Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • Trans for Iran

    n>

    "Yes, the Iranians kill gays but help people change sex. I get the feeling this is the direction of travel of the trans agenda in the west too."

    "In Iran they trans away the gay. It's illegal to be a gay man in Iran. If caught they're forced to have genital surgery whether they like it or not. Many are so distressed they commit suicide."

    "Think this through Philip. A country notoriously anti woman and gay people but supports trans. Have you joined the dots yet?"

    [The "India" Ted Cruz refers to is of course notorious trans activist and Rowling-hater-extraordinaire India Willoughby, who's come out for Team Iran and will no doubt be thrilled by this extra bit of publicity.]

  • At the Palestine Action protest in Manchester

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  • Falsely accused of Islamophobia

    university said that it “recognised” the concerns of students and scrapped the module, ­titled “Islam, China and the Far East”. Greer resigned.

    Greer said: “Not only did they fail to protect me, and failed to deal with the complaint appropriately, they then compounded the risk by ­equivocating about my innocence.

    “By saying they recognised concerns, and taking off the module because of student sensitivities, it looks like a whitewash, like they still had lingering suspicions about me.”

    He was stitched up, and the university went along with it. Sheer cowardice.

    Twelve groups, including the Free Speech Union, Academics for Academic Freedom, Alumni for Free Speech and Christian Concern, have written to the regulator asking it to investigate Bristol.

    They pointed out that the university had a legal duty to take reasonably ­practicable steps to ensure freedom of speech within the law for its students and staff, but took no visible steps to do so in Greer’s case. They allege that ­Bristol’s failures resulted in the ­censorship of lawful expression and that, as in the Stock case, there was a failure to take reasonable steps to ­protect academics from physical harm.

    Key failures, according to the groups, include allowing the complaint despite numerous procedural flaws, failing to take action on the aggressive social ­media campaign by disciplining any students who were involved, and ­cancelling Greer’s module even though he had been exonerated.

    Given the scandal, the complaint notes, it would be a “brave scholar” who would make legitimate observations about Islam in a similar context.

    Well quite. Discussion of Islam, let alone criticism of Islam, is becoming increasingly discouraged. As if, perhaps, it might be blasphemous.

  • The NHS trust Pride calendar

    The NHS trust at the centre of the Darlington nurses dispute would seem to have an agenda. From the Times:

    A hospital trust at the centre of a row over transwomen sharing female changing rooms has come under fire for producing a Pride calendar celebrating “polyamory” and “pansexuality”.

    County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is being sued by eight nurses who claim that a policy allowing transwomen to use single-sex changing rooms puts women at risk….

    But a Pride calendar sent to staff has stirred further criticism of the trust over claims that bosses are more concerned with protecting LGBT rights than those of women.

    The 36-page document, Pride Month 2025, begins with a graphic in which each day in June is dedicated to celebrating an LGBT theme. These include images of flags placed on different dates that represent a variety of “genders” and sexualities that people can identify as.

    Among these are flags for the polyamorous — defined in the booklet as “a relationship style in which more than two people engage in intimate, consensual relationship” — and the pansexual, described as individuals “attracted to all types of people” regardless of “gender or sexual orientation”.

    Other flags represent those who identify as asexual, explained as people who “may experience little sexual attraction or none at all”….

    Elsewhere the document advises staff advice on providing “safe spaces” for LGBTQ+ people.

    There's someone high up at the Durham and Darlington trust that seems to be pushing this, and no one dares speak up – apart from the Darlington nurses.

    Some staff at the hospital say the exercise is “divisive”, particularly in the light of the case of the eight Darlington nurses, strengthened by the recent Supreme Court ruling that, under equality law, women and men are defined by biological sex.

    One female hospital employee said: “Why should an individual’s sexuality or kinks be not only brought into the workplace but actively promoted and forced on staff? Following the Supreme Court ruling, it is incredibly insensitive and hostile to be trying to ‘educate’ staff on these issues.

    “This exposes that County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has an extreme agenda and are keen to be seen as ‘inclusive’ while continuing to exclude women and ignoring their rights to basic dignity.”

    Further concerns have been raised over the booklet’s directing staff towards Mermaids, a charity for trans youth, as one of the 11 “LGBT focused charities” it lists.

    Hmm. Someone high up with a transed child, perhaps.

    Shelley Charlesworth of Transgender Trend, a parent-led group that campaigns to raise awareness of the sharp rise in children identifying as trans, said: “No part of the NHS should be endorsing Mermaids, a charity which was opposed to the ban by the NHS on puberty blockers and which has a history of controversies in its dealing with children.”

  • Abandoning self-identification language

    From the Times:

    Judges will no longer have to refer to criminal defendants by the gender of their choice in an update after the Supreme Court’s transgender ruling.

    The revised guidance abandons self-identification language and reaffirms the binary definition of sex to state that the legal definition of a woman means biological female rather than sex attained by the acquisition of a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

    It says that non-binary status has no legal footing and sets out that courts may refuse contested pronouns.

    Rape suspects should not be referred to as female and there is “no entitlement” for anyone to use single-sex services intended for the opposite sex, the guidance says.

    It previously stated that judges should refer to criminal defendants by the gender they have chosen for themselves.

