Elaine

In memory of Marjorie Wiles 1928-1999. Let's find a cure for MND. 🧡💙

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@swearysnork @tinternetqueen Ooh, I'll have a look!

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@swearysnork @tinternetqueen My youngest daughter would love these - she's 34 but has only size 3 or 4 feet!

[Jennifer Thetford-Kay @JenKteach]

https://t.co/LzSIhuPgQv

[Kate Clanchy @KateClanchy1]

I felt I had to write about my students in Afghanistan where the abuse of women grows everyday. link in next tweet.

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@lascapigliata8 @ZoeNope 🤣🤣

[David Setters @dsetters]

Delayed approval of #tofersen for 2% of UK @MNDPatients who would benefit shows current @MHRAgovuk @NICEComms approval pathway is not fit for purpose for #MND & we clearly lag far behind North America and Europe.
Please read this from @united2endmnd https://t.co/b3vcuUFtys 1/2

[David Setters @dsetters]

https://t.co/b3vcuUFtys
Unless this is tackled now, when the next treatment is taken to UK regulators, it will take 3+ years before it is widely available. Given average survival post diagnosis is 3 years that says it all. @MHRAgovuk @NICEComms @APPGonMND @IanByrneMP 2/2 #MND

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@LissaKEvans I'm a recent alliums convert, and now I can't get enough of them 🙂

[Trevor Phillips @TrevorPTweets]

My thoughts on the @EHRC guidance laid yesterday; this is not about non-existent "rights". It is about the safety of women - mothers, sisters, wives, daughters. We men need to hear their voices. Virginia Woolf : "Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes".

My intro on @TimesRadio yesterday:

Where I live there are two different routes to and from the tube station. One, let’s call it Acacia Avenue, is quiet and residential. The other, London Road, is a busy major route with lots of traffic. At all times of the day, I automatically head for Acacia Road. It’s just much nicer.

The women in my family, on the other hand, will never willingly make that walk after dark. They live with an anxiety that most men find it hard to imagine, and frankly, rarely think about unprompted.

Last year 739,000 women were sexually assaulted in Britain. Virtually all such assaults - nine out of ten - are perpetrated by men. One in four women have been attacked at some time in their lives. Acacia Avenue is exactly the sort of place in which most women fear that they become vulnerable, and they are right.

As the author Virginia Woolf once wrote " Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes".

I think this is the right context in which to understand the furore over the guidance being laid today by the government, over the meaning of the words man and woman when it comes to providing services and facilities in workplaces.

Many men think this is about a rather arcane dispute about who gets to use what loo. For their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, it isn’t.

In a previous life, as Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I had a hand in writing this country’s equality laws, in particular the 2010 Equality Act. It never occurred to any of us that there could be any confusion or dispute over the meaning of the words man and woman. But it has taken a decade of campaigning, a Supreme Court judgement and now hundreds of pages of guidance to settle the issue.

This is not about so called trans rights, which are completely unaffected by this guidance, since no-one has ever had the right to walk into a changing room reserved for teenage girls.

What it does mean is that women and girls are guaranteed the protection they deserve, and that their safety, which we spent half a decade drafting law to ensure, is protected.

But the whole business illuminates some serious issues in our politics.

First that many of our institutions, in spite of the fact that they always knew what the right thing to do was, decided to ignore the fears of their women customers and employees, under pressure from noisy pressure groups. Instead, the people who were supposed to be the grown ups behaved as though the law said what campaigners wanted it to say, rather than what it actually said. They settled for what they hoped would be a quiet life.

In a democracy, there’s little point in Parliament deciding anything if the law is then made an ass by activists intimidating bosses in companies, schools, universities and the media into doing something different.

Second, at the heart of the campaign to undermine the Equality Act is an idea that we specifically rejected in 2010, so called self-identification. That is to say, that it should be up to the individual to decide whether they have what’s called a protected characteristic - are you male or female, are you black or white. The problem is that self-ID would destroy the operation of any law against discrimination.

Look, it would almost certainly have been to my advantage as a young man to self-identify as a handsome, white public schoolboy. None of those things is true of me. And at various points I am pretty sure it’s been to my disadvantage. It is certainly statistically likely to have been to my disadvantage.

But according to the logic of those who say that self-ID should be the rule and that anyone should be able to decide for themselves whether they are male or female, black or white or Asian, were I to complain about racial discrimination, it would be difficult for anyone prove that I’d been discriminated against because of my race since anybody to whom I’d lost out could just tell the courts that they too were black.

I know that sounds like Alice in Wonderland but you can google the case where a chap, both of whose parents are white, insisted he should get money from the Arts Council because he so identified with the black struggle that he considered himself black, and everyone should accept his point of view. In the United States and Brazil exactly such outlandish claims have been made and people rewarded to the disadvantage of people actually born into minority families.

