I personally find it reassuring and not at all an indication that I'm listening to a dipshit crank when an interview begins with the regular line, "It wouldn't usually be proportionate to have somebody on the door of every single toilet or changing room asking people their sex before they went in."
EHRC chair challenged on how to enforce single-sex toilet rules
We spoke to Mary Ann Stephenson, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
channel4.com
I don’t blame the public for this: most people will be looking at this slack jawed wondering what the fuck is going on. And the answer is: the British media/political class has driven itself insane trying to reconcile a decade of its own nonsensical, contradictory, idiotic bullshit.
Think of Sir Keir black-clad in front of a billowing sixty foot union flag, talking about his government’s awesome plan to win over Tories and the far right with historically remarkable National Front migration crackdowns. What, is this worse than that? Or is it the same shit, but even dumber.
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 13h agoIt’s wild how Kemi is just this funhouse mirror of ten years of horrible UK politics and media, showing the rest of them their reflections with deeply unsettling and embarrassing distortion. What she’s doing is IMO little different to what they’ve done, it’s just more ham-fisted, crass and idiotic.
I don’t think Badenoch’s plainly unreformed neo-Nazi adviser is any sillier or more insulting than anything else her cohort have to say about destabilisation, anti-racism and anti-extremism. She’s just too stupid to realise you can’t do this with someone jailed for quite horrifically abusing an MP.
Proper “accusation is really a confession” moment here
This is a smart, because senior politicians and press have been treating reactionary crackpots, vicious wingnuts and straight up fascists as sage and judicious advisors on radicalisation, extremism and racism for at least a decade. This convict neo-Nazi will fit right in with the rest.
Once again, I come back to the fact these guys have created a situation where one of the UK's leading, cis female athletes is scared to go to the loo alone, and the fact that they are celebrating this as a step forward for women's rights.
Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 22h agoOur code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx
To explain for foreigners: our energy regulator rubber-stamps price rises; the water regulator tuts while rivers fill up with human shit; the press regulator wags an occasional finger, and the national equality body enforces press campaigns against groups of people they hate and wish to damage.
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 21h agoBritain, where the national equality body is a boobyhatch jam-packed with wingnut cranks who fervently believe their job is creating weapons for police to hammer minorities that the press hates and wants to harm.
This, while all the lads on the newspaper and magazine politics podcasts are talking about The Return Of Two-Party Politics as if it was a natural phenomenon and not a decision they have reached amongst themselves
The entire problem for Silicon Valley is that about 99.7% of the populace could give up AI tools tomorrow without noticing, much less caring
Alexander Glass@alexanderglass.bsky.social · 24h agoI have one answer.
People sometimes ask how I have the energy and fortitude to keep documenting the daily atrocities, to show people what goes on in this country’s media/political class. And my honest answer is, it takes no energy at all. It’s like hunting on Dodo Island, the birds endlessly wander right up to you.
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 19h agoHodges is an occasionally useful guy to keep an eye on, mainly because he’ll say things that his less stupid colleagues are smart enough to keep to themselves.
This should be seen in its proper context. It’s long been normal for the press to treat far right crackpots and straight fascists as valuable authorities on extremism, and to present them to the public as anti-radicalisation and as antiracists. They’ve been doing it for at least ten years.
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 19h agoHodges is an occasionally useful guy to keep an eye on, mainly because he’ll say things that his less stupid colleagues are smart enough to keep to themselves.
Hodges is an occasionally useful guy to keep an eye on, mainly because he’ll say things that his less stupid colleagues are smart enough to keep to themselves.
I do wonder if The Media Class of this country have been on the mercury cocaine. Their brains must be as hard and crumbly as Edinburgh rock. Imagine writing that paragraph and thinking *Séamas* is the bad guy.
Mic Wright@brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 23h agoNow, I *am* a nobody but @seamas.bsky.social is a bestseller so surely Joanna is just showing herself up here.
It does seem odd that Epstein was able to directly suborn at least one serving government minister, while flying his private plane in and out of military bases in Britain and visiting e.g. Buckingham Palace and one of the royal family’s private retreats. Presumably nothing dodgy going on there.
