Jolyon Maugham is recklessly (at best) “warning” of a flood of suicides (more threatening than warning), and the trouble with doing that is…

I’ll just quote the rest of what Jen says, to spare you the twittering.

There is a very clear link between coverage of suicides in the media and people ending their own life. Research showed an estimated 400-500 additional deaths by suicide in the aftermath of Marilyn Monroe’s death. That may not sound like much but it’s half the people at Jonestown.

Most of those copycatted her method. Any mention of suicide method leads to an upswing in attempts and successes using that method. From my own experience for a year after a very well publicised event of the death of 2 teenagers we were still getting people talking of that method (which was unusual) as being their preferred method. And a family member sadly took his life using a method publicised by a columnist in the week before his death. These effects are real and it’s real people and families who suffer as a result.

If you think ‘oh they would have done that anyway’ no they would not. Prevention works because people dont get a fixed idea in their head and go through with it no matter what. We know that from decades of studies which show that rates fall when access to methods [is] removed.

So why did his tweet make me so angry? Because it assumes people will take their lives. It even gives them a reason to take their life, as a means of pressuring the govt which means in the context of what I’ve said I see him as encouraging suicide. He’s doing it for a cynical reason because he wants to use their deaths to force the government to do what he thinks is right, and ignore the scientific evidence. He has spoken much about supposed additional deaths as a result of changes in policy but by this tweet, in the terms he wrote, he shows us he does not actually care about those people dying. They are nothing more than yet another manipulation tool to get his own way but this time his attempt to manipulate could see vulnerable people dying needlessly. But should the worst happen he’ll use their deaths and blame others for them.

It’s truly grim.

I’m stealing that punchline.

Some people have stealing luggage privilege.

Former Biden-administration nuclear official Sam Brinton, charged with felony suitcase theft, pleaded guilty to petit larceny in a sweetheart plea deal in Virginia that results in no jail time for him.

…

Brinton, who identifies as non-binary, uses they/them pronouns, and dresses in women’s clothes, worked as deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy before being sacked following his luggage-theft scandal. His appointment as a nuclear-waste official in the Biden administration was widely touted as a historic accomplishment for the LGBT community.

But there is no such community. The T is the cuckoo in the nest.

In February 2023, he was charged with grand larceny for allegedly taking Tanzanian designer’s Asya Khamsin’s luggage from Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va. It was the third such incident of luggage theft Brinton was allegedly associated with.

…

Brinton was jailed in Virginia for about two weeks in relation to the Khamsin theft after being released on bond.

As part of the deal finalized last week, Brinton entered into an adult diversion program in which he committed to undergo a mental-health evaluation, write a letter of apology, return any stolen property, and complete 50 hours of community service assisting the elderly, according to prosecutors. The arrangement also involved downgrading Brinton’s grand-larceny felony charges to petit larceny, a misdemeanor. Brinton will avoid a prison sentence, which for grand larceny in Virginia can go up to as many as 20 years.

But that’s ok, everyone who steals thousands of dollars worth of goods gets a deal like that.

Brinton allegedly stole luggage from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nev., on July 6, 2022, raising questions about his claim that the earlier instance of alleged theft of the designer’s belongings was a mix-up. There was a federal warrant out for Brinton’s arrest on grand-larceny charges for stealing property worth between $1,200 and $5,000. Police said Brinton was caught on surveillance footage running off with a suitcase filled with over $3,500 worth of jewelry, clothing, and make-up on July 6, 2022.

He’s just misunderstood.

Department of weird priorities:

Police Scotland is paying its officers to take part in Pride parades at the same time as it is cutting back on fighting crime and scores of staff are leaving. The revelation was described as “setting a dangerous precedent” for the under-fire force which is grappling with financial issues.

Cops are being encouraged to represent the service at LGBTI events in exchange of either pay or a day off in lieu. It comes as cuts see some communities without a local bobbie to deal with issues.

Dealing with crime is a lower priority for the police than marching in Pride parades.

Just Pride, mind you. Not any other kind of march. Nobody else matters the way the People of Pride matter. Not women, not workers, not migrants, not people of color, not the unemployed, not people with disabilities – none of them matter as much as teenagers who call themselves “queer”.

Shun the witch and her witchy Report:

The New Statesman can reveal that tomorrow (Wednesday July 17) the governing body of the British Medical Association (BMA) – the doctors’ trade union – will vote on whether or not to “disavow” the Cass Review.

To “disavow.” They might as well say it has cooties.