I have even been told about firms who, when reporting their gender pay gaps have put men who just happen to like wearing dresses at weekends - nothing wrong with that, let me be clear - into the female column and told their women employees that they really haven’t got anything to moan about because statistically they are paid equally, and they should get back in their box.

So today’s guidance isn’t just another tiresome chapter in culture wars. It is , I hope, a halt to the efforts to undermine one of the most important pieces of legislation on the statute book, by people who, for their own reasons, would prefer us to be living in the 1950s world of Mad Men.

[Michael Foran @michaelpforan]

It's very good that the Code has been laid, but it's also important to be clear that it is not for lawyers or judges. It’s for members of the public who are not trained lawyers to help them to understand the law. The Code of Practice does not make new law; it merely provides authoritative guidance to the public on what the law is.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

Woman of the Day prison reformer and philanthropist Elizabeth Fry, born OTD in 1780 in Norwich, the first woman to give evidence to a Select Committee. It was instrumental in the passing of the Gaols Act 1823, which separated the sexes.

Caring responsibilities came early to her. Her mother died when she was 12 — she had twelve siblings — and as a Quaker, she took an interest in the impoverished, the sick and prisoners. A “plain Friend”, she dressed plainly, did not dance or sing, and took philanthropy very seriously.

In 1813 and at the suggestion of another Friend, Elizabeth visited Newgate Prison and found women and children in small overcrowded cells where they had to manage washing, cooking, toilet functions, and sleep on straw. Some hadn’t even been tried at court. She was horrified.

“All I tell thee is a faint picture of reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the furious manner and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness, which everything bespoke are really indescribable".

She returned the following day with food and clothing, but family finances prevented her from doing more until 1816. At first, she concentrated on the children by funding a school inside the prison for them, but she found it impossible to ignore the plight of the women. They were at the mercy of male inmates who raped and sexually exploited them. On release, the few occupations available to women were beyond their reach. Life was without hope.

Elizabeth founded the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate and encouraged other affluent women to set up classes for women prisoners, providing them with materials so they could learn to sew and knit. It calmed them — “Already, from being like wild beasts, they appear harmless and kind" — and meant they had employable skills on release.

When she gave evidence to a Select Committee on 27 February 1818, she pulled no punches. She told them in graphic terms of the rapes and sexual exploitation suffered by the women. Her powerful evidence helped to secure the Gaols Act 1823 which required prisons to separate the sexes.

Other provisions of the Act included paying gaolers (to combat corruption), requiring doctors and chaplains to visit prisoners (still an important statutory requirement today), and greater emphasis on reform and rehabilitation.

The Gaols Act was far-seeing and genuinely progressive, but other than separation of the sexes, toothless. Town gaols and debtors prisons were excluded and there was no means of checking that its provisions were being met.

Elizabeth returned once more to give evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1835, pointing out that "in many instances their condition is melancholy...they may truly be called schools for crime", that some still had "no instruction, no employment, no classification [of inmates]...and they get into a most low and deplorable state of morals...I would not say that all are in that condition, but I fear many are".

In those days, many prisoners faced transportation to New South Wales even for the most minor of crimes (for more serious offences, hanging was the go-to sanction). They faced eight months in vermin-infested cramped holds, often flooded with bilge-water, and strictly rationed fresh water. The women transported by the First Fleet had only the clothing they were standing up in and when this became infected with lice and had to be burnt, they were given rice sacks to wear. Elizabeth campaigned for better care and provision for them too.

In 1825, she published "Observations of the Siting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners", an influential book that laid out in clear detail how penal regimes should be run.

Somewhere along the way, Elizabeth established a "nightly shelter" for the homeless in London after seeing the body of a boy who had frozen in winter and set up a system of volunteers to visit the poor and homeless and provide help and comfort to them. She campaigned against the slave trade, and in 1840, opened a training school for nurses. Florence Nightingale took a team of Fry nurses to the Crimea.

Her abiding principles of kindness and fairness sprang from her Quaker faith and she was the first woman — other than the late Queen, of course — to be depicted on a British banknote.

Elizabeth Fry died in 1845 at the age of 65. I cannot tell you how much I admire this woman.

Less than a century later, Westminster and Holyrood subsequently ditched Elizabeth’s truly progressive approach to prison as a place for rehabilitation, not punishment, and decided that it would be even more “kind and inclusive” to hold men in women’s prisons, as long as they claimed to be women too.

In wartime and in war zones, that would be regarded as a war crime under the Geneva Convention, and those officials who allowed it would be classed as war criminals.

It’s peacetime, allegedly, but I’d still call it a human rights violation, and I have a few choice words for all of those politicians and civil servants who nodded along with it. I hope their complicity haunts them.

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@TheAttagirls I don't remember much of what I learnt in primary school, but I do remember Elizabeth Fry. In fact, I recognised her image in your post before I saw her name, so she must have made quite an impression. Another truly amazing woman.

