Ah what a fine parade of headlines:

The Guardian:

Trans charity Mermaids fails to have charitable status stripped from LGB Alliance

BBC News:

Trans charity Mermaids loses challenge against LGB Alliance

The Telegraph:

Trans group Mermaids loses bid to have gay rights charity shut down

The Guardian account is surprisingly free of snide insinuations:

The transgender children’s charity Mermaids has lost its attempt to have charitable status stripped from the new gay rights organisation LGB Alliance.

Golly! The Guardian calls it “the new gay rights organisation” instead of calling it “the anti-trans rights organisation.”

In the hearing last autumn, the two organisations set out their opposing views. The legal discussion pitched the LGB Alliance’s position that there are only two

We must not stop using oil, says oil executive, and what possible reason could an oil executive have to tell us to keep using oil while the planet heats up like an oven that heats up to infinity?

Cutting oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible”, the boss of energy giant Shell has told the BBC. Wael Sawan insisted that the world still “desperately needs oil and gas” as moves to renewable energy were not happening fast enough to replace it.

But the world also desperately needs not to keep heating up.

Mr Sawan angered climate scientists who said Shell’s plan to continue current oil production until 2030 was wrong. Professor Emily Shuckburgh, a climate scientist at

Stark raving mad. The Times:

A women’s rights and gender equality campaigner is having her bank account shut without explanation, her family said last night.

Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, has been with the Royal Bank of Scotland, a subsidiary of the NatWest Group, for 32 years.

However, two weeks ago, she and husband, Allan McKechnie, were told that their joint account, containing thousands of pounds, would be shut next month. In a letter, RBS said that it would be ceasing its “banking relationship” with the couple and they would have to make other banking arrangements “outside of the Natwest group”.

RBS added that it was “not able to discuss this decision

We’re going up up up…and not in a good way.

The world’s average temperature climbed to its highest level since records began, according to provisional data from U.S. researchers, underscoring the pressing need to slash greenhouse gas emissions fueling the climate emergency.

The planet’s average daily temperature climbed to 17.18 degrees Celsius (62.9 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, an unofficial tool that is often used by climate scientists as a reference to the world’s condition.

The milestone comes just one day after global average temperatures topped 17 degrees Celsius for the first time in 44 years, when the data was first collected. The previous record of 16.92 degrees Celsius had

Lies must be set free.

A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.

The order, which could have significant First Amendment implications, is a major development in a fierce legal fight over the boundaries and limits of speech online.

It was a victory for Republicans who have often accused social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube of disproportionately taking down right-leaning content, sometimes in collaboration with government.

That’s because right-leaning content also leans heavily toward lies.

In the ruling, Judge Terry A. Doughty

When even banks and the police are on board, it’s time to realize your cause may not be all that progressive.

The Bank of England has stated that people of any gender identity can become pregnant.

Then the Bank of England has said a deeply stupid thing. “Any gender identity” will necessarily include males, and males cannot become pregnant.

In any case “gender identity” is irrelevant to pregnancy. A person’s sex is relevant to pregnancy. The female sex is the one that can get pregnant; the male sex is the one that can’t. Next question?

Andrew Bailey’s under-pressure central bank, which is battling to bring inflation under control, also offers to help staff to pay for gender reassignment treatment

Conor Friedersdorf on the hypocrisy of mandatory diversity statements:

John D. Haltigan sued the University of California at Santa Cruz in May. He wants to work there as a professor of psychology. But he alleges that its hiring practices violate the First Amendment by imposing an ideological litmus test on prospective hires: To be considered, an applicant must submit a statement detailing their contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

That sounds like a stretch to me, but I’m not a lawyer. But whether it violates amendment #1 or not, it is at least an irritating mode of gatekeeping. It’s jargon, and jargon of that kind tends to put people off more than it inspires them to help minorities dismantle … Read the rest

And the cruise ships still ply to and fro.

Travelers are drawn to Antarctica for what they can find there—the wildlife, the scenery, the sense of adventure—and for what they can’t: cars, buildings, cell towers. They talk about the overwhelming silence. The Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge called it “the quietest place I have ever been.”

All of these attractions are getting harder to find in the rest of the world. They’re disappearing in Antarctica too. The continent is melting; whole chunks are prematurely tumbling into the ocean. And more people than ever are in Antarctica because tourism is on a tear.

“Antarctica is so brilliant because it’s quiet and empty of people, so I’m going to go there!” The … Read the rest

It’s not the future any more.

The world’s average temperature reached a new high on Monday 3 July, topping 17 degrees Celsius for the first time. Scientists say the reading was the highest in any instrumental record dating back to the end of the 19th century. The high heat is due to a combination of the El Niño weather event and ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide.

Researchers believe there will be more records in the coming months as El Niño strengthens.

Stay in the shade.… Read the rest

If you’re a man who claims to be trans you can do whatever you want.

A transwoman who admitted having dozens of indecent images of children has been spared jail after magistrates said they took an “unusual” decision.

Images of children being sexually abused, that is.

Tanya Howes, 66, was told by magistrates that the offences “would normally attract immediate custody”.

But they said they had decided to suspend a 12 month jail term, something they conceded was “unusual”.

But you see he’s a Member of the Trans Communniny so it wouldn’t do to punish him.

A ban on trans women with male genitalia who are violent or sexual offenders serving sentences in female prisons came into force earlier

Transgender Trend shares a heartbreaking and enraging letter to Rishi Sunak from five teenage girls asking for single-sex toilets in schools.

