The Times:

The Labour MP Rosie Duffield is being investigated by her party for liking a tweet which it claims is antisemitic, but allies fear she is being targeted because of her views on transgender issues.

Allies can see she’s being targeted. The “antisemitic tweet” claim is utterly ludicrous. But also – the Times? Even the Times??

She was branded transphobic for “knowing that only women have a cervix” and campaign[ing] against people with male genitalia who identify as women being allowed to enter female-only spaces such as changing rooms.

Excuse me? Since when does the Times say “people with male genitalia” when it means “men”? Since when does the Times substitute the ridiculous “”people with male genitalia” for the quick easy and simple word “men”? And if it’s going to do that why doesn’t it say “people with male genitalia who identify as people with female genitalia”? In short has it lost its fucking mind?

Insiders claim that an investigation was launched into her conduct at the end of March after she liked a tweet by the Father Ted comedy writer Graham Linehan.

Labour investigated her for liking a tweet. Nothing is too petty to punish and abuse women for.

He was responding to a tweet by the comedian Eddie Izzard who wrote: “I’m a trans superhero — but if I’d lived in Nazi Germany I’d have been murdered for it.”

Linehan responded: “Ah, yes, the Nazis, famously bigoted against straight white men with blonde hair.” Duffield liked Linehan’s response, which immediately triggered a furious backlash led by LGBT Labour, a campaign group, and Ash Sarkar, a contributing editor at the left-wing media platform Novara Media.

Sarkar tweeted to her 400,000-plus followers: “This is Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP, liking a tweet that contains Holocaust revisionism. Trans people and gay people were sent to die in concentration camps by the Nazis. This is a historical fact, and it is disgusting that a sitting Labour MP would approve of its denial.”

It definitely makes sense to trust Ash Sarkar on this subject when she’s confusing concentration camps with death camps.

Within days of liking the tweet, Duffield, who is a vice-chairwoman of the all-party parliamentary group on antisemitism, was asked to “unlike” it by her whip, Chris Elmore.

She is understood to have agreed to the request, while continuing to deny the tweet was antisemitic, explaining that Linehan had been sarcastically mocking Izzard’s comment identifying with the victims of the genocide of Jews, despite belonging to none of the identities targeted by the Nazis.

That kind of thing is normally condemned as “appropriation” by trendies like Sarkar, but I guess when an opportunistic “trans” person does it it’s brave n stunning. Also of course the Jews. I mean…you know…were they really the victims here? Shouldn’t we be centering all the martyred trans women instead?

Charming headline:

Doctor Who’s first 60th anniversary special is a Terf’s worst nightmare

Yay let’s throw stones at radical feminists some more.

Doctor Who not only has a trans character, but an entire trans storyline – and not even that, but trans joy.

What’s trans joy? Misery that identifies as joy?

Rose as a character isn’t simply put there to make up a quota, Doctor Who thought her identity is worth celebrating – her being who she is literally saves the world.

Sounds like a plausible plotline.

Doctor Who has always had a massive queer fanbase; it has always been progressive, and showrunner Russell already had a quote ready for the people who predictably will have an issue over this.

Speaking at a press event ahead of the episode airing, he said he knew  there were some people ‘full of absolute hate, and venom, and destruction and violence who would like to see that sort of thing wiped off the screen entirely.’

Oh yes, that’s us, full of absolute hate, and venom, and destruction and violence. We’ve killed several billion people already.

And to anyone who held those ideals, he declared: ‘Shame on you and good luck to you in your lonely lives.’

What ideals? Hate, and venom, and destruction and violence? No other values are mentioned; that sentence follows immediately on the string of insults. Also “Shame on you and good luck to you” is a bit silly. Make up your mind.

In short it’s a deeply stupid piece; I’d even call it trashy. Trans ideology is undeniably popular but it doesn’t seem to attract the sharpest minds.

H/t Mostly Cloudy

More on Trump’s plans for when he returns:

Donald Trump’s talk of punishing his critics and seeking to “weaponize” the US justice department against his political opponents has experts and former DoJ officials warning he poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US.

