wheelberg

[The Royal Family @RoyalFamily]

📕 With a shared passion for books and a deep commitment to children reading for pleasure, The Queen and author J.K. Rowling have met at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Her Majesty and Ms Rowling discussed the importance of ensuring that young people have access to books and the vital part reading plays in opening doors for future generations.

[The Jewish Chronicle @JewishChron]

Our holiday landlord realised we were Jewish. What happened next was deeply troubling

https://t.co/11yDYNVIRV

[Andy Burnham @andyburnham]

I have never taken part in a coup against any Leader of the Labour Party and I am not going to start now. 2/3

[Ani O'Brien @aniobrien]

At what point are we allowed to stop pretending that "non-binary" is a serious concept? Not that I ever pretended, but I mean "we" as in society.

It's insane how quickly society went from "gender stereotypes are limiting and every should just do their own thing" to "if a man likes knitting and power tools he is actually neither male nor female".

People can dress however they want. Wear suits, dresses, dungarees, clown costumes, or a friggin' traffic cone if they choose. None of that changes the fact that they are either male or female though.

What I object to is the demand that the rest of us participate in the performance.

A few years ago, almost nobody had heard of non-binary identities. Now we're expected to master an ever-expanding vocabulary, remember bespoke pronouns, and indulge the fantasy that someone has transcended the sexes because they shop in both the men's and women's departments.

Apparently if you don't play along, you're hateful. Well, you've probably seen what they say about me.

I can understand why a 14 year old might go through a phase of believing they are uniquely fascinating and that the world should reorganise itself around their identity epiphanies. What I find harder to tolerate is the insufferable adults.

Being gender non-conforming is not new. Get over yourself. The only genuinely new thing is the expectation that everyone else must engage in grammatical gymnastics to validate someone else's ego.

[wheelberg @SaraWheelberg]

The lack of self awareness is astonishing…

[Rush @exRAF_Al]

The same Lewis Hamilton who used a corporate leasing structure to save money on taxes (around £3.3 million in VAT) when acquiring his Bombardier Challenger 605 private jet in 2013? The same Lewis Hamilton who bought the £16.5 million jet through his British Virgin Islands company (Stealth Aviation Ltd) and who then set up an Isle of Man leasing company (Stealth (IOM) Ltd, to import it into the EU and sub-leased it to a UK jet management firm (TAG Aviation), which in turn provided it back to Hamilton and his Guernsey company under charter agreements? *That* Lewis Hamilton?

[wheelberg @SaraWheelberg]

@aniobrien Well, and thoughtfully said. Also, why a month? It’s International Womens “Day”, for example… (though the corporatisation of that is also wearing).

[VeryBritishProblems @SoVeryBritish]

What British people have in their freezers:

-Frozen peas (some in a bag, some rolling around loose)
-Full bag of oven chips
-Another bag with three oven chips left in it
-Tupperware half-filled with unidentified brown stuff
-Half a scoop of mash potato that you saved for some reason
-An empty box that used to contain ice lollies that fools you every time you look in it but you still don’t throw it away
-Bag of hash browns
-Some sort of meat joint (possibly lamb) from 2014
-A near-empty ice cream tub
-Something that might be chilli or might be bolognese but you didn’t label it
-Some party food from three Christmases ago
-An empty bag that used to contain ice cubes
-A pack of chicken or fish that you needed to eat but you chucked it in the freezer because you ordered a takeaway instead
-One drawer that doesn’t open anymore

[wheelberg @SaraWheelberg]

For the first time I am whole heartedly in agreement with To y Blair!

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions:

- welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap
- defence spending is too low
- the triple lock is unsustainable
- without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution
- we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea
- migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state
- any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement
- we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable
- Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly

Blair basically says all that.

The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind:

- judges and quangos have too much power, are unaccountable and without redressing the balance in favour of parliament it is very difficult to do anything big fast
- the bare minimum that needs to change in this regard is to reform judicial review and planning law so we can put building and economic growth ahead of newts and NIMBYs

None of that above really ought to be up for discussion. It is all common sense but not one of our politicians will publicly say all of it

Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement.

Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others

[Lisa Mckenzie @redrumlisa]

The Greens are not the party of the working class they are the party of the student activist, the bourgeois left & the Pro Palestine fever. There is nothing working class about the Greens.

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

Yes, I get it, you all hate Tony Blair etc you’ll find loads to disagree with here I’m sure - but the quality of analysis of our problems and what any potential leader ought to be thinking about if they want to solve them puts this essay light years ahead of what any current contender for national leadership has offered. Anyone who wants to be an effective prime minister (including the current one) should read it

[Marcus Walker @WalkerMarcus]

It pains me to say this but… Tony Blair is right; absolutely spot on. Depressingly the Labour Party is more likely to listen to my cat than Tony Blair.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

If you’re going to dine out on being Australia’s first woman prime minister, @JuliaGillard, you’re going to have to say accurately what a woman is.

[Ani O'Brien @aniobrien]

Essential reading. It is really great to be able to see these exchanges & Joseph is right to point out that previous media gatekeepers do not like that we can bypass them. His detailed responses are excellent.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Kirralie Smith (@KirralieS) is in court today to appeal a vilification decision and $95,000 in damages.

Kirralie was bringing attention to the *fact* there are biological men in a women’s soccer team, and they sued her.

It has since been revealed that the women in the women’s soccer league have been told they will be punished if they so much as walk off the field when a man [who claims to be a woman] is on it.

The destruction of women’s rights have long been the canary in the coal mine of gender ideology, and Kirralie is being used as the example to scare other women into submission.

But it isn’t just women’s rights that gender ideology destroys: it’s freedom of belief & freedom on speech, the absolute bedrock of a free society.

I wish I could be with you today, @KirralieS, but I’m in Canberra reminding politicians that men are not women 😉

Men are not women.

🩷🩷🩷

[Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon]

Hi. Lawyer here. In this thread I’ll explain why letting knife-wielding gang rapists walk free is permitted by the sentencing guidelines and therefore absolutely fine. 🧵 1/128

[Sex Matters @SexMattersOrg]

Statement from @MForstater on the EHRC Code of practice for services, public functions and associations before parliament.

Women were right. The time for excuses is over.

[Victoria Smith @glosswitch]

There's something incredibly callous about Burnham's casual reference to women's experience of male violence as a reason why they might want spaces of their own ("maybe that's what makes these women so difficult") >

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

Any politician who opposes woman being accurately defined in law is simply saying that men who claim to be women are more important and have more rights than actual women.

You want legal protections for “trans”? Get them without taking away the rights of women & girls.

[Ani O'Brien @aniobrien]

READ: https://t.co/lKH30vnQC3
"It is not a human right for a male to literally become female any more than it is a human right for a 46 year old to claim he is 65 and entitled to a pension. Liberal societies function because freedom exists alongside boundaries, categories, and shared understandings of reality. The state cannot operate coherently if laws become subordinate to subjective identity claims."