A Close Reader

#closereader #readcloser

@ElfwickDraws @godblesstoto Willoughby had a camera phone before they existed. He was also able to change sex. There are two falsehoods here.

Willoughby had a camera phone in 1990

@NormalGayPsych Though in some cases gay people are so progressive their brains have fallen out, happily, many gay people have retained leave of their senses even though they are exclusively same-sex orientated. Being gay doesn’t inevitably mean you are mad.

Gay people prefer not to be thrown off roofs...

@ElleBeeG Immediately clocked the lad. “You do not pass”, said Gandalf to the Balrog.

How did you know this person was a transwoman Thelma? 🤔

@defossardf @LoftusSteve Almost correct. The EU certainly is a hostile negotiator that wants control of the UK and its money. But the UK has its own objective: to hand over funds to the EU and to give up sovereignty. Happily for the EU the two coincide.

Two conceptual issues with the Reset: The EU is a hostile negotiating partner. They want our money and they want Britain to follow EU rules so we don't out-compete them. The Government has no objectives for this other than "better relations with Europe." Vibes not objectives.

@soniasodha @godblesstoto @emily4MK Hello Emily, I am sure you do not support gay conversion. Women cannot be gay men if they take T; men cannot be lesbians if they take E: gay boys shouldn’t be castrated because they’re “too girly”; gay girls shouldn’t be mutilated because they’re tomboys.

Hi Emily, it’s the Equality Act that says single sex services can’t admit people of the opposite sex. The Code of Practice simply explains it to service providers. If you want services organised on the basis of gender identity not sex you need to advocate for a change in the law. There’d be a lot of opposition to that (including from me) because of the impact on women, including domestic abuse survivors. Happy to put you in touch with a specialist lawyer if you want to know more about the relationship between the law and guidance.

My thoughts on the EHRC Code of Practice

@spectator Perhaps the BBC could explain why, back in 2010, the UN produced a report that already observed that this “impossible” choice was “pervasive” in Afghan “culture”? The tragedy is certainly experienced by the girls, not their grotesque fathers.

If you heard that a man was thinking about selling his seven-year-old daughter into marriage or domestic servitude, who would you feel sorry for? The dad or the girl? The man treating his own child as property to be traded for cash, or his daughter, the innocent made into chattel for gross creeps to barter over so that they might secure themselves a child bride? All normal people would say the daughter. Of course we would. Not the BBC, though. Our public broadcaster has told precisely this horror story, only it paints the men selling their daughters as the victims, not the girls who are being sold. Meet the 'Afghan fathers' who are 'forced to make impossible choices', it blubs, blissfully unaware of how sick it sounds to the rest of us to play a tiny violin for men who sell girls into slavery. ✍️ Brendan O’Neill Article | spectator.com/article/why-do…

@danbloom1 He’s working on his plans for his first 100 days “in government”, but at the same time does not want to talk about his tax plans, or position on the EU, because he is focused on “representing the people of Makerfield”. Transparently slippery, but will anyone be fooled?

EXCL: Andy Burnham’s team is working on a plan for his first 100 days in government in the event that he wins a crunch by-election and replaces Keir Starmer, three people tell me The plan is in its early stages but is likely to include reforms to the creaking social care system

@alexwickham He doesn’t want the people of Makerfield to know his plans for their taxes, he doesn’t want to talk about the EU, but he does want this election to carry him into Downing Street. This isn’t a sustainable position.

EXCLUSIVE: Andy Burnham won’t commit to keeping Labour’s manifesto promises on tax and has opened the door to new tax rises if he becomes PM. His decision to back the current fiscal rules wins him a reprieve from markets, but it limits his options to fund policies like council house-building. It raises the prospect of tax hikes. Asked by Bloomberg if he is committed to Labour’s election manifesto pledges not to raise income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax, his campaign declined to say so. They also didn’t rule out new taxes on wealth. Burnham’s spokesperson says he doesn’t want talk about tax policy during this by-election: “Andy is fully focused on working hard for every vote in Makerfield so he can represent them in Parliament. Andy is not standing on a national manifesto at this election; he is standing to make a difference for the people of Makerfield and to bring the change he has delivered in Greater Manchester to the national stage.” Burnham has recently called for the top rate of tax to be hiked to 50p and a council tax reevaluation to target the wealthy. “We have overtaxed labour and undertaxed wealth,” he said last year. But former Jeremy Hunt SpAd Adam Smith says wealth taxes don’t raise sufficient revenue and it is inevitable Burnham will have to look at the big taxes if he is going to implement bolder policies.