    About bloody time. Will we now see an end to press reports of women rapists, "her penis" and so on? That'd be nice.

  • Standing with Iran

    Dave Rich – The right side of history:

    What does it take for a demonstrator, marching through central London, to hold a placard declaring that a regime that maims and blinds young women for the ‘crime’ of wanting to choose how they dress is on the right side of history?

    Why is it that so many women on that same march happily chanted “We Stand With Iran” while dressed in a way that would see them beaten and imprisoned by that same Iranian regime, and despite all the horrors it perpetrates on its own people, most of whom would be glad to see the back of it (even if they don’t welcome Israeli and American bombs)?

    It was entirely predictable that the pro-Palestinian movement that has solidified on our streets and online since October 7 would swing firmly behind Iran once Israel – and now the United States – bombed Iran’s nuclear and other military facilities. That the Iranian regime hangs gay men from cranes was never going to stop Owen Jones from choosing the Iranian side in this war. Any discussions about the true intentions of Iran’s nuclear programme, the state of international negotiations, and the possible ways this conflict now plays out are a distraction from the only thing that matters: the belief that Israel is always in the wrong, that its actions are never justified, and that everything it does is a crime of inhumane cruelty that exceeds rational explanation. All else flows from that; all is justified in opposition to it….

    Shorter version:

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  • Exposing the weakness of the Islamic Republic

    Kyle Orton at UnHerd on the Trump bombings:

    Trump was reluctant to carry out this action, and reportedly tried to minimise the fallout by communicating to the Iranian leadership in advance that the strikes were a one-off, strictly limited to the nuclear weapons programme and with no intention to threaten the regime itself. This did not stop the Iranians vowing “everlasting consequences”, but perhaps what moved the US President to commit to strikes was the realisation that there is nothing the Islamic Republic can actually do.

    Israel has thoroughly infiltrated Iran, causing the suppression of air defences in the first hours of this campaign. It has killed swathes of Tehran’s senior leadership and struck nuclear facilities, the missile programme, and even energy infrastructure. Israel crippled Iran’s ability to carry out foreign terrorism years ago, reducing the country’s response to sporadic and increasingly ineffective missile barrages.

    The Islamic regime governing Iran has prospered because of its enemies’ timidity, which has been justified by Tehran being on the threshold of nuclear weapons. Israel’s actions over the past two years — in devastating Iranian outposts around the region and then taking the war to the central node in Tehran — have shaken this paradigm. Whether the American strikes have completely disarmed Iran or not, Trump has provided the opportunity to discard it altogether. The weakness of the Islamic Republic has been exposed and a precedent set. If there are future negotiations with Iran, all sides now know the West has cards to play which it has denied itself for too long.

    What Iran can do – what they've threatened to do – is close the Strait of Hormuz, shutting off the oil tankers from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. The Saudis would not be pleased, and, facing a weakened Iran and with the support of America, might feel tempted to respond with some force of their own…

  • Evin prison

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  • Gender-critical beliefs rooted in “white supremacy”

    o become a man or woman – is rooted in “patriarchy” and “oppression”.

    The charity that works with local schools claimed that the views of JK Rowling and other gender-critical feminists are the result of “white supremacy”.

    In a lengthy statement, the charity added that “defining womanhood as ‘biological’ is dangerous” and can lead down a “slippery slope of white supremacy thinking”….

    Anti-Racist Cumbria claimed following the Supreme Court decision: “The activism of so-called ‘gender-critical feminists’, supported by the likes of JK Rowling and the Trump movement, will not stop here.

    “The fight against trans rights does not exist in isolation, and although it is dressed up as ‘women’s rights’, it’s a direct result of patriarchy and white supremacy as systems of oppression.”

    The post also included an image of JK Rowling smoking a cigar “on her superyacht”, the charity claimed in a picture caption, while many “transgender people have experienced homelessness”.

    The lengthy article about the gender ruling, on the “resources” section of the charity’s website, also touched on issues of women’s safety, which it claimed were preludes to “fascism”.

    Gosh.

  • The genital equivalent of a Flat Earther

    at, say, advertising campaigns the way they do.

    They certainly don’t need the money. But when, like [Daniel] Radcliffe (thought to have around £100 million) and co., you know that you really are nothing special and were just tremendously lucky, it’s bound to make you feel insecure, no matter how much you’ve got in the bank. Look at the vast amount of voiceover work (like his female equivalent, Dawn French) Fry has done – that can only be greed. Surely there’s only so many video games his lovely young husband can play with?

    Cross-dressing men in general want to be Rowling, as they tend to look like navvies done up as prossies, whereas J.K.R. is wonderfully elegant with her wand-like body and Modigliani face and clever way with a big hat and a lovely bit of scarlet lippy – the brazen hussy! But we inevitably come back to Fry as the bellwether (not to mention the bell-end) of J.K.R.-envy. I once, some time ago, labelled him ‘a stupid person’s idea of a clever person’ – but the degradation of his intellectual ability in the years which have passed since then has been a remarkable, Biden-level catastrophe for his thought processes. So more than anything else, he envies Rowling because she is that rare thing in a po-faced world; she is a wit. And it’s been a damn long time since Fry – his once-glittering brain eaten alive by becoming the genital equivalent of a Flat Earther – was one of those. The poor poppet!

    Ouch.

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