Trump’s talk of seeking “retribution” against foes, including some he has branded “vermin”, has coincided with plans that Maga loyalists at rightwing thinktanks are assembling to expand the president’s power and curb the DoJ, the FBI and other federal agencies. All of it has fueled critics’ fears that in a second term Trump would govern as an unprecedentedly authoritarian American leader.

And a second term is looking way too likely.

Trump’s angry mindset was revealed on Veterans Day when he denigrated foes as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out”, echoing fascist rhetoric from Italy and Germany in the 1930s.

“I’m hard-pressed to find any candidates anywhere who are so open that they would use the power of the state to go after critics and enemies,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor and co-author of How Democracies Die.

“This is one of the most openly authoritarian campaigns I’ve ever seen. You have to go back to the far-right authoritarians in the 1930s in Europe or in 1970s Latin America to find the kind of dehumanizing and violent language that Trump is starting to consistently use.”

I’m pretty sure it’s THE most authoritarian campaign for this particular country.

“US, democratic institutions are hard to kill,” noted Levitsky. “But Trump and people around him are better prepared this time. Trump learned he needs to purge and pack an administration with his loyalists.

“Autocrats have to take state institutions and pack them. Trump has learned from experience which makes him more dangerous.”

…

One ominous plan Project 2025 has been weighing would allow Trump to invoke the 1871 Insurrection Act on his first day in office, greenlighting using military forces against political foes and demonstrators protesting a new term for Trump, according to the Washington Post.

Jeffrey Clark, the former DoJ official who schemed with Trump about ways to overturn his loss in Georgia and other states and who the Fulton county district attorney has indicted along with Trump and 17 others, has been “leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025”, the Post has reported.

Let’s hope he drops dead soon.

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela points out a certain gap in the discussion of October 7.

Many feminist organizations rushed to express support for the Palestinian cause while eliding the plight of Israeli victims. The organization UN Women issued a four-page report last month exclusively addressing the impact of the war on women and girls in Gaza but made only a brief condemnation of the Oct. 7 attack that made no mention of the sexual violence that had been reported. A group of prominent scholars circulated a letter under the title “Feminists for a Free Palestine,” without explicitly condemning the sexual violence against Israeli women.

So some women deserve it? War crimes are not war crimes if you hate the victims? If that’s the case then there are no war crimes. because there are always plenty of people who hate the victims. That’s how wars work.

College campus groups have furnished other examples, such as the women’s students’ groups at Harvard that signed on to a letter holding Israel entirely responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks or the (now-former) director of the University of Alberta’s Sexual Assault Center’s signing on to a letter doubting the veracity of accounts of Israeli rape survivors.

Good to know the director is now former.

Even the office on my own campus that is devoted to helping students “lead social-justice centered lives” issued thousands of words in solidarity with the Palestinians and did not once acknowledge the sexual violence (or murder or abduction) perpetrated by Hamas. 

Hamas is not our friend. Hamas is not benign or benevolent. Hamas is not “progressive.”

It’s not a book advocating genocide, or torture, or apartheid, or rape, or colonialist exploitation, or slavery, or racism, or sadism, or eating babies, or speeding up global warming, or burning down the Blue Mosque or the Forbidden City or the Sydney Opera House. And yet…

The “sensitive content”:

A nice little earner.

As a royal author, I have come across plentiful examples of royal greed. It is standard practice for the royals to seek to minimise their personal expenditure while maximising their income from other sources, normally the public purse.

I think by “minimise their personal expenditure” he means not “spend less” but “spend other people’s money.”

But the revelation that King Charles III’s personal slush fund, the Duchy of Lancaster, is having its already bulging coffers augmented by the estates of people who die in parts of England with historical links to the royal estate plumbs new depths of disgusting avarice.

Like many so-called traditions, the feudal hangover that is bona vacantia should have been consigned to the dustbin of history centuries ago, but it has been all too tempting for successive royals to preserve this royal fruit machine that pays out again and again. Over the past 10 years, it has collected more than £60m.

Well if we went around consigning feudal hangovers to the dustbin of history where would that leave Choss Windsor?

