Mick Hartley

Author: Mick Hartley

  • Nothing taken from trans people ‘except a false belief’

    After the Guardian's misleading headline, the Telegraph gets it right – Supreme Court ruling has taken nothing from trans people ‘except a false belief’, says equality watchdog chief:

    Trans people have been “lied to over many years” over their rights to enter female-only spaces, a senior member of Britain’s equality watchdog has said.

    Akua Reindorf, one of eight commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said transgender people had been misled about their entitlements and there “has to be a period of correction” to recognise the women’s right to single-sex spaces.

    Ms Reindorf made the comments at a debate about the Supreme Court ruling that the word “sex” in the Equality Act refers only to biological sex, and not to a person’s gender identity.

    The ruling confirmed it was lawful for female-only sports teams to exclude trans women and for trans people to be barred from lavatories and changing rooms for the opposite sex. This was later backed up by interim guidance from the EHRC.

    Asked by an audience member about concerns that the ruling could roll back the rights of trans people, Naomi Cunningham, a barrister and panellist at the debate, said trans people “will have to give way”, adding: “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

    Ms Reindorf, speaking next, agreed, saying: “Unfortunately, young people and trans people have been lied to over many years about what their rights are.

    “It’s like Naomi said – I just can’t say it in a more diplomatic way than that. They have been lied to, and there has to be a period of correction, because other people have rights.”

    Naturally there are dissenting voices:

    But Chiara Capraro, the head of gender justice at Amnesty International UK, criticised Ms Reindorf’s comments.

    She said: “The EHRC has the duty to uphold the rights of everyone, including all with protected characteristics. We are concerned that it is failing to do so and is unhelpfully pitting the rights of women and trans people against each other.”

    It was, of course, the trans activists who pitted the rights of women and trans people against each other, by demanding that trans women – men in dresses – have access to women's toilets, women's sport, women's prisons, lesbian groups, by misrepresenting the law. Now they know better. Or should know better. But Amnesty have lost the plot on this, as on so much else.

  • Hamas brutality

    As not seen on the BBC:

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    "Six others were reportedly executed without trial, without court—just Hamas’s bullets.

    "For those constantly worried about ISIS-linked militias in Gaza: hopefully, your concern extends—at least equally—to the daily torture, executions, and lawless brutality inflicted by Hamas on Gazans themselves."

  • Men in women’s sport

    When it's fine:

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  • Piers Morgan “a significant part of the problem of disinformation”

    is week by Piers Morgan demonstrates that he is a significant part of the problem of disinformation about this conflict. Morgan should be well aware that there have been repeated stories emerging from Gaza which have subsequently been debunked only after they spread around the world. The predictable result has been the poisoning of many minds against Israel, on the basis of fabrications and blood libels. My simple entreaty was that the matter should not be prejudged, especially where fake AI generated images had been deployed to support it. Cue frenzied outrage and bile from Morgan.

    Defence of fake images in pursuit of a “good story” is, of course, old ground for Morgan. He was dismissed from his role as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004, following the publication of photographs that purportedly showed British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. The images were later determined to be staged and not taken in Iraq. Morgan stood by their publication and refused to issue an apology on the basis there was no firm evidence that they were fake, though the newspaper did, acknowledging that it had been the victim of a “calculated and malicious hoax” and expressing deep regret for the reputational damage caused to the British Army. Morgan’s defence of his decision to publish those fake pictures stemmed from his opposition to the Iraq war in a disgraceful example of “the ends justify the means”.

    Did he learn anything from that shameful incident? The way I was treated on Uncensored suggests not. At least when Morgan was in the employ of a national newspaper, he could be held accountable. But this no longer appears to be the case. He is now free to shout down his guests without consequence.

    The problem doesn’t stop with Morgan. The unfair way in which Israel is presented in the Western media, and the refusal to treat Hamas’s claims with scepticism, misleads the public. It increases the threat of violence to Jews around the world, but also, crucially, props up and encourages Hamas, thereby prolonging the war and the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

  • The realisation of the Palestinian vision of return

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  • The “genocide” meme

    Yep. Another facile lying slogan.