The motion, first drafted as an emergency measure in June, was not discussed at the BMA’s Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) last month. BMA rules would suggest that for it now to be going to the union’s governing body, the proposal has gained the support of at least 10 members – about one in six – of the BMA’s Council in the intervening weeks. That makes it eligible to be voted on. The motion alleges that the Cass Review contains “unsubstantiated recommendations driven by unexplained study protocol deviations” and is concerned at its “exclusion of trans-affirming evidence”. It calls on the BMA to “publicly disavow the Cass Review” and to “lobby and work with other relevant organisations and stakeholders to oppose the implementation of the recommendations made by the Cass Review”. It also calls for the union to “lobby the government and NHS in all four nations to ensure continuity in provision of transgender health care for patients younger than 18 years old”.

Keep destroying children, full speed ahead.

The BMA is an outlier here, Hannah Barnes goes on to say, in having not yet responded to the Cass Review.

The Royal College of GPs and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have both accepted Dr Cass’s recommendations and said that it will inform their practices going forward. So too has the Association of Clinical Psychologists.

But not the BMA. Too frightened of the zealots?

Commenting on the BMA vote proposed for 17 July, Dr Cass said: “It is disappointing that a professional organisation should choose to determine whether to support the findings of my report based on the votes of Council, rather than a transparent and scientific appraisal of the report.” She added that were the BMA to invite her to discuss her work with its members, she would “happily accept”.

Well that won’t do. Then they would have to come up with reasons.

Yet for people like me, who hoped that the Dr Hilary Cass’s painstaking work would lead to calmer, more nuanced discussion – and to an agreement that the previous model of care has diverged far from ethical medical practice – the past couple of weeks have proved otherwise. Not just the revelation that the body that represents the UK’s doctors would consider rejecting it, but also the response to the new Labour health secretary Wes Streeting’s indication that he intends to make a ban on the private prescription of puberty blockers permanent. Streeting has faced abuse and name-calling, being accused by former Mermaids boss Susie Green of having “blood on his hands”, and by lawyer Jolyon Maugham of killing trans children.

Because trans is a religion. It’s fighting heretics and blasphemers.

Well that’s a kind of activism I guess.

A former SNP activist who once tweeted how he wanted “beat the fuck” out of feminists has been jailed for six years for a series of sexual assaults. Cameron Downing, 24, preyed on six victims at locations across Scotland during a course of conduct which began when he was just 16-years-old.

Whaddya know. Rape and fantasizing about beating the fuck out of feminists in one guy. Who could possibly imagine?

Downing, a former Drama student and an equalities convenor for the SNP’s London branch, spent his trial denying any wrongdoing. The accused told the jury in his evidence that they identified as being non binary, said he hadn’t been threatening the male and was battling ‘complex’ mental health issues at the time of the abuse.

“The accused told the jury in his evidence that they identified as being non binary” – so he told the jury that the jury identified as non binary? Seems odd.

Last month, jurors spent two days deliberating their verdicts before returning guilty verdicts on charges of physical and sexual assaults on Downing, whose pronouns are he/they.

So he’s male and non binary. Seems not so much odd as a flat contradiction.

It is not the first time that Downing has come to public attention.

In 2022, it emerged that Downing tweeted about how he wanted to “beat the fuck out of some terfs and transphobes”. He also tweeted “I fucking hate terfs and transphobes with such a passion.” The tweets caused Harry Potter author JK Rowling to say: “Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland: A place where an equalities officer feels free to declare in public how much he wants to beat up non-compliant women.”

Trans ideology has made it acceptable again to trash and threaten women. No wonder men like Billy Bragg and Jolyon Maugham love it so much.

Anti-Trump Republicans are aghast.

Funny kind of “teaching.”

And do we in fact know “how important it is to listen, and be respectful, when somebody tells you who they are and how they feel”? I don’t know that. Suppose it’s a stranger sitting next to you on the bus, for instance? Or someone you work with but don’t know well? Or a neighbor you don’t like? I don’t think I have any duty to fall silent and listen when random people talk to me about themselves.

This may seem peripheral but I don’t think it is. I think gender-woo and self-obsession and self-importance are inextricably linked. The belief that people can swap genders goes with the belief that people should think about themselves most of the time and that they should also talk about themselves all the time regardless of whether anyone wants to hear them or not.

New York state is suing a county to force it to let males ruin female sports.

New York’s attorney general sued Nassau County on Monday to block enforcement of a new law banning transgender athletes from playing in girls’ and women’s sports at county-owned parks and facilities.

