to provide plausible views of our collective future”.

Their damning conclusion: “The continuing misuse of scenarios in climate research has become pervasive and consequential – so much so that we view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st Century thus far. We need a course correction.”

Let’s stop pretending the culture wars aren’t real – Patrick West :

Are the culture wars real? Some assume that they’re an imaginary affair, or, at best, a distraction from the real, pressing bread-and-butter concerns of today. 

The culture wars about race and gender are irrelevant and ‘piffling’, so some say. It’s all fuss and nonsense.

Many on the left decry with airy disdain that complaints of ‘cancellation’ and ‘wokery’ are just antediluvian grunts of conservatives who don’t like, or don’t understand, the modern world – with its new, strange manners concerning matters race and gender. Then there are the shopkeeper-type conservatives, who think the culture wars are all a silly hoo-ha about pronouns, toilet usage, dramas about Cleopatra and the Royal Family as seen on TV. They scold that we should be properly concerned with material materials: the cost of living, inflation, mortgage payments, industrial disputes, the future of the Conservative party.

Both conclusions, from the complacent left and bean-counting right, are based on misapprehensions. They derive from a double falsehood. The culture wars are really taking place, whether the left likes or not. And the culture wars are a bread-and-butter issue, whether the right likes or not.

The consequences of wokery are having a tangible effect in the USA – which always heralds what is to come – where withdrawal for support and funding of the police has grown at a time of rising crime in Los Angeles, San Francisco and even now New York (the Big Apple a few years ago being the beacon of how to solve crime). . . 

For years now we have seen people lose their jobs, been silenced, or been investigated by the police for saying something ‘inappropriate’ online. We live now in a culture of not only censorship, but self-censorship, in which people are terrified to speak their minds on a day-to-day basis.

This is the culture wars in very real action, in which the powerless and poor are penalised. It’s not just academics or writers who have been put at jeopardy. It’s all of us who are petrified to speak our minds on an every-day basis, for fear of the repercussions that may way come via our employer. We are now our own self-censors. The unsent tweet is the signifier of our age.

Some of us can deal with the social stigma that comes with voicing unfashionable out-of-season opinions on race and gender and immigration, but very few of us can afford to declare these unfashionable opinions. And ‘afford’ is the key word here. The likes of J.K. Rowling, Irvine Welsh and Tom Hanks have the privilege to speak as they like, because they can literally afford to do so. It matters nothing to them any threat of cancellation or of being fired. 

The rest of us live in material and financial fear of what might happen if we make public what we think. We live in acquiescence and silence. The likes of me just go along with the fact that to be white, male and straight can now cast you at a disadvantage. We are damned and assumed to be privileged and guilty. Even TV adverts seek to make us invisible.

Wokery is an unspoken force – as are the most dangerous and coercive ideologies. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault observed in ‘Discipline and Punish’ (1975), the most pernicious and malevolent forces in an oppressive society are not the obvious ones – manifest Orwell-style in Big Brother statism – but the unspoken truisms and mores we unthinkingly imbibe, assume and propagate silently. People even assume that what the social media giants digest as news is neutral. It isn’t. They all have their agendas, and it is these day invariably liberal-left.

Wokery is an invisible force of the nature Foucault wrote about: an invisible, silent mind-virus. That’s why people sit back and conclude that it doesn’t exist, or it is a hard-right fantasy. It’s also why some conservatives conclude that it’s all side-show from that which really matters.

It isn’t. The culture wars are real and they happening. They have a very, real tangible effect on how we live from day to day.

Net Zero’s artificial food crisis paves the way for ‘future foods’ – Flat White :

Net Zero rules employed by the United Nations, European Union, and domestic political parties across the world are expected to cause the imminent shutdown of high-production farmland, or at least, significantly reduce its capacity.

Yes, after centuries of perfecting food growing techniques, a bunch of bureaucratic regulators have decided to deliberately massacre the industry. Farmers in the Netherlands are first on the chopping block, with their historic estates being forcibly purchased by the State in what amounts to a complete erasure of private property rights.

