Lauren Smith at Spiked tells us:

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ordered the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust to release details of its communication with Mermaids. In 2021, a concerned parent made a Freedom of Information request to see what, if any, correspondence there had been between the Tavistock and Mermaids – including emails or minutes of meetings. Initially, the Tavistock refused to comply, arguing that doing so would cause ‘a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress’. When the ICO asked the Tavistock to justify its refusal, the Tavistock took back its original excuse and instead claimed that there was no relevant information to hand over.

I’m fascinated to learn that the Tavistock thinks it can refuse a Freedom of Information request on the grounds that it’s irritating. No you’re irritating.

In a judgement published at the end of March, the ICO ruled that the Tavistock most likely does hold information relevant to the request. And if it does not present this information by the end of this week, the Tavistock trust could face a fine for contempt of court.

But that would cause irritation.

Whistleblowers at the Tavistock have long tried to warn the public about its relationship with Mermaids. Sue Evans, a mental-health nurse and psychotherapist at the Tavistock between 2003 and 2007, claimed that Mermaids and similar charities were always ‘involved in helping formulate the materials that the service used, [and] how to talk about things’.

Another Tavistock whistleblower, Sonia Appleby, also mentioned Mermaids by name during an employment tribunal in 2021. According to Appleby, there were a number of Tavistock staff who were concerned about the influence of Mermaids and similar organisations. Pressure from the trans lobby, she said, had led clinicians to become increasingly ideological. This made them more likely to affirm children in their belief that they were ‘born in the wrong body’.

See that’s the whole damn thing in a nutshell. On the one hand the ideologues insist being trans is a real, documented, physical, in the body thing – read this Scientific American article, it proves it!! – and on the other hand the medical people are coached and lobbied and pressured and pushed by the pack of deranged fundamentalists that is Mermaids. It’s real, it’s science, and Mermaids is our Leader.