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@sleeepysandy Quite.

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@sleeepysandy I just don't think any of them view it as important. It's "a minority issue" 🙄. Sadly, in some ways they're right, as so many people aren't aware of the full picture, because it doesn't get proper coverage in the MSM.

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@Psychgirl211 @latsot @AndyBurnhamGM This is about a 2022 meeting. I want to know what he's saying about this now, today. Has anyone asked him?

[Elaine @ElainepCoates]

@womanxx82 @robjessel16 @HistoryLover987 Classing a request as "complex" is a valid reason for extending the deadline, but I don't think they need to say what makes it complex. The ICO guidance says that this can vary from organisation to organisation. They'll have to reply eventually, though!

[Campaign Against Antisemitism @antisemitism]

Extremism for sale in London.

At a recent pro-Palestine demonstration, clothing featuring an inverted red triangle was being sold.

The inverted triangle and its emoji variant have been used by some anti-Israel activists to signal support for proscribed terrorist organisations such as Hamas, inspired by the appearance of the symbol in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate targets for attack.

This is deplorable and clearly underlines that this is not, and never was, a march for peace.

[WDI.Afghanistan @WDIAfghanistan1]

1703 days since the Taliban BANNED girls from going to school. Afghanistan is ONLY country in the world that has made education a crime for teenage girls.

These empty girls' classrooms symbolize a grave violation of human rights. The world's silence will not be forgotten.🙏

[WDI.Afghanistan @WDIAfghanistan1]

Today is Day 1 of the #OpenSchoolDoor one-month campaign for Afghan women and girls.
Over 2.2 million Afghan girls are banned from secondary and higher education. The Taliban have closed girls’ schools — making Afghanistan the only country in the world to do so.
For more than 4 years (since March 2022), girls above grade 6 have been kept out of school — now entering the fifth year of this ban, with thousands of days stolen from their education.
While Taliban leaders send their own daughters abroad (to Qatar, Pakistan, etc.) to study, millions of girls inside Afghanistan are not even allowed to enter a school. This hypocrisy is blatant!
If this ban continues, in ten years there will be no new female doctors, nurses, or midwives left. The world must not stay silent in the face of the destruction of Afghan women’s future!
Our girls stand behind locked school doors. The world must NOT recognize the Taliban! Condemn sex apartheid now.
#OpenSchoolDoor

[Omid Djalili @omid9]

🚨 This Lego video is circulating supposedly telling you “how the Iranians, the real ones” feel. The AI video with AI rap says “I don’t want the politics, I don’t want the war, I just want to know their names, say their names”.

My first thought: “at last, the people inside Iran speak out!”

But no. It is a regime sponsored video, a sinister one too because it’s subtle. I don’t blame this lady at all. It pulls at the heart strings. But it’s a regime video. How do we know?

Firstly this differentiation between Iranians and “real Iranians”. They want you to see a divide. Now there are Iranians outside the country, and inside. Even the ones inside are split between white Sim card holders who can communicate with the world, known as ‘regime supporters’ and there’s the vast majority of people who have no Internet, known as ‘anti-regime protestors’. In this video “the real Iranians” are the ones holding the crab-like regime flag of Iran (2nd image) thus it’s regime sponsored. A regime that hates America. So anything in the video glorifying America is utter nonsense trying to manipulate.

Also the video only calls for the names of the “168” children in Minab. Where there has still been no independent investigation of the school bombing tragedy, where evidence is coming to light from the parents - currently being silenced - that there were two schools side by side, one with the children of IRGC commanders evacuated just in time, and the other which got hit had its doors purposefully locked from the outside. The intention being pupils from the Baluch minority (traditionally staunchly anti-regime) would be sacrificed by the regime to start a propaganda war. Propaganda the parents were forced to participate in.

This is coming from inside Minab covered by the intentional press. Which is exactly what we said would happen if a war started: the regime would sacrifice innocent Iranians, woman & children, anyone, to stay in power.

Of course the names of these children must be remembered - but in the correct context.

The video has ZERO mention of the daily executions of teenage protesters. ZERO mention of the enforced internet black out (now entering day 71) and ZERO mention the 40,000 slaughtered by the regime. This is the crucial context which the video conveniently leaves out.

If you are “legitimately choked up” by this video then here is news for you: you’ve completely fallen for the propaganda of a terrorist regime. Propaganda that seeks to appeal to the ONLY thing that will keep them in power:
American public opinion.

The way to end the war is to end the regime. The only thing that will bring peace to the entire region is to end the regime.

Anything less and the world is keeping a regime in power who have vowed to punish their own people, 14 million of whom were protesting, which got the attention of the world in the first place, and vowed to continue to export their ideology of hate and inflict even more tyranny on the world.

America. Stop VALIDATING the regime in Iran. Your validation of these videos is supporting the biggest terrorist organisation the world has ever seen.