As these policies are primarily targeting the world’s food bowls – the Netherlands, Canada, Sri Lanka, the United States, and Australia – the global agricultural supply chain can expect a prolonged artificial shortage of critical food items in the near future.

Food shortages, where demand remains the same or rises with population growth, results in the rapid increase of cost. Add to this problem huge changes to fertilisers, transport, red tape, pesticides, biosecurity, packaging, and labour.

We are already seeing the early stages of these policies play out in supermarkets across the Western world where gaps are appearing on the shelves, the diversity of products is in swift decline, and of the food that remains – its price is becoming a financial burden, even to the lower-middle class who have not struggled to afford food for three generations.

How convenient that some corporate and ideological partners of the international bureaucracies pushing these Net Zero policies are waiting in the wings with ‘planet saving’ food products!

In a world where fresh food is plentiful and cheap, no one would dream of sniffing around a lab for their next meal, but poverty is a powerful motivator to accept barely palatable crap sweetened with false virtue. Instead of counting calories, the next generation will be calculating their carbon footprint at the dinner table.

Keep in mind that this is a menu for the poor. Fresh food, real meat, and French wine will continue to fill the kitchens of the ruling classes. It’s the family of five squished into a city apartment, unable to turn the air-conditioner on for more than an hour a day, that will be faced with a range of cheap, depressing items at the supermarket.

The two emerging food groups for the latter half of this century are bugs and printed food – both of which are frequently grown in a lab.

Astonishingly, it is the ‘bug’ portion of this food pyramid that is rapidly making its way into the European shopping trolley, with crushed bug bits being approved as a filler or replacement for wheat. Whoever made that decision should be sat down in front of a plate of crickets and told to mash them up by hand before eating a loaf of bread made from the bits. Let’s see if they really think bug-meat is an appropriate substitute…

Within a few years, it will be extremely difficult for the average European to ensure that their meals are bug-free. Just as our food is currently tainted with chemicals and additives we’d be unlikely to pick if we knew what they were – the future of bread, flour, pasta, and sauces is sealed.

Nothing says ‘civilisational success’ quite like eating the critters that crawl over our mounting piles of garbage.

And yes, these bugs are grown in the lab, but in some ways this is worse. They are fed on a diet of chemicals, locked in tiny boxes, killed en masse, crushed up, and fed to us. At what point do you say that we had it ‘better’ thousands of years ago, salivating over a freshly roasted mammoth steak?

Vegans and vegetarians will want to avoid the eating of sentient insects. (Or maybe not? Who knows… Might be worth laying some money down on that.)

If these two groups of picky eaters remain true to their moral core, they will find their shopping experience rather patchy. The world’s farms are shrinking and the costs of transporting produce around the world is becoming fatally high. At some point Gen Z will realise that their local fruit market was put there by jumbo jets, ships, and vans. What sort of selfish vegan would insist a nation waste their carbon footprint flying fruit and vegetables in from another country? That would be literally destroying the world.

The supply problems of fresh produce may even be accidental, caused by incompetent governments failing to realise that the forced closure of oil and gas will create transport price hikes that no farmer can sustain and no customer can carry. . . 

Some people like future-foods, I prefer old-style simplicity.

Other 3D-printing restaurants focus on meat-replacements which, more often than not, are actually printed from lab-grown fat and sinew. While the first form of 3D-printed restaurant food is about putting on a flashy, futuristic show, meat-replacements are more ‘on vibe’ with saving the planet. It’s about ‘responsible eating’ and finding ways to make the otherwise unpalatable tolerable. If we are honest, it also provides a way for vegetarians and vegans to cheat on the whole no meat pledge.