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  • Breaking the blockade

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  • Guardian trouble

    on of Akua's comments here expresses the very heart of the political problem regarding the objectives the trans rights movement, the attack on women's rights, and the complicity of many parts of the left, including The Guardian, with that… https://t.co/gbx3MruwYP

    — Dr. Jane Clare Jones (@janeclarejones) June 6, 2025

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    Full text:

    The staggeringly dishonest presentation of Akua's comments here expresses the very heart of the political problem regarding the objectives the trans rights movement, the attack on women's rights, and the complicity of many parts of the left, including The Guardian, with that attack.

    The Supreme Court judgement *does not reduce the rights of trans people as given in law.*

    What it does is correct the situation *in which the trans rights movement had arrogated itself 'rights' by disseminating a false interpretation of the law which undermined women's rights.*

    It arrogated itself these 'rights,' therefore, by non-democratic means, and attempted to enforce its claims by preventing anyone from discussing what it was doing, and threatening and trying to destroy the livelihood and reputations of people who refused to comply.

    The act of injustice here is one that has been perpetrated *by* the trans rights movement *against* the people whose rights they attempted to non-democratically help themselves to, that is, women and especially lesbians.

    And the main newspaper of the left is still so largely captured by the ideological discourse of the trans rights movement that it is totally failing to accurately inform its readers about what has happened, how this situation arose, who has wronged who, and what the SC judgement actually represents.

    It is still seeking to present the wronged parties as the aggressors, and the people who spent over a decade illegitimately trying to remove their rights as the victims.

  • North Korea “a leading nation in the global anti-imperialist front”

    Selling the sending of North Korean troops to Ukraine, from the Daily NK:

    North Korean authorities have been conducting political lectures for officials promoting the country’s deployment of troops to the Russia-Ukraine war since officially acknowledging the dispatch last month.

    According to a Daily NK source in Kangwon province recently, the propaganda and agitation department of the Workers’ Party issued special political lecture materials about the Russia deployment to provincial party committees on May 21. Kangwon province’s party committee then held a regular Saturday lecture for officials based on these materials.

    The materials said combat units of the Korean People’s Army took part in operations to liberate Russia’s Kursk region, helping to wipe out Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces and protect Russian territory.

    “Our soldiers’ fighting spirit and tactical skills struck fear into the enemy,” the materials said, apparently trying to instill pride in officials about North Korea’s military strength.

    The lecturer emphasized that North Korea leads an alliance of anti-imperialist forces.

    “The lecturer kept using the phrase, ‘North Korea is a leading nation in the global anti-imperialist front,'” the source said. “This was clearly meant to drill into officials that our military has the combat power not only to protect our homeland but to lead the global strategic balance.”

  • Congruent with consumer capitalism

    It's the young, overwhelmingly, who support trans ideology, while us older folk tend to the gender-critical side. So the tide of history is with the gender crowd, and when we gender-criticals have shuffled off, there'll be no stopping them. That's how progress works – right? Well, Susanna Rustin at the Guardian sees it differently:

    I think those who characterise this struggle as being between young progressives and ageing reactionaries are mistaken. While I fully support transgender people’s right to be protected from discrimination, I don’t regard the erosion of sex-based entitlements – including single-sex sports and spaces – in favour of an ethos of “inclusion” as either liberal or leftwing.

    On the contrary, I think valuing inclusion over bodily privacy (in changing rooms) or fairness (in sports) is sexist – since women are more disadvantaged by these changes than men. And while gender identity campaigners claim autonomy and choice as progressive, even socialist, values, I see their emphasis on the individual’s right to self-definition as congruent with consumer capitalism. Multinational corporations, including banks and retailers, embrace Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index and fly Progress Pride flags from their buildings because the shift away from the class politics of redistribution towards the identity politics of personal expression suits them.

    So someone at the Guardian is prepared to stick their hand up and say that it's not really a progressive cause, this gender stuff. Big business wasted no time in jumping aboard, and – in the US at least – there are megabucks to be made by mutilating kids in the name of "gender-affirming care". Not quite the full it's-actually-profoundly-homophobic-and-misogynist gotcha, but it's a start.

    "Congruent with consumer capitalism" -  a very Guardianisty take. But fair enough – especially if you buy into the Pritzker saga, as outlined by Jennifer Bilek in 2022. 

    And an interesting side note: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is widely regarded as being a potential future Democratic presidential candidate.

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