Under this system, the Duchy of Cornwall, owned by Prince William, can claim the assets of people who die in Cornwall intestate – without a will – if no relatives can be found. Charles’s Duchy of Lancaster does the same when their last known residence is within what was historically known as Lancashire county palatine.

“Cornwall for me, Dad, and Lancs for you.”

George VI did very well out of the loyal servicemen who died serving their country in the second world war, who originated from within the confines of the duchy and had no will. “For king and country” took on a whole new meaning.

As disquiet about the practice of bona vacantia grew after the war, the royals announced that moneys collected would henceforth be given to charity – after processing costs had been deducted, of course.

But only then, eh? “All right all right if you’re going to make such a big fuss about all this free money we get for existing.”

Yet a Guardian investigation now reveals that matters are even worse than we have been led to believe. Put bluntly, we have been lied to. Moneys we all thought were going to charity have instead been used to improve properties owned by the duchy, increasing the income stream that flows from them into Charles’s pockets.

We have the most expensive monarchy in Europe by far in terms of state support, and one that benefits from unique tax treatment available to nobody else. No inheritance tax is paid. The so-called private estates of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are not private enough to pay corporation tax or capital gains tax. Even income tax is only paid voluntarily – if it all – no receipts have ever been made public.

The civil list, which in 2011 gave the royals £7.9m a year, was replaced, after palace lobbying, with the sovereign grant, which 12 years later is up to £86m a year.

Over the centuries, the royals have continually bleated poverty and demanded more money from the taxpayer, while at the same time refusing point blank to reveal the extent of their accumulated wealth.

And they’re still doing their best to hide the extent of their wealth. Choss didn’t tell us about this bona vacantia wheeze himself, you’ll notice.

It’s not as if he invented the internet.

Tech bros are weird.

Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon. In contrast, however avaricious, the titans of past gilded eras still saw themselves as human members of civil society. Contemporary billionaires appear to understand civics and civilians as impediments to their progress, necessary victims of the externalities of their companies’ growth, sad artefacts of the civilisation they will leave behind in their inexorable colonisation of the next dimension. Unlike their forebears, they do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest underground lair in New Zealand, colony on the moon or Mars or virtual reality server in the cloud.

…

To escape “near-term” problems such as poverty and pollution, Jeff Bezos imagines building millions of space colonies housing trillions of people on the moon, asteroids and in other parts of the solar system, where inhabitants will harvest the resources of space for themselves and those left back on Earth. Elon Musk is convinced he will build a city of a million people on Mars by 2050 at a cost of up to $10bn a person.

Ffs. Multiply all the engineering it took to get the Mars Rover up there and working by eleventy trillion and get ‘er done in under 3 decades? Come on.

UN Women (the organization) is…alarmed.

Alarmed.

So alarmed that they said nothing for seven weeks.

There are many quote-tweets saying the same.

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Over in seconds.

As an Irish citizen who was born abroad and moved here over twenty-three years ago, I’ve seen the growth of the population and it really hasn’t been a problem for anyone except the racists and xenophobes, who would object to any immigration whatsoever. The total population is still little more than half what it was before the mass emigration due to the potato blight and subsequent deliberate starvation of the Irish people; Irish people still emigrate to other countries in large numbers.

The population of Ireland during the 2002 census (near enough twenty years ago) was 3,858,495. That same year, there were over half a million Irish-born people living in the UK. Also, thanks to the great number of Irish who moved to Britain during the famine and subsequently, it is estimated by some that there could be more than five million British-born people with at least one Irish grandparent, which would entitle them to automatic Irish citizenship. My mother is one – three of her grandparents were Irish.

The population in 2022 (the latest year for which the figure is available) was 5,123,536, an increase of 1,265,041, or about 33%, over the previous figure.

From the 2022 census page:

The question on nationality changed in Census 2022 to capture information on country of citizenship. This change may have impacted comparisons with previous census data.

84% of the population hold sole Irish citizenship, or (as I do) dual citizenship. For census purposes, both are counted as Irish. Twenty percent of the resident population were born abroad, but that includes those who are Irish citizens (such as offspring of Irish emigrants who returned to Ireland); only 12% of the population have citizenship of a different country, and no Irish citizenship.

For anyone interested, here’s the website of the government office with the official figures, which go into a great deal of detail.