There is likely to be a backlash to all the bugs and sci-fi food if it goes from being a market option to a government-mandated initiative, as we have seen with electric vehicles. People may start trying to grow their own food – or at the very least, barter outside the government’s field of view with those who have the means to grow food. In some regional communities, this is already happening. Fresh produce is being shared amongst farms away from the greed of supermarket oligarchies and excessive agricultural regulators. If you ask most people whether they’d rather eat something grown in a lab or trust their mate farmer Jeff and his watermelon crop well… I know what I’m eating.

As we watch the wilful and reckless destruction of the world’s agricultural heartlands, we should ask ourselves, ‘Is this progress? Do we want politically-aligned laboratories controlling food production?’ . . 

 

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better– J.K. Rowling

Straight question, crooked answer

What is a woman?

Anyone who understands biology shouldn’t have any trouble answering that question.

A woman is an adult human female.

But listen to this exchange:

Prime Minister of NZ asked "What is a woman?" pic.twitter.com/k7Zct2yILd

— The Platform NZ (@theplatform_nz) April 3, 2023

Sean Plunkett: “. . . how do you and how does this government define a woman?”

Chris HIpkins: “ (long pause) um, I to be honest Sean that, that question has come slightly out of left field for me. Um the, well,  biology, sex gender um, people define themselves, people define their own gender. . . “

How did it come to this?

The Prime Minister of the first country in the world to give women the vote, the one so proud of its three women Prime Ministers, is asked a straight questions about how to define a woman, and gives a crooked answer.

As I write, I haven’t found any reference to this in the mainstream media, but it has got international attention:

In the interests of balance, someone should now ask women how they define Chris Hipkins. https://t.co/9tlDywXtM2

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 3, 2023

One-way traffic for trans inclusivity

Have you noticed trans men seeking to compete in men’s sport, to use men’s loos or to be incarcerated in men’s prisons?

I haven’t but I have seen and heard a lot of trans women wanting to take part in women’s sport, to use women’s loos and to be incarcerated in women’s prisons.

Sport NZ has joined the ranks of those who in an attempt to be inclusive of transgender athletes will be excluding girls and women:

Transgender athletes will be able to participate in sport in the gender they identify with, and will not need to “prove or … justify” their identity according to new guiding principles released by Sport New Zealand.

The principles only apply to community level sport – not elite level sport – but it will be up to sports bodies to define where and how the trans athletes will participate.

Sports bodies will not lose funding if they do not adopt the principles within their inclusion and diversity policies, and some organisations may have policies that reflect safety over inclusion, Sport New Zealand chief executive Raelene Castle said. . . 

And why will they need policies that reflect safety? Because those born male have different bone and muscle structure; and those who go through puberty as males will be bigger and stronger than females.

No amount of suppressed hormones changes bone structure coming with biology, giving males both more power conversion &reduced lower limb injury advantages-thats just based on bone structure. Not even mentioning increased cv system or muscle strength &memory🤯 no males in XX sport pic.twitter.com/qz4JbzkNUQ

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) December 5, 2022

There are lots of reasons people are upset and concerned about one-way traffic for trans-inclusivity and this supports their concerns:

US rowing:
Women-only rowers forced to accept transwomen as competitors.
But when it comes to mixed boats of 8, the 4 women have to have been born female.
Why? Because otherwise it’s unfair on the men in the other boats. https://t.co/NZ6EfgD98u

— Genspect (@genspect) December 6, 2022

If it’s not fair for trans men to compete as women in mixed teams, it can’t be fair for them to compete as women in women’s teams.

Sporting organisations have spent decades fighting against drugs in sport.

If drug enhancement is wrong, how can biological advantage be right?

Lance Armstrong was just one man who cheated for years! Look how much damage he did. One cheat is always one too many… we now have 100s across the world using an unfair biological advantage to steal places designed 4 females in teams & on sports podiums. Biology matters in sport pic.twitter.com/0ft5HspbE7

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) December 13, 2022

The damage this does is compounded by the propensity to label anyone who raises questions about it as  trans-phobic regardless of how accepting they are of people who choose a different gender.

