Anthony Hurford

interested in human and natural systems, how they affect us and each other, and actions to promote life within both...views my own

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@noel_willcox Is it because he had grabbed one of their colleagues and was on top of them? No idea what their rules are, but the non police guy wasn't just standing free he was grabbing the officer who pulled him off the wall

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@frankwrighter @AndyMacroryNi @PeterMcCormack @RestoreBritain Was that your son hanging around in the back of the vox populi interview? Loved watching his bored indifference in contrast to your focused intensity

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@austopian @jk_rowling @HJoyceGender Could also help reduce queues for the women's at busy times, but that would be the choice of the women in the queue (as happens now in practice!)

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@austopian @jk_rowling @HJoyceGender Just made me think that converting all men's toilets to 'all gender' could solve the problem... Men are used to other men and less physically threatened by trans identifying men or women... Women get to keep their human adult female only spaces. No need for third/more space.

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@TheProjectUnity Having lived abroad in Indonesia and Switzerland for 6 years, I'd add that you might eventually miss being a native... But we'll always be here, probably...

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@MikeGG420 @AshtonForbes Looks right up @PatrickQJackson street

[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.

[Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs]

FYI, this is kier Starmer, the prime minister of the UK, kneeling for fentanyl addict George Floyd, who died of an overdose.

He hasn’t said a word about Henry Nowak, the British kid who was stabbed to death by an Indian man in his country.

Henry drowned in his own blood, and Kier can’t be bothered to even give his condolences.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Dear @keir_starmer, you seemed very heartbroken when George Floyd, the American convicted felon died in the United States. BUT you are not in the least bit moved that your own citizen Henry Nowak was murdered and the police were complicit in his demise. Any kneeling for Mr. Nowak or only for American felons of color?

[Verhofstadt's Quiff @VerhofstadtQ]

There's plenty of people commenting on the airport assault retrial without knowing the facts. So here's some information for the people who struggle to find the truth, even with Google at their fingertips.........

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@kingkapoor72 They don't seem to understand the concept of kindling in fire starting

[Matthew @Lux1090]

Reading through Reddit threads in which leftists/progressives express their bewilderment/confusion/fury at working class English voters for casting their lot in with Reform, one of the things I'm starting to understand is this:

They simply do not understand how a government could help working-class people in any other way besides giving them benefits, handouts, and other free things.

Their entire mental architecture is premised upon the premises that
1. Working class people are poor
2. The only way for them to not be poor is for the state to give them free stuff
3. So left-wing parties need to promise them lots of free stuff

Then, when these working-class voters instead vote for right-of-centre parties who instead promise an economy in which they can build a career, start their own business, make a financial success of themselves and start a family, they're confused.

Because, again, in their mental architecture, what the working class are *supposed* to want is free benefits from the state.

But what they *actually* want is a fair shake at making their own way in the world, making money, getting on in life.

And the left simply doesn't understand that what these voters want from the state is an economy in which they can actually do this.

[Wales-Women’s Rights Network 💜🤍💚🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @WRNWales]

If you care about the rights and safety of women and girls in Wales, check how the main parties' candidates responded to our question about sex-based language in policy.

Your vote has power. Use it wisely.

3/3

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@Gwlad_Gwlad @reformparty_uk @GBNEWS @1GarethWynJones Maybe join @reformparty_uk for a bit then get kicked out etc! Seems to have helped @RupertLowe10 grow @RestoreBritain_ without much media support

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@WRNWales @WelshConserv @Plaid_Cymru @WelshLibDems @TheGreenParty Are you not asking @gwlad_gwlad too?

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@jan_murray Small claims court is easy, online

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@muellerberndt How would you know when it is correct/accurate when we don't know or understand everything about our universe?

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@RestoreBritain_ Not exactly money 'out of his own pocket' when he donates every month to different causes and says he doesn't need the salary

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@weezeg @TheProjectUnity @fonix50 @recusant_raja Provided by the linked account @recusant_raja You can't expect people to do all the work for you

[Anthony Hurford @aphurford]

@TheProjectUnity @fonix50 Love your work Jay and surprised at your strong stance on this. How do you feel about past and recent evidence of illegal 'bloc' and 'family' voting in parliamentary elections? Read @recusant_raja for details