Billy Bragg admits it’s all about being trendy.

Billy Bragg has changed the lyrics of his hit song “Sexuality” in support of transgender rights.

In the original version of the song, Bragg sings: “And just because you’re gay I won’t turn you away/If you stick around I’m sure that we can find some common-ground” in support of gay rights. But, in recent live performances of the song, he has changed “gay” to “they” in support of transgender people.

Ooh, bold step. “Just because you’re they” – that’s a fine use of language right there.

Explaining why he chose to change the lyrics, Bragg wrote on Twitter: “Times changed. Anyone born since the song was released would wonder why it’s

Women’s bodies are public property chapter eleventy billion:

When a 21-year-old Native American woman from Oklahoma was convicted of manslaughter after having a miscarriage, people were outraged. But she was not alone.

You remember this story from a few weeks ago.

Brittney Poolaw was just about four months pregnant when she lost her baby in the hospital in January 2020.

This October, she was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for the first-degree manslaughter of her unborn son.

As if the four month old fetus inside her were an independent person she killed.

Yet Poolaw’s story is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of the National Advocates of Pregnant Women (NAPW),

JoMo says fear not, brands will save you.

But the only people trying to understand the medium and long term – and who invest huge amounts in ensuring they understand it correctly – are consumer brands. And they all face, unequivocally, in the same direction. They know what the future holds.

Be optimistic. 2/2

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) November 12, 2021

Consumer brands know what the future holds. That’s some top-class epistemology right there.… Read the rest

Ben Hunte is angry at the BBC. (He used to be “BBC LGBT Correspondent” according to his profile, and now works at Vice.)

"I can't keep working for the bad guys"

Exclusive: I received a leaked recording of a heated “listening session” for LGBTQ BBC staff, which reveals that several LGBTQ employees have quit – or are about to quit… https://t.co/rEdRtYubgQ

— Ben Hunte (@BenInLDN) November 11, 2021

But what does he mean LGBTQ employees? Does he mean several have quit as in a coupla lesbians a coupla gay men a couple bi people a coupla trans a coupla queer? Or does he mean several trans people? It would be useful to know, but the LGBTQ formula prevents us from … Read the rest

It was consensual manslaughter.

A man jailed for choking a woman to death during sex will not have his prison sentence increased, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Sam Pybus, 32, was jailed for four years and eight months after admitting the manslaughter of Sophie Moss, 33, at her home in Darlington on 7 February. Attorney General Suella Braverman said the sentence was unduly lenient and referred it to the Court of Appeal.

But three judges said nah, it’s all good. He was drunk, you see.

Pybus, who was married, had told police he and Ms Moss had been in a casual relationship for three years and that she encouraged him to strangle her during consensual sex.

Ah those … Read the rest

It’s all about impartiality.

The BBC retreated from Stonewall’s divisive Diversity Champions scheme because it needs to be “squeaky clean” on impartiality, an executive said.

He and Emma Barnett had a long conversation about it: he kept pressing a distinction between Stonewall’s advice on employer policy and making everyone feel included, and editorial decisions about content.

Fair enough, but as he said it over and over I kept wondering how much the BBC worried about making women feel included. I wondered, and still wonder, what it did about the imbalance between hand-wringing concern over about 400 trans employees and, I’m guessing, a rather larger number of women employees. I wondered and still wonder why he got such an anxious … Read the rest

Also this happened today – a ruling that Mermaids can’t share documents with the Good Law Project (aka Jolyon Maugham), because of the obvious risk that he’ll blab everything on Twitter. Mermaids and Maugham are trying to get the LGB Alliance’s charitable status taken away.

The lack of reading comprehension of many is no longer a source of amusement but is actually quite frightening. Mermaids have NOT been prevented from speaking to their lawyers. The Good Law Project are NOT their lawyers. pic.twitter.com/74PEceEcj2

— Sarah Phillimore (@SVPhillimore) November 11, 2021

… Read the rest

Let’s look at the Pregnant People bit.

Emma Barnett: There are guests who come on this show who talk about “pregnant people.” What should I do, live in the moment – should I get them to clarify themselves because only biological women can be pregnant?

Long, telling pause

Rhodri Talfan Davies: Well, “pregnant people” isn’t inaccurate, it’s clearly one way of framing the statement

Me, interrupting: Now wait just a damn minute. Accuracy isn’t the only relevant quality here, and anyway it could be called inaccurate in some senses. It’s not the usual, familiar, standard, unsurprising way of saying it. Don’t go pretending not to know that. And because it’s not the standard way of saying it, and because … Read the rest

The stations of the cross.

If anyone is wondering why I'm leaving the charity sector after only six months in my role, please see this actual genuine thing that has just been sent to me. "Omnisexual Awareness Day"??? GET A GRIP. pic.twitter.com/nxOBKpF3qL

— Ffion B Goode (@FfiFfi_LaRue) November 11, 2021

I wonder how Asexual Visibility Day is celebrated.… Read the rest

Whoaaaa the ground is shifting.