J.K. Rowling was a victim of this, even though there were absolutely no grounds for the accusations against her:

Right, I’m done.

3 months ago, I was tasked with writing an article detailing “20 Transphobic JK Rowling Quotes We’re Done With”

After 12 weeks of reading her books, tweets, full essay & finding the context of these “quotes”, I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message🧵

— EJ Rosetta 💚🖤💜 (@ejrosetta) November 22, 2022

In many cases, one groups rights are being sacrificed for the other, with the most vulnerable women often paying the price. Here in Britain, we always want to support both sides but realise that in some cases (like DV Shelters), that is impossible.

And JK was paying attention.

— EJ Rosetta 💚🖤💜 (@ejrosetta) November 22, 2022

JK saw the loopholes being created & knew that women needed a voice. So instead of sitting back & wishing everyone well, said “It’s got to be me, hasn’t it?”. She did something terrifying & amazing & used her voice, I suspect knowing damn well what was to come.

That’s bravery.🧵

— EJ Rosetta 💚🖤💜 (@ejrosetta) November 22, 2022

Shame on those who have framed her under the guise of “reporting” when you must know, deep down, you are just chucking out clickbait & stirring up hate. Shame on those who followed that propaganda without critical thought.

You’re burning the wrong witch. I stand with @jk_rowling

— EJ Rosetta 💚🖤💜 (@ejrosetta) November 22, 2022

Already ignoring frantic phone calls from my agent demanding I take it down.

NO

— EJ Rosetta 💚🖤💜 (@ejrosetta) November 22, 2022

Group think, brainwashing & listening unquestioningly to the voices of my LGBT peers over critical thought & doing my own research/thinking.

5 years I have spent nodding along while JK was buried, and for that I apologise.

I’m glad to report I’m thinking for myself again now. https://t.co/2lCljvPsvO

— EJ Rosetta 💚🖤💜 (@ejrosetta) November 22, 2022

Why are people ignoring the science and distorting biology? 

 

 The purpose of pretending there are more than two sexes is to support those who have assumed non-traditional gender roles. In other words, those who question the binary nature of sex are doing so because they’re trying to make nature itself conform to an ideology that accepts the non-binary nature of gender. The conflation is deliberate, an example of what I call the “reverse appeal to nature”: “what is good must be what is natural.” But as Richard Feynman said about the Challenger space shuttle disaster, “reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

And, in the end, there’s no reason to misrepresent science: people of different genders can be supported and respected without having to distort the nature of biological sex.

Quite. Just as there is no reason to redefine words as the Cambridge Dictionary has done.

Now even the dictionary is lying to us. The Cambridge Dictionary has updated its definition of the word woman to include men. A woman is now any adult ‘who lives and identifies as female’ even if they had a ‘different sex at birth’. That is, even if they’re blokes. Even if they sport a pair of testicles. Even if they’re one of those human beings we’ve referred to as men for millenia. . . 

Cambridge isn’t alone.

Dictionary.com has chosen woman as its word of the year.

It’s one of the oldest words in the English language. One that’s fundamental not just to our vocabulary but to who we are as humans. And yet it’s a word that continues to be a source of intense personal importance and societal debate. It’s a word that’s inseparable from the story of 2022.

Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year is woman.

woman [ woom–uhn ]noun

1. an adult female person. . . .

So far so good. But then it concludes:

But the dictionary is not the last word on what defines a woman. The word belongs to each and every woman—however they define themselves.

This is the one-way street for inclusivity that excludes, as the Midwifery Council of NZ did:

The Midwifery Council of NZ is updating its Midwifery Scope of Practice guidance for midwives to entirely remove the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’.

Health researcher and former midwife Dr Sarah Donovan says the move is likely to be out of step with public expectations in New Zealand about the profession of midwifery, including how it describes who it cares for. . . .

