Ruth Parry 💙

I’m out and about today In my long time home town thehistorypress.co.uk/article/nottin…

@Gillian_Philip @BBCr4today @BBCRadio4 The BBC trolled everyone who would have cared that Dame Jenni Murray received a proper tribute. It was a power move designed to enrage. Same as the cross dressing man as the ‘expert’ to discuss misogyny a few days earlier on Woman’s Hour. They know what will hurt the most.

Robert Mueller died last night. He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving. He had integrity. And tonight the President of the United States said good! I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good. I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word. Good. This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather. That is what is happening. That is what has happened. The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming. America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner. And the church said nothing. Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary. Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him. Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart. JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn. These men are something more painful than monsters. They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again. Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing. Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less. That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him. And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it. When Trump is gone, they will still be here. Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous. That morning is coming. Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say. He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true. He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad. The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it. That is all it needed to be. A man died. His family is broken open with grief. That is all it needed to be. Instead the President said good. And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸 Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

"It was an absolute insult for the BBC to have Harriet Harman on the Today Programme where she insinuated that Murray’s principled stand detracted from her feminism rather than forming an integral part of it."

RIP Jenni Murray 1950-2026 A courageous woman sadly missed @BBCRadio4 @BBCWomansHour “There are many different stereotypes that fit our gender, so there’s no one stereotypical woman - but our sex, we share.” #SexNotGender #NoToSelfID #AdultHumanFemale #SexMatters #GetTheXYOut

“Her views on the trans issue were an intrinsic part of her feminism, but we had to listen to Harriet Harman on the Today programme on Saturday patronisingly explain that they didn’t “detract” from it. This is a travesty. Murray thought as she did because she was a feminist to her fingertips. She never regretted what she said and felt that the 2025 Supreme Court ruling on the matter had proved her right: that the legal definition of women is based on biological sex. She never backed down. She was never afraid to ask the difficult questions. She was magnificent, she had class. Her legacy is not to bow down to flimsy thinking that reduces womanhood to mere “feelings”. As she fought for us, we must now fight to make sure she is remembered with the respect she deserves.” @suzanne_moore remembers Jenni Murray 💔

@BBCNews are hypocrites. Here’s why Jenni Murray left the BBC, in her own words. Shame on her spineless colleagues & handmaidens addled by #GenderIdeology who succeeded her. BBC, once respected & trusted, is now a clown show. #SexNotGender #SexMatters #NoToSelfID #DefundTheBBC

The Beeb at its best. Promoting misogyny… this was what passed for entertainment back in the day in the gay bars when lesbians were routinely insulted - the term “fish” launched at the lesbians from the stage by vicious narcissists cosplaying women

When an Olympian like Claire speaks about fairness in women’s sport, we should listen. Protecting women’s categories isn’t exclusion—it’s the foundation of fair competition.

"Natacha Kennedy" is a vile individual who seems to love to bully women (the list). We worry that this toxic, sexist man is teaching young people @GoldsmithsUoL. I hope they will review his social media use.

The existence of a blacklist of Terfs can be neither proved nor disproved but I am assured by a mole or two that it exists, and @BBCWomansHour should take a hard look at itself and they way it prioritises trans over actual women.

RIP Jenni Murray x Her deep, no-bullshit, authoritative but somehow equally soothing, reassuring and often slightly cheeky voice was one of so many of our childhoods right through into adulthood. I was very lucky to share studio space with her at @BBCWomansHour a few times to see her at her formidable best behind the mic - and quake a little in her presence! This was 7th Feb 2018, just two months after my 4th child was born, so I had to bring her with me to the studio to feed her. Jenni was absolutely LOVELY to her, and to me, and we juggled motherhood and work as women do ... and CAN do thanks to the work of many of the guests she championed and supported over her career. Thank you for the countless hours and of education and entertainment about the lives of women that influenced so many of us. I have no doubt that The Sisterhood Myth has you to thank in many ways 💔❤️

When 'Sir' Jimmy Savile died in 2011 he was 'outed' as a paedophile. For 50 years Savile abused in plain sight and the BBC, Police, Social Services, the NHS & Gov said lessons were learned and no man would abuse a child in plain sight ever again. Fast forward 2026 and TRANS

Paging @DrAmirKhanGP

Absolutely no one looks at this man and sees a woman, he isn’t even trying anymore This is the face of a man who knows he doesn’t have to try, he can just bully women into submission This is what the patriarchy looks like

Genspect remembers with deep respect and sadness the passing of Jenni Murray, one of the few voices within the BBC establishment who spoke truthfully about the trans issue. Writing for The Sunday Times in March 2017, she penned an article headlined “Jenni Murray: Be trans, be proud – but don’t call yourself a ‘real woman’.” thetimes.com/uk/society/art… In November 2018, Murray cancelled a scheduled Oxford University History Society presentation following a backlash regarding her comments in The Sunday Times. bbc.com/news/uk-englan… The following month, University of Hull announced it was revisiting plans to name a lecture theatre after Murray amid protests; the university’s Student President team released a statement reading, “We oppose the naming of a lecture theatre after Jenni Murray. We do not believe that someone who holds these views should be presented as a role model to students”. bbc.com/news/uk-englan… In a 2020 article for the Daily Mail, Murray revealed that the BBC had banned her from chairing “any discussions on the trans question or the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act” following her departure from Woman’s Hour. christian.org.uk/news/jenni-mur… In 2020 Murray also signed a petition organised by @blablafishcakes @Glinner and @stellaomalley3 to support @jk_rowling ipetitions.com/petition/in-so… Jenni Murray was a courageous woman who spoke with conviction when it mattered most, and will be remembered for her willingness to stand firm and tell the truth

Harriet Harman is an absolutely shameless hypocrite. It would be an appropriate legacy for Dame Jenni Murray if she were regarded as having been the brave and authentic voice of UK women, with Harman excluded from this role, and less often promoted by broadcasters from now on.

In @BBCr4today tribute to Jenni Murray @HarrietHarman said “despite” Jenni making a fuss about women’s spaces:trans she made a huge contribution to women. In fact, it’s Labour women like Harman who betrayed their sex. Jenni saw what was being done and fearlessly resisted.

@BBCr4today There’s probably a Greek or German compound word for what @HarrietHarman said this morning about Jenny, translating to: ‘Wanting-the-limelight-of-a-good-woman-by-association-whilst simultaneously-currying-kudos-from-halfwits-who-bullied-and-betrayed-her’. Yuk

I didn't think Harman could be any more disappointing. I was wrong. New low unlocked.

So, thanks to ministers' procrastination, the rape gang inquiry won't report until AFTER the next general election. How politically convenient is that?