Extremely effective interviewing here from @Emmabarnett – she did a great job of cutting through the waffle and attempts to sidestep by Rhodri Talfan. I particularly liked "There are also facts, and facts don't have to be balanced." https://t.co/HxGhIZGbbR

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) November 11, 2021

… Read the rest

Doc Stock on the “But but but you wrote a piece for The Spectator!!” expostulation:

I am on the left — or at least, a version of the left that doesn’t involve trying to get employees sacked by bosses, which may or may not be the left as we now know it. One frequent preoccupation of fellow left-wingers is the potential for guilt by association with those on the right. When feminists like Julie Bindel and I share a platform with a Tory, or write something for The Spectator, isn’t that just grist to the mill of our enemies? And, over time, won’t this heinous practice increase the likelihood of our own politics becoming less feminist? My usual

Sorry, can’t do the anti-vax rally, have Covid.

A Republican lawmaker in North Dakota will miss his Monday rally opposing vaccine mandates because he has COVID-19. Instead, Rep. Jeff Hoverson said he will stay home and take a cocktail of medications including the unproven anti-parasite drug ivermectine and the malaria remedy Hydroxychloroquine.

He must be a very intelligent man.

Hoverson has battled mask mandates. He was barred from boarding a flight with his wife at Minot International Airport late last month after taking issue with a TSA patdown. Hoverson said he and his wife were traveling for their anniversary.

Covid doesn’t care what you’re traveling for.

H/t Holms… Read the rest

GCs have convinced the world that teenagers are being “transed” against their will. They should admit, rather, that they simply think they know better than teenagers. They don’t, and when they try to impose their ideas onto teenagers’ bodies, they get into this kind of mess.

— Prof. Grace Lavery (@graceelavery) November 10, 2021

GCs don’t know better than teenagers? That’s just a blanket absolute rule is it? No gender critical adults know better than teenagers?

Come on. Teenagers don’t know everything. They’re young, and their brains haven’t finished developing yet. Of course they don’t know best on all occasions no matter what.

Lavery is an academic in the English department. Academics in the English department have a bad habit … Read the rest

Disturbing indeed.

Disturbing footage posted to social media shows a fight breaking out at a Brazilian school allegedly after a girl confronted a trans-identified male in the women’s bathroom.

Or changing room (or both), I think, because the girl is barefoot.

A newly-posted recording uploaded to Twitter from inside a Brazilian public school caught a violent scene breaking out between a trans-identified male student and a young female. The male can be seen pulling the girl from the women’s restroom by her hair and throwing her to the floor where he begins to thrash and kick her repeatedly.

The fight purportedly broke out after the girl expressed discomfort with the male’s presence in the women’s restroom.

So the male … Read the rest

When “activism” has a price.

In all their crowing about going after the LGBA Alliance the Good Laugh Project forgot to mention that the tribunal hearing the case has prohibited them from having access to the case papers because of QCAnon's tweets. Proper lols. pic.twitter.com/aRPHBXlgda

— Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2) November 10, 2021

Translation: Jolyon Maugham doesn’t get to see the case papers in the LGB Alliance appeal because everyone can see he would tweet about them.

Sigh. Et tu Washington state?

Nurses Callie and Hannah work tirelessly each day to keep mothers & birthing people safe from COVID-19. With the recent surge in cases and hospitalizations, the message is clear — thank health care heroes by getting the vaccine.

— Washington State Department of Health (@WADeptHealth) September 29, 2021

… Read the rest

What I’m saying. Letters to the Guardian:

The results of this survey are sad but unsurprising (Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds, 7 November). At the weekend, I took my 12-year-old son by bus across west London to his football match. While the world discusses how to address climate change, everyone in west London is out driving a 4×4.

The vast majority of children going to play football and rugby on the pitches where we spent the morning were driven there. The roads were gridlocked, the car parks were full, and tempers were fraying. Yet the parents will make the same choices next weekend – and no doubt what I saw

Feel-good story:

Marcus Rashford has vowed to keep campaigning to lift children out of poverty after receiving his MBE, saying he will give the medal to his mum.

The England footballer, who last year forced two major government U-turns to extend free school meals into the school holidays, received his MBE for services to vulnerable children at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.

Rashford, 24, has helped raise enough money since March 2020 to help the food waste charity FareShare distribute more than 21m meals for families experiencing food insecurity.

Rashford was outspoken in his opposition to the government’s axing of the £1,040-a-year – £20-a-week – universal credit uplift on 6 October.

It’s not a particularly glamorous or sexy cause. Respect.… Read the rest

Meanwhile we continue to race toward the cliff.

The world is on track for disastrous levels of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at the UN Cop26 summit.

“Pledges.” Pledges are cheap. Pledges butter no parsnips.

Temperature rises will top 2.4C by the end of this century, based on the short-term goals countries have set out, according to research published in Glasgow on Tuesday.

And they won’t meet the short-term goals anyway. It’s not “countries” setting out the goals but the governments of countries, which will be voted out by all the people who don’t want to do what it will take to prevent … Read the rest

Arizona Lunatic Paul Gosar did what?

He tweeted a doctored anime video that shows him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, haw haw, very normal healthy sensible behavior.

Martin Pengelly reports:

Twitter attached a hateful conduct warning to Gosar’s tweet, which also showed the sword-wielding congressman appearing to threaten Joe Biden and was also posted to Instagram.

It’s not just “hateful” conduct though. That would be less alarming. It’s “get people killed” conduct. It’s incitement conduct.

The roughly 90-second video is an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of border patrol officers and migrants at the US border with Mexico.

Because migrants at the southern border are a reason to get very very racist.

In one section,