The issue is not that they’re “transgender” but that they’re male. Males should not be playing in girls’ and women’s sports. (Nor should girls and women who are on testosterone, but for some strange reason that doesn’t come up as much.)

In the complaint, Attorney General Letitia James said the new law, “Fairness for Women and Girls in Sports,” is “in fact not an act of fairness,” but entrenches “regressive and invasive” gender stereotypes.

Like the “stereotype” that males have numerous physical advantages over females? The stereotype that’s not a stereotype but just the reality? And what’s “invasive” is letting men and boys invade and destroy women’s and girls’ sports.

“Here in New York, every person has the right to be exactly who they are free from discrimination, and my office will always protect that right,” James said in a statement.

But what she’s defending is the right to be exactly who they are NOT. Men are exactly not women.

At least the people of New York state are saner than Letitia James.

In a Siena College poll, opens new tab in April, 66% of New York voters favored requiring high school athletes to compete only with people of the sex they were assigned at birth, with just 27% opposed. Democrats also favored such a requirement, by a 52% to 38% margin, while Republicans voted 83% to 15% in favor.

Supporters of restrictions have said transgender females have competitive advantages that make their participation in girls’ and women’s competitions unfair.

There’s a reason for their saying that. It’s true.

Behold: an idiot.

…this idea that like well, ok, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them, and making it easier for people to shift spouses, like they change their underwear, that’s gunna make people happier in the long term. And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, I’m skeptical, but it really didn’t work out for the kids in those marriages, and that’s what I think all of us should [clip ends]

So it works out for kids to grow up in a family where there is violence, which of course Vance doesn’t mention is nearly always man on woman violence? It’s healthy and inspiring for kids to see their fathers beating up their mothers?

I am skeptical.

From the Times live updates:

The sweep of Cannon’s decision was a surprise at the Justice Department. The outcome was not. Jack Smith’s team saw the Trump documents case as essentially stalled out for months because of Cannon’s slow pace and had more or less written off the possibility of a trial this year.

That’s probably because the Justice Department and Jack Smith are aware that Cannon is a freakishly underqualified judge appointed by the freakishly underqualified Trump to serve Trump’s interests as he tries to get away with anything and everything.

Even before her bombshell decision on Monday to dismiss former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, Judge Aileen M. Cannon has made any number of unorthodox rulings.

Since taking control of the case last June, in fact, many of her decisions have been so outside the norm that they have come to seem like business as usual.

Still, almost no one — including some defense lawyers working on the case — expected Judge Cannon to kill the documents case by ruling that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the indictment, had been unconstitutionally appointed to his job. And her timing could not have been more shocking, delivering Mr. Trump a major legal victory on the opening day of the Republican National Convention, where he will soon be formally named as his party’s nominee for president.

I suppose the point is to rub our noses in it. “Haha we can do anything we want and you can’t do jackshit about it.”

Many legal experts questioned her decision to hold a hearing last month on the question of Mr. Smith’s appointment, arguing that several courts reaching back to the Watergate era had already upheld the legality of independent prosecutors. The hearing was even odder, the experts pointed out, because Judge Cannon allowed outside parties who had filed friend-of-the-court briefs to address her directly for up to 30 minutes — a practice that rarely takes place at the trial level and is more common in appellate-level courts like the Supreme Court.

So she likes to have a little fun at our expense, is that so wrong?

Look if you have to borrow a megaphone are you really ready to change the world?

Three lawyers a year ago on why Cannon shouldn’t be involved in this case at all:

Soon after the news broke that Donald Trump will become the first former president to face federal criminal charges—37 counts that include willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealing documents, and false statements—it was also revealed that Judge Aileen Cannon is scheduled to oversee the case. In our view as experts with more than a century of collective experience in judicial and other ethics questions, that cannot stand. She must recuse herself from the case or, if she refuses, be reassigned by the appropriate judicial oversight authorities.

But she wasn’t, and here we are.

 Cannon heard Trump’s challenge to the government’s classified-documents investigation, appointed a special master to review the documents, and temporarily barred the Justice Department from using those records in its investigation. That much-maligned decision was later reversed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit consisting of three conservative judges: two Trump appointees and the G.W. Bush–appointed Chief Judge William Pryor. They wrote that her decision violated “clear” law and that her approach “would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and “violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

Of course violating those separation of powers limitations was the whole point. Limitations would mean she couldn’t hamstring the case against Trump, and she’s there to hamstring the case against Trump.