Julie Bindel doesn’t want to be lectured by late arrivals.

Another day, another virtue signaller standing by their ‘trans siblings’ and taking a pop at feminists. Sandi Toksvig, she of the unfunny Radio 4 shows more recently known for her involvement in the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) – has denounced feminists who are ‘anti trans’.

Toksvig says she’s been an activist all her life, but Julie is not convinced.

When feminists were battling to set up single sex services to support women that had experienced rape and domestic violence, was she there? Was Tokvsig on the feminist frontline in the 1960s and 1970s? If so, what did she achieve? If not, perhaps she should pipe down about those feminists who were present, instead of berating us for being trans exclusionary.

Rather than aiming her fire at women, Toksvig needs to realise there are important battles still to be won. Even today, lesbians are lectured by some for excluding men who identify as women from our dating pool. Such attitudes are a rerun of old misogynistic times, but with a progressive spin. Toksvig should surely understand how distressing it is for lesbians to be told we are not valid unless we include a penis in our relationship.

Maybe Toksvig thinks a penis that belongs to a trans woman isn’t a penis at all.

Perhaps Toksvig felt the need to speak out because she has seen what has happened to lesbians such as myself, Kathleen Stock, and numerous others when we pushed back against gender ideology? Whatever her reason for adding fuel to the misogynistic fire currently raging, it is cowardly, craven, and deeply disrespectful of those women that have fought for the rights that she enjoys. ‘Radical feminists’ like me will not be rebuked by someone who spends time attacking us – instead of concentrating on fighting for the rights of women.

The Twitter Trans Guard is raging at Julie for being such a big meany to that nice incloooosive Sandy Toksvig.

Immigrant steps up:

DELIVEROO DRIVER CAIO Benicio was on his motorbike this afternoon, on a job, when he saw a man with a knife attacking a young girl on Parnell Square East.

Immediately, the 43-year-old Brazilian dismounted his bike, took off his helmet, and hit the attacker with it.

“I didn’t even make a decision, it was pure instinct, and it was all over in seconds. He fell to the ground, I didn’t see where knife went, and other people stepped in,” he told The Journal tonight.

So immigrants aren’t all demonic?

Now Benicio is exhausted – all day he has been running on adrenaline. He doesn’t know where his bike is as he left it at the scene inside of the Garda cordon. However, he’s  not worried about it; he’s worried about the victims.

“I remember it all in flashes now. It was over in seconds it seemed,” he said.

Benicio came to Ireland for work after his restaurant burned down in Brazil. He hopes his children can come here one day.

He was saddened to see the chaos on Dublin’s streets tonight – with anti-immigrant sentiments being expressed by rioters and far-right actors.

“It looks like they hate immigrants. Well I am an immigrant, and I did what I could to try and save that little girl,” he said.

It sounds as if he did quite a lot.

Just think: a year from now we may be doomed to have this malevolent lunatic in power again:

Donald Trump went after his political enemies in a Thanksgiving message posted on Truth Social on Thursday.

The former president focused his attacks on those involved in his civil fraud trial as well as on President Joe Biden.

He wrote: “Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, who has let Murder & Violent Crime FLOURISH, & Businesses FLEE; the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a ‘Psycho,’ Arthur Engoron, who Criminally Defrauded the State of New York, & ME, by purposely Valuing my Assets at a ‘tiny’ Fraction of what they are really worth in order to convict me of Fraud before even a Trial, or seeing any PROOF, & used his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator, Chief Clerk Alison Greenfield, to sit by his side on the ‘Bench’ & tell him what to do; & Crooked Joe Biden, who has WEAPONIZED his Department of Injustice against his Political Opponent, & allowed our Country to go to HELL; & all of the other Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Fascists, Marxists, Democrats, & RINOS, who are seriously looking to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY.

That’s all one sentence. It should be multiple sentences, but no, pumpkin head needs to make it one giant flatulent run-on sentence sprinkled with semi-colons where periods should be.

And quotation marks on “tiny.” Meaning what? That the fraction isn’t actually tiny? But he wants us to believe him that it is tiny. So why the quotation marks? Why the quotation marks on “Bench”?