Five teenage girls from schools across England have got together to write to the Prime Minister asking for the re-establishment of single-sex toilets in schools, for the privacy, dignity and safety of girls, and to state this unequivocally in the forthcoming trans schools guidance. The girls have used pseudonyms to protect their identities, which we also think sends a strong message about the situation for girls now in schools, that they are too afraid of being ostracised or bullied for holding gender-critical views [to make this reasonable request openly].

Dear Rishi Sunak

Single-sex facilities are an essential safeguarding feature,

Originally a comment by Arty Morty on A seven-page dossier.

I’m glad the Free Speech Union is defending Colonel Wright. I recently ditched my little canvas New Yorker tote bag for a little canvas Free Speech Union bag that I proudly carry every time I go to the market.

I’m not entirely surprised the army is so hostile to gender-critical views, considering the military is lousy with crossdressers. For reasons still not quite understood, military men are far more likely to become transvestites than men in any other profession. The trope of the secretly-crossdressing general has been around since at least the 18th century. It’s incredible how many of the most famous trans activists of the 20th and 21st … Read the rest

All perfectly normal.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk appeared in a Twitter post to endorse the idea of taking the right to vote away from people without children.

Yet again, where are the editors? Musk didn’t appear in a Twitter post. That’s silly: nobody can appear in a Twitter post. But anyway – Musk said the thing.

The billionaire Tesla co-founder replied “Yup,” to a series of posts from Twitter user @fentasyl, which argued “democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents.”

Yo Eelzee baby, maybe it’s the other way around. Ja ever think of that? Maybe it’s parents who shouldn’t be allowed to vote, because they’re so likely to favor their children over everyone … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Are you now or have you ever been a diversity statement?

If you do think that the different men/women ratios in roles such as primary-school teaching and nursing, versus, say, construction work, being a lumberjack and computer coding, are all about socialisation and very little to do with biological differences, then, well, I think you’re wrong.

It would help things immensly if we were looking at this in an environment where socialization was neutral, but we’re not. I think it’s far too early to rule out socialization. Horribly naive in fact. Even without the subtle (and not so subtle) coaching and influence of even the most well-meaning and enlightened parents, there’s … Read the rest

Even the Army?

A colonel has claimed he was forced to quit the Army after he was criticised for stating that “men cannot be women”.

Dr Kelvin Wright, 54, had been a Reservist commanding officer with 14 years’ unblemished service, including two tours in Afghanistan, before his “honour was attacked” with a transphobia complaint and an investigation he described as “hellish”.

In May, he shared a post on his private Facebook account from Fair Play for Women, a campaign group that works with governing bodies to preserve women’s sport for those born female, which consisted of a quote from Helen Joyce, a feminist campaigner backed by the author JK Rowling.

The quote, shared without any additional comment, said: “If women

Extremely rich man who pays no taxes gets extremely expensive new sword paid for by people not as rich as he is.

A new sword will be presented to King Charles when he receives Scotland’s crown jewels at a ceremony in Edinburgh.

The King will be presented with the Honours of Scotland at a service in St Giles’ Cathedral on 5 July.

Named after his late mother, the Elizabeth sword was commissioned because the existing 16th Century sword is too fragile to handle.

So don’t handle it then. Skip the sword-handling, or use another sword from the cupboard.

The Elizabeth Sword cost £22,000 to make and was designed by Mark Dennis and worked on by a number of expert

Huh. I thought Choss was supposed to be such a keen environmentalist.

King Charles’s private country estate at Sandringham in Norfolk has been linked to the deaths and disappearances of a string of legally protected birds over the past two decades, a Guardian investigation has found.

The cases include the alleged poisoning, shooting and disappearance of some of the UK’s rarest birds of prey. One of the cases involved the mysterious loss of eastern England’s last breeding female montagu’s harrier, a critically endangered species whose future in the UK is now looking bleak.

The Guardian has identified 18 cases since 2003 involving suspected wildlife offences or the alleged misuse of poisons, linked to the royal estate and neighbouring farmland

Is the heat really such a problem? Who needs fish and plants anyway?

The UK’s hottest June on record caused unprecedented deaths of fish in rivers and disturbed insects and plants, environment groups have warned. Nature is being “pounded by extreme weather without a chance to recover”, the Wildlife Trusts said.

…

“The reports of the number of fish death incidents in rivers for this time of year has been unprecedented. I would normally expect rivers to be affected later in the summer when it’s hotter and drier,” Mark Owen, from the Angling Trust, told BBC News. In one case, sea trout were found dead on the River Wear in north-east England, he said.

The deaths are partly caused by

Hottest so far.

The UK had the hottest June on record, the Met Office has confirmed. The average monthly temperature of 15.8C (60.4F) exceeded the previous highest average June temperature, recorded in 1940 and 1976, by 0.9C.

Climate change made the chance of surpassing the previous joint record at least twice as likely, scientists also said.

…

“It’s officially the hottest June on record for the UK, for mean temperature as well as average maximum and minimum temperature,” said Met Office’s Climate Science Manager Mark McCarthy.

“An increase of 0.9C may not seem a huge amount, but it’s really significant because it has taken the average daytime and the night time temperature for the whole of the UK,” Paul

A pusher of the dogma tells us how to push the dogma, which is to say, Helen Webberley says

Saving trans lives is simple:

Believe them.

Yes, that is simple, but it can’t be a general rule, for reasons that ought to be obvious if you think about it at all.

It can’t be a general rule that you must believe X brand of people, because people can be mistaken and people can lie.

Webberley is using the fact that, socially speaking, we generally do believe what people tell us if there’s no obvious reason not to. If we ask a stranger where the nearest grocery store is, we assume she’ll tell us the truth, because why wouldn’t she? … Read the rest