Frances

Passionate about justice & fairness for ordinary working folk, believe society should look after all its members...we’re all in this together

[Frances @FranTheOldGal]

So cutting (already inadequate) benefits to families with children and inflicting further deprivation to those children, is fine by our new Government? Children are to suffer further for parents’ failings https://t.co/Pb9xZiXTjo

[Frances @FranTheOldGal]

Compelling!

[💕 Brittany Belle 💕 @BrittanyinTexas]

If this doesn’t wake America up, nothing will. Best yet. He’s 1000% correct.

[Frances @FranTheOldGal]

@LePapillonBlu2 Trump is a (very big) small, small man - he cannot (will not?) even acknowledge reality, be it history or truth, or humanity come to that!

[Frances @FranTheOldGal]

Brilliant!

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

No, they’re not. They’re just telling service members that they don’t have to be criminals like you and your boss are.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

When you separate children from their parents and zip-tie them like criminals, expect to see us rise up against you. We are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the generation that fought the fascists. We defeated you in 1945 and we'll defeat you in 2025. Count on it.

[Frances @FranTheOldGal]

@jk_rowling Thank you for your courage and also your lucidity in this complex and emotive topic. I am profoundly grateful for your tireless and sensible response to very powerful claims that transwomen are in fact women. Thank you so much for keeping our claim to our biological sex alive.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?

I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.

Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.

[Dr Stephanie Dowrick Joins calls for PEACE @stephaniedowric]

Today I celebrate with gratitude another year on this earth. Every child born & yet to be born should have the same privilege. That's my passion until my last breath.
Peace and security for all. And for our planet.

[Daily Indignation @DailyIndgnation]

Once again, this government's politicians are allowed to lie or fudge details in a Stuff article. In a story about the lack of housing in NZ, Manch just lets Bishop get away with claiming he'll be building 2500 homes in the next two years, without adding some important context.

[Daily Indignation @DailyIndgnation]

The prisoner voting ban was found to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. That should be the angle the media takes on it being reinstated, which RNZ is. NewstalkZB, unsurprisingly, is running cover for the govt.

Who you get your news from matters.

[Frances @FranTheOldGal]

@DailyIndgnation Thank you!

[Daily Indignation @DailyIndgnation]

And finally, Audrey gives Simeon Brown 8/10 and writes something so full of spin National's PR team have probably pinned it to their whiteboard: "[Health NZ] Has taken early steps to get faster access to treatment and address workforce shortages". Never change, Audrey.

[Eileen Kiffin. @KiffinEileen]

DEI

[Greg Presland @GregPresland]

Proud to be a kiwi right now ...

[Peter FitzSimons @Peter_Fitz]

Completely STAGGERING.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I feel nothing but sympathy for some of those who kept silent while the gender wars raged around them. I’ve had literally thousands of emails on this subject and some of the most desperate have been from people who risk their livelihoods and face persecution and harassment if they speak up.

That said, I have zero sympathy for academics who did nothing to prevent illiberal and authoritarian activism stifling debate, freedom of speech and academic enquiry at their place of work. Defending those values is fundamental to academic life and you didn’t just fall short, you disgraced yourselves. Your inaction and cowardice enabled a campaign of persecution against one of your own that shamed @SussexUni.

There are times in life where we are confronted by clear moral choices, when there is no middle route. Either you stand up for freedom of speech and belief - yes, even up to the point of causing offence - or you bow down to a totalitarian culture that relies on intimidation and threats to sustain itself.

It’s deeply depressing to think that a university requires a punitive fine to make it wake up to the fact that it’s abandoned basic liberal values, but the OfS has at last drawn a much needed line in the sand. I wouldn’t bet against more monster fines to come, though. The University of Sussex is far from the only institute of learning where a culture of fear has been allowed to flourish.

[Cheryl Kernot @cheryl_kernot]

“A barely sentient turnip!” 😂

[Kaz M - #kickthepricksin26 @KarinMary1]

@ClintVSmith The only people I don't trust on tax is National.
They outright lied about our tax cuts, and then they lied about not borrowing to fund them.
They've been totally discredited as good money managers by this current lot.

[Jennifer 🟥🔴🧙‍♀️🦉🐈‍⬛ 🦖 @babybeginner]

Think about this. This is key here.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

@siefermad 'Woman' isn't a state of mind, a costume for men to slip in or out of, or a retirement home for men who don't want to be masculine. No man knows what it is to be a woman, because no man has ever been a woman. Woman is a biological reality.

[Eileen Kiffin. @KiffinEileen]

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