Now that the same investigation has resulted in an indictment against Trump, Cannon’s prior, fundamentally erroneous approach casts a shadow over the proceedings. Because her earlier handling of this case went well outside the judicial norm and was roundly criticized by the Court of Appeals, reasonable observers of this case could question her impartiality. Federal law has a way to deal with this challenge: Under 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), a judge “shall disqualify himself [or herself] in any proceeding in which his [or her] impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Cannon’s situation clearly fits that test, and she is obligated to recuse herself in Trump’s case.

But of course she didn’t do that, and here we are.

I’m looking around for some law people takes.

Judge Cannon just did the unthinkable: She dismissed the Trump classified documents case on the repeatedly rejected basis that DOJ violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause by appointing Special Counsel Smith at all! DOJ must appeal right away. On SCOTUS, only Justice Thomas took that view in Trump v. United States. This finally gives Jack Smith an opportunity to seek her removal from the case. I think the case for doing so is very strong.

Guido Fawkes on the pompous absurdity and absurd pomposity of Mr Maugham:

Jolyon Maugham has been having quite the weekend – mainly consisting of a meltdown over Wes Streeting’s decision to continue the ban on puberty blockers being given to children. He issued advice to every trans family: Evacuate the UK now…

The fox-beater has been barraging Wes Streeting with tens of “questions” including such killer takedowns as: Why are puberty blockers still allowed to be used in clinical trials but not outside of them? To be fair to Jolyon, he isn’t a medical expert…

Last night Jolyon threw off the blinders of privilege and declared himself in possession of the “skeleton key” to “a whole new moral universe” thanks to his trans work.

Someone should do a new comedy series: Yes Barrister.

Jolyon is outdoing himself in the pomposity stakes.

Just look at that. Hello Government Person, if you ignore what I, alone among mortals, am telling you, bad things will happen. Yes I really am that important.

How do people not get that marching around shouting about how important you are is not a good look?

If you’re wondering who Pooter is, he’s the diarist of Diary of a Nobody. Hilarious book, a must-read.

Sigh. Of course. Trump’s judge has thrown out the documents case.

The federal judge overseeing the classified documents charges against former president Donald Trump has dismissed the indictment on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, according to a court filing Monday.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling is a remarkable win for Trump, whose lawyers have thrown longshot argument after longshot argument to dismiss the case. Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about the legality of Smith’s appointment.

But none of that matters, because he had the good luck to be able to put his own chosen patsy in that job and she is doing the expected.

One Reichstag fire after another.

Ursula Doyle speaks up:

My name is Ursula Doyle, and I have worked in book publishing for more than thirty years. Since 2008 I have worked at Hachette UK, one of the UK’s leading publishing groups, first at its Virago imprint (a sub-brand of the publisher) before setting up my own imprint, Fleet, in 2016. Fleet publishes a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, and Fleet authors have between them won numerous awards, including four Pulitzers.

In 2020 I published Kathleen Stock’s influential book on sex and gender, Material Girls. Since then, I have been a target for abuse by colleagues in the book industry, who have used social media to accuse me of – among other things – bigotry, prejudice, transphobia and hatred, often tagging in my employer, Hachette, and Hachette’s Pride network. 

Hachette have done nothing to protect me, and have created a hostile working environment for me and anyone else who shares my views. When two of Fleet’s authors complained that my views were transphobic, the company agreed to move paperback editions of the authors’ books away from the imprint to another part of the business, damaging my reputation both inside and outside the company. I became ill with stress and associated conditions, and finally resigned. I am bringing a claim of discrimination on the grounds of my gender-critical belief (sometimes known as ‘sex realism’), and of sex discrimination.

Pledges are pouring in.

Gender critical women are the new…what…bosses? Priests? Scabs? Enslavers? Colonialists? The new all-powerful sneering unjust overlords who need to be overthrown and punished.

I’m taking a look at the publisher Hachette’s incloosion policy. I’ve spotted something quite funny (in its own warped way).

It lists a bunch of networks – AgeWise Network, AllTogether Network, Accessibility Network, Gender Balance Network – ah yes that’ll be the one, let’s look at the caption under that one.

The Gender Balance Network aims to eliminate the gender pay gap by focusing on equal recruitment and progression for all genders, at every level of the business.

What?

What is this “the gender pay gap” of which they speak?

If you google it you find it’s the pay gap between men and women. This doesn’t surprise you, because that’s what it’s always meant. What else would it mean?

But, Hachette says this is about all genders – which has to mean more than two, because otherwise they wouldn’t bother to say all. It would be stupid to say “this is about all two genders.” When it’s two you say both, not all.

So what pay gap is Hachette talking about then?

There’s no way to know.