And the random capital letters. Why capitalize Criminally Defrauded? Why capitalize Valuing my Assets?

A gag order in the case previously prevented Trump from criticizing court officials, but last week a state intermediate appeals court, headed by Judge David Friedman, granted a temporary stay on the order, effectively suspending it due to the “constitutional and statutory rights at issue.”

Engoron had previously fined Trump $15,000 in total for violating the order twice after commenting about Greenfield, including falsely claiming she was in a relationship with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The stay seems very unfortunate under the circumstances.

Credit where it’s due.

What counts as controversial, and who decides?

Sometimes the BBC decides.

BBC staff have accused the corporation of double standards after they were told not to attend a march against anti-Semitism this weekend. Staff working in current affairs and factual journalism who have sought permission to go to the Campaign Against Antisemitism march in London have been referred to guidelines that tell employees not to take part in public gatherings about controversial issues.

They have told bosses that “racism is racism” and that if the BBC believes racism is not acceptable in any form, it should allow staff to show their opposition to it. They point out that BBC staff are allowed to take part in marches supporting other causes, such as Pride, which are not seen as controversial by the broadcaster.

But the broadcaster is telling staff they must adhere to the same guidelines that have prevented them from attending pro-Palestinian rallies in recent weeks. According to the impartiality rules, editorial staff “should not participate in public demonstrations or gatherings about controversial issues”.

That’s so interesting given the way the BBC reports on trans issues and especially on women who reject trans ideology.

Sandi Toksvig has definitely done some good things.

When Toksvig came out in 1994, she became one of the most visible lesbian women in British public life. She tells me coming out was about setting an example to her children with former partner, Peta Stewart. “I had three small children and my youngest had just been born. My then-partner and I were not prepared for them to grow up in the shadow of a secret,” she says.

At the time, Section 28 prohibited their own children from learning about LGBTQ+ people in school. “It was more important to me to be a good mum than it was for me to have a career. Everyone told me that my career would be over, but standing up for what you believe in in front of your children – that’s more important.”

Her career didn’t end there. Far from it. Toksvig has become a household name – and has built a loyal queer following – while also using her platform to campaign for equality. In 2015, she founded the Women’s Equality Party. At the last election the new party stood five candidates and, if funding allows, they hope to do so again.

For now, Toksvig’s focus is on the removal of unelected Church of England bishops from the House of Lords. There are only two countries in the world where representatives of the state religion automatically get seats in parliament: the UK and Iran. She wants to make that a party of one, because of the Church of England’s opposition to same-sex marriage and its institutionalised misogyny. (The church is exempt from UK equalities law, so this discrimination is entirely legal).

Another good reason is because theocracy is a really bad idea. Gods can’t be held accountable, not least because they don’t exist.

“It’s shocking. They don’t deal with gay people or women in an equitable manner. And they aren’t some sort of obscure organisation – this is our state church,” Toksvig says. “None of them have been elected. This is our parliament and it’s not OK. Be a bigot if you want to, in your own back yard – but don’t come and play in mine.”

There shouldn’t be any state church. She’s completely right on this one.

She is disturbed by the recent rise in reports of homophobic hate crime and the anti-trans moral panic that has been peddled by politicians and media figures. “I am so distressed by people who call themselves ‘radical feminists’ but are anti-trans. I could weep. I don’t get it. It’s beyond me,” she says. “When the feminist movement started in the 60s and 70s, lesbians were often excluded, because we were told that we would make the movement less palatable [acceptable]. I have been excluded myself, so how could I do that to someone else? It fills me with rage.”

So socialists should not exclude conservatives from their socialism? Unions should not exclude bosses? Football should not exclude tennis players? Marathons should not exclude cars?

Get a grip. Feminism is about and by and for women. Lesbians are women. Men are not women. Excluding men from feminism, even men who call themselves women, is not comparable to excluding lesbians from feminism.

That Malott guy praises himself for being all nuanced and shit.

To each of you who resist acknowledging nuance:

On Tuesday I shared a video with thoughts about childhood medical transition and passability, in particular the strong draw for transitioning young because biological males in particular know that they will be treated quite a bit more kindly and humanely if they ‘pass’.