With midwifery arguably the most woman-centred and mother-centred of all health professions, Donovan says clarification is needed on what evidence base and advice underpinned the Midwifery Council’s decision to remove these words entirely. The words ‘wahine’ and ‘māmā’, used almost universally in other maternity care material in New Zealand are also not used anywhere in the English language version of the document. The lack of these words seems conspicuous considering the inclusion of te reo in the English version for other terms.

“For a lot of people this will probably not make sense. Why erase these important words from midwifery in New Zealand? If this is about being inclusive, there is scope for terms to be used alongside each other. My understanding of what inclusive language in healthcare means is that it actually includes rather than excludes; it is additive of new terminology rather than removing widely-recognised and culturally cherished terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘māmā’ . . .

Not all parents are mothers, but if you are under the care of a midwife because you are pregnant, you have a uterus which is one of the biological realities that makes you a woman.

Trying to change language so there is no longer a word for an adult, human female – one who was born with all the biological bits and pieces that differentiate them from people born without them – doesn’t make it so.

If trans women are women then there is no difference between people who weren’t born female and those who were, so ipso facto all women are trans which is contradicted by biology and is patently ridiculous.

People should be treated as people and their gender choices respected but respect is a two-way street.

All people have a right to fair competition and safety both of which are compromised by demands that trans women’s rights trump those  of women, who, in spite of the dictionary’s redefinition, are adult human females.

And adult human females ought to be able to retain the word woman and its definition without being called trans-phobic.

Define Woman

J.K. Rowling is standing up for women again:

This morning you told the British public you literally can't define what a woman is. What's the plan, lift up random objects until you find one that rattles? https://t.co/QoBPt5HpKf

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 8, 2022

Yes, sweetheart. I'm staying right here on this hill, defending the right of women and girls to talk about themselves, their bodies and their lives in any way they damn well please. You worry about your legacy, I'll worry about mine 😉 https://t.co/wLekwpMQEe

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 8, 2022

What you and your ilk fail to appreciate is how tediously familiar I find your tactics. I had a violent ex-husband who used to tell me life would be great if only I’d comply, but you’re making the same mistake he did. Women like me can’t be bullied out of resistance. pic.twitter.com/039pBtFtNT

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 9, 2022

For the record the dictionary definitions for woman are: an adult female human being; a female member of a workplace, team etc.; a female person associated with a particular place, activity or occupation; a female belonging to a particular category; a wife or female sexual partner.

The definition of woman has become controversial because of the political trope that trans women are women and that anyone who disagrees with that is transphobic.

Sigh.

It is quite possible to accept the biological reality that someone born with X and Y chromosomes can never be the same as someone born with two X chromosomes, regardless of what surgical and medical treatment they undergo, without being transphobic.

Behind the debate over the word woman are issues of safety for trans women in men’s places and the question of whether trans women can compete in women’s sport.

The solution that trans activists seek, to allow them in women’s places, can, and does, raise issues of safety for women; and competing with women in sport raises issues of fairness.

The solution to both doesn’t lie in denying biological reality or redefining words. It requires a way for trans women to be safe without compromising women’s safety and to compete is sport fairly.

Neither will be achieved by ignoring biological reality, trying to distort language, or by labelling as transphobic anyone whose views don’t fit those of the trans activists.

Humpty Dumpty rules

Absurdity is one word for it:

‘Absurdity’ of police logging rapists as women

Police have been criticised for saying they will record rapes by offenders with male genitalia as being committed by a woman if the attacker “identifies as a female”.

Police Scotland said that they would log rapes as being carried out by a woman if the accused person insists, even if they have not legally changed gender. . . 

There would have been a lot of stronger words for it, but now Humpty Dumpty’s rules have taken over:

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

It’s no longer a question, words now mean what the offenderati want them to mean and if you want some entertainment, watch as they cancel J.K. Rowling again for this:

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.https://t.co/SyxFnnboM1

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 12, 2021

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox s yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse but not to abuse.

It is impossible to live without failing at something unless your live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you fail by default. – J.K. Rowling

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book – J.K. Rowling