@alexwickham I wonder why he doesn’t want voters in Makerfield to know that he is unlikely to reflect their views on a whole range of issues? What a puzzler.

BREAKING: Andy Burnham u-turns on his desire to rejoin the EU “I am not proposing rejoining the EU” “I respect the decision that was made at the referendum” “The last thing we should do now is re-run those arguments” Flips his view from just 7 months ago when he backed rejoin

@TerraOrBust It is revealing that many EU-obsessives in the UK can only themselves stomach a bowing and scraping return provided the UK is still able to keep the EU at arm’s-length.

If someone tells you that the UK would not have to join Schengen or the Euro if it rejoined the EU, then all they are telling is that: 1) They're ignorant 2) They're a liar 3 ) They're in denial

@AgrippaSPQR The UK is the EU’s third country …

Having binned the Tory plan to send rejected asylum seekers to a third country hub (Rwanda), Labour signs up to an EU plan to send rejected asylum seekers to a third country hub. Net waste of UK taxpayers money £700 million.

@LoftusSteve There is no pride in topping these tables (puns intended), because to do so requires that an entire populace is forced to deny reality and humiliate itself.

Just to be clear. What Owen considered "Anti-trans" and the criteria required in the ILGA scoring to achieve a high score would require the following. Allow people to just say they are women (or men) without any medical intervention of any kind at any age.

@MrsNickyClark Don’t forget the second leadership contest he lost … to Jeremy Corbyn. Labour MPs, who recognise that none of their current 400+ colleagues have any leadership potential, are putting their faith in a twice-loser, as judged by many of them.

The thing is Andy Burnham was in a leadership contest previously. He lost, to Ed Miliband.

@john_mcguirk But it is very telling that many in Labour are convinced there isn’t a single possible leader among their 400+ current colleagues. They are so low calibre it isn’t surprising they are desperate to hand control of the UK back to Ursula and co.

One thing I do not understand, as someone who remembers the Blair/Brown years quite well, is how UK Labour members have convinced themselves that Andy Burnham, of all people, is going to be their saviour.

@john_mcguirk Everyone has forgotten that he stood for Labour leader twice, losing first to Ed Milliband, then to Jeremy Corbyn. Even his colleagues thought he wasn’t the right guy for the job. It is unclear what has changed, or if Burnham has much appeal beyond greater Manchester.

@ShippersUnbound @danielmgmoylan Labour tried to sneak through state-assisted suicide without democratic consent, they’ll certainly attempt to push through “rejoin the EU” without democratic consent. They “know what’s best and are listening”.

A reminder that the Leave campaign has had a slogan ready to go since the last referendum. 'Tell them again' looks like the easiest win in political history to me. The Rejoin terms would be so abject that, whatever the polls say now, many 2016 Remainers would vote to stay out

@OdohertyI64991 @malonebarry Ah yes, their latest trick of pretending that the people who acknowledge biological reality are the real weirdos, whereas those who intend to reorganise society around the demands of men with a sexual fetish are just entirely normal.

@malonebarry Do you go into women's bathrooms, dressing rooms and private spaces? If not, why not? And if you feel certain rules of basic decorum and manners apply to you, why don't they also apply to other men?

On Rachel Millward/Morgan/penises, I tweeted that anti-trans obsessives were weird a couple of weeks ago and I got deluged with hundreds of insane replies. It hits home because, on some level, they know it's true. They have a bizarre fixation and it's time they go outside.

@ripx4nutmeg Non-men are just very different, and there are so many different sorts of non-men that even men can be non-men, and if they’ve gone on a journey they’re the most special non-men, unlike regular, run of the mill non-men who don’t even have a sexual fetish.

Here's Harriet Harman, the UK government's new adviser on women and girls, speaking at length in 2024 about why she believes some men are women

@Madz_Grant Absolutely. If they’ll lie about the basics they’ll like about everything. But worse than their own willingness to degrade themselves, they will force everyone to degrade themselves. They want a humiliated populace.

V tiresome framing, as if biological reality and its obvious relevance to public spaces, female sports, the privacy and dignity of women, is somehow trivial Actually, if politicians lie or equivocate on this basic point, you can safely assume they'll do it with everything else

@NickTorfaen You wrote “working” but you meant “welfare”.

We need to move forward calmly, and continue to serve our country. When we came into Government, what changed was having a PM whose priority was, and is, improving the lives of working people. Keir is determined to make our country better-and he has a mandate to do so. (2/2)

I’m deeply saddened about the results today, especially in Wales. But we will bounce back. Now is not the time to walk away from the challenges we face. Change does not happen overnight. We cannot choose chaos. (1/2)