I put forward that if we have concerns about childhood medical transition—which I do—then we should actually confront this draw towards passing and the benefit it offers, because that’s the strongest argument in support of childhood transitions.

Some of you have chosen to intentionally mischaracterize what I’ve said… I get it.. it’s more convenient to characterize me as having come down in support of medical transition for children, wouldn’t it?

Mischaracterizing what I said and calling me a groomer doesn’t change that I’m right. The reason we have childhood medical transition at all—for those who actually care about history—is because practitioners recognized that the world is hostile to gender dysphoric individuals who don’t ‘pass’ and that passability is more likely when transition is undertaken young.

For gender criticals, this is a matter of medical safety, female spaces, risks of regret, and in some cases just a visceral distaste for the idea of someone transitioning.

For progressives, this is about a society that is incredibly gendered, where some people find distress in their biological reality, and an understanding that ‘disappearing’ as one’s preferred sex is most likely when transitioned young.

Now—I didn’t take a position there. I stated the positions of two opposing sides. Two sides that are arguing for different outcomes on different basis. I’m empathetic to both of these positions to a certain extent: the only thing I can be accused of, if I must be accused of something, is not taking a hardline position unilaterally in support of one or the other.

I believe nuance is important. I’ve had thousands of hours of conversation with individuals devastated by policies holistically in favour of both extremes in this debate.

I don’t think I have all the answers.

But I do have an observation: individuals on both sides are so entrenched in righteous indignation that there doesn’t seem to be space to talk about this with nuance. To reflect on the complexity. And to cry together from the devastation of real lives being affected in real ways. Let’s humanize this conversation a little bit by listening to others and allowing for complex takes.

Yesterday I recorded a fantastic podcast with @JLeslieElliott and @jlmannisto that goes very in-depth on my perspectives around all of this, so if you want a more nuanced take you should definitely check that out.

— — —

Anyway, I wasn’t going to make a video tonight because I’ve had a family crisis that will be taking my attention for—well possibly for a very long time. Wishing you each the very best.

I love that closing “Wishing you each the very best” as if he’s King Choss or the pope or the UN. He’s just some long-winded self-important guy on Twitter.

Why the gag order on Trump just might be a good idea:

The Department of Justice submitted a court filing on Thanksgiving arguing that a gag order against the former president must remain while pointing to documents filed as part of the $250 million civil fraud trial in New York.

On Thursday, November 23, Cecil Vandevender, an assistant special counsel for the Department of Justice, notified the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals of a document which said that a gag order needs to be reinstated against Trump during the civil proceedings in New York, where state Attorney General Letitia James has accused the former president of fraudulently inflating the value of his properties in financial statements.

The government’s court filings pointed the appeals court to one section in particular, in which an employee at the New York State Unified Court System details the “hundreds of threatening and harassing voicemail messages” which had been sent to Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the civil trial, as well as the judge’s law clerk Allison Greenfield.

Well how bad can it be, really?

According to an affidavit cited by the DOJ from Charles Hollon, who works in the Public Safety Department’s Judicial Threats Assessment Unit, there are 275 single space pages worth of transcribed threatening messages and voicemails which have been left for Engoron and his court staff since early October.

Several of the “threatening, harassing, disparaging and antisemitic” which were left on Engoron’s chamber’s voicemail were cited in the New York affidavit. One of the messages to Engoron states: “Trust me. Trust me when I say this. I will come for you. I don’t care. Ain’t nobody gonna stop me either.”

A second transcript of the message calls Engoron a “dirty, treasonous piece of trash snake,” and warns “we are coming to remove you permanently.”

I guess that answers that question.

Charles Clymer attention-seeking as usual.

Originally a comment by Artymorty on This period of maximal disruption.

It’s off topic, but you make an interesting point about immigration and benevolence. In Canada, immigrants are not usually poor, and they’re admitted strictly on terms related directly to their suitability to the labour force.