Burnham not considering public inquiry into UK activities of Jeffrey Epstein
Victims’ minister said earlier that PM was ‘looking into’ inquiry into Epstein and another into Mohamed Al Fayed
theguardian.com
Me: (a smart columnist, looking at claims made by an ex-Tory neo-Nazi booted out of the party for crimes, now standing as a Tory councillor whole doing a rehabilitation tour parroting the agreed media line in his new “anti-extremism” gig) This is extremely convincing stuff, and very worrying.
Britain, where the national equality body is a boobyhatch jam-packed with wingnut cranks who fervently believe their job is creating weapons for police to hammer minorities that the press hates and wants to harm.
I’d ask: how many times is it possible to accidentally give readers the impression crimes committed by neo-Nazis were in fact the work of nice nurses and teachers in the Labour Party, before we conclude that some kind of calculated dishonesty was at work there www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
meanwhile, the anti-trans lobby has gone straight from "we won't need toilet police" to "the toilet police will need much more funding" without missing a beat bsky.app/profile/hlee...
Lee Hurley@hleehurley.com · 22h agoAbsolute state of Falkner and Reindorf in the Times today
wild way to frame one of the most aggressively anti-trans bathroom bans in the developed world
Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 22h agoOur code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx
Horrendous stuff, but again it is grimly hilarious that the Tory leader is so awesomely stupid that she doesn’t understand she’s humiliating everyone and making an absolute mockery of almost a decade of terrifying all-channels panic.
A tough balancing act: they’re going all guns blazing on being good people who mean well, but they don’t want to convince the wrong people that they really are going to do much that’s good, in case the pig-people decide they should join in and participate.
David Timoney@fromarsetoelbow.bsky.social · 23h agoI think the best way to read this obvious propaganda is as a determination by the party right (through its Guardian-friendly mouthpiece, Labour Together) to keep the membership small and reliably anti-left. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
issuing a correction on a previous post of mine, regarding antisemitism in british politics. there is a place for it, and it’s in the country’s natural party of government and the broader right-wing coalition, which is radicalising at an alarming clip.
Former neo-Nazi activist selected as Tory candidate for Somerset council election
Joshua Bonehill-Paine, creator of satirical Crewkerne Gazette, has convictions including for harassing a Jewish MP
theguardian.com
No, this exactly the kind of “free speech” they have always believed in: special Freedom Plus for themselves, and PC Plod banging on your door to finger wag you for impertinence, while they phone your boss and try to get you fired.
Mic Wright@brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 23h agoWhat’s amazing about the Telegraph crew is how thin their pretence of believing in ‘free speech’ really is.
The “Be Kind” mob was Jess Phillips et al, who would not say boo to these vicious wankers. She may mean the “kinder, gentler politics” people and that was about less screaming hate for benefit claimants and less racist fearmongering, it wasn’t free rein for fash columnists to fill their boots.
Mic Wright@brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 23h agoI was wondering why I’d got 19 clickthroughs from The Daily Telegraph…
I was wondering why I’d got 19 clickthroughs from The Daily Telegraph…
This is what they expected and wanted to happen: that members of the public, shown the cops would take their side if they kicked off and went mental at anyone they suspected of being a transgender, would then start going apeshit en masse and enforce their wacko ideas for them.
Not more complex than: he was one of the special people who have Freedom Plus to do and say whatever they want without any limitations set by the public, who need to be watched like hawks and harshly punished, the second they step out of line or get any ideas about how things should be organised.
It’s worth noting: the anti-austerity movement arose organically from the public at a time when public organisations and NGOs were blaring klaxons about the calamitous damage austerity was doing. And so the lads got together and stomped those insolent motherfuckers into the earth, where they belong.
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · yesterdayWhy did Britain spend the decades after the financial crisis repeatedly stabbing itself for no good reason, with both hands? Because all the right sort of chaps decided that was better and more in their interest than e.g. admitting the Thatcherite consensus was fucked and needed to be replaced.