Unlike Western European nations who are saddled with waves of migrants and asylum seekers of all kinds of education, language, and work skills, making their way from the Middle East, Northern Africa and elsewhere, and the US with its porous border with Mexico, Canada has the luxury of naturally strong border protection, flanked on both sides and above by vast oceans, with the US below. This means the topic of immigration is, to us, almost entirely separate from topics like asylum and refugee hosting, and largely uncoupled from cultural debates around xenophobia and racism.

Immigration today in Canada is strictly business, and it’s all about the labour force. Our refugee program aside (which is surprisingly small, given our goody-two-shoes image on the global stage), you can come to Canada from anywhere in the world, so long as you’re already middle-class or have enough qualifications to show you’ll be a productive, skilled labourer when you’re here.

Applicants to come to Canada are scored on a point system, between 0 and 1200 points, almost entirely based around their job qualifications, and what kinds of skills our economy is looking for at any given time. If we need computer coders, we’ll recalibrate the point allocation to give more points to people with computer science degrees; if we need mining specialists, you’ll get a huge points bonus if you’re skilled in that area. Then we set our threshold at however many points we need to get exactly the right number of immagrants into exactly the right areas into our economy. (Today the dial is set at 431. Very low. We’re letting lots of people in. This is causing problems for the housing market, and it’s starting to become a political issue.)

It’s a ruthlessly impersonal system. And it is based 100% purely around the idea, deeply ingrained in Canadians’ psyches, that this country depends on a growing population of skilled labourers to sustain itself. We must always have more productive labourers than retirees, and we must always draw upon immigrants with professional skills to keep the country growing and healthy.

In a country as resource-rich as Canada, that could in theory be sustained for a long time. But realistically, globally, it’s not working. And with AI very suddenly poised to render many of those new Canadian residents’ labour skills irrelevant, tensions at our nation’s borders are sure to get a little dicey.

Andy Lewis on the Brighton “skeptics”:

So, Brighton Skeptics were to hold a talk in January between Hannah Barnes and Helen Lewis. Barnes was the journalist who wrote a book exposing the debacle of the Tavistock gender clinic and how it was desperately failing vulnerable children.

What a perfect topic for a public critical thinking meeting! It involves the failure of evidence-based medicine, the ideological capture of institutions, and popular ideological beliefs that turn out not to be true. That is bread and butter for the ‘skeptic movement’.

Or so you would think. But as @helenlewis tweets, the event has been cancelled despite selling out immediately. It looks like Brighton Skeptics failed to “compromise”. With whom though, and why?

Because third rail, that’s why. Touch it and instant electrocution.

A group was formed to get this event cancelled – and if that failed to try to disrupt it on the day. This new group was to be called “Reece’s Pieces”.

The founders though did not want this to be seen as pressure from external trans groups, so were keen to recruit ‘sceptics’ who were sympathetic to trans ideology. The “main thrust” must come from “sceptics”. They would front the “anger”.

They called it “Reece’s Pieces as this is a reference to the advertising slogan about a sweet with a peanut butter inner and a crunchy shell. They believed that “trans liberation and scientific skepticism are two great tastes that taste great together”.

They may taste great together but they sure as hell don’t work well together. The foundational belief and dogma and imperative is that people are the opposite sex if they say they are. It’s a magical claim, so skepticism has to be kept at a distance – a very large distance.

Sceptics should not intend to be cruel, but ought to believe that truth is necessary. Without truth we do not know how to be kind or just.

Unfortunately, too many sceptics groups now think we need to be kind first and foremost, and kindness needs to guide how we see truth. That is the road to hell. That leads to rejection of truths based on social acceptance rather than material reality.

Conformity rather than inquiry. The hell with that.

What we have here is a lobby group with pseudoscientific ideas trying to shut down public discussion that has material impact on the well being of many people, not least children. That they appear to have recruited “sceptics” to do their dirty work is deeply alarming.

But not at all surprising how sceptics appear to be easy prey for these fashionable “progressive” beliefs about how sex is not real and lesbians can have penises. The desire to appear to be ‘kind” easily suppresses critical thinking.

For some people, it seems. It doesn’t work that way for me. That’s not because I love to be unkind, it’s because I don’t believe in the “kind” they’re talking about, and I find it both soppy and manipulative. I don’t think it is “kind” to pretend that ludicrous fact-claims are true.