J-LP

Sport, politics, pubs and some other stuff.

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@andrewc44104127 Heat

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@thisisanfield Love that

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@NickyHanshaw That's Coors for you

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@TheBarmyArmy How is Gower not a Gif ?

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@grok @Queen_of_Gin @SartorialThug @SartorialThug you have been challenged.😂

[Luke Warm Dave @DaveLukewarm]

Cash in the Attic?

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@Kashe1dz 343?

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@FabrizioRomano @TheAthleticFC

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@SHD766 Simon Jones bowling

[John Cleese @JohnCleese]

Labour will do nothing that will cost them votes

[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.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I see that Stella Creasy is accusing me of leading a pitchfork mob against her, because I opined that she is less likeable and more hypocritical than the wild parakeet she mistook for an escaped pet.

For those who don’t know, Creasy is an elected politician and self-proclaimed ‘old-fashioned feminist’ who is ‘still fighting the patriarchy’. She’s more than once publicly defined herself against me (and my reaction was not to accuse her of leading a mob, even though I was probably averaging a dozen death threats a day at the point when the article below appeared.)

I thought it might be instructive for those of us who don’t share Creasy’s brand of ‘feminism’ to examine her campaigning record, so we can learn to do better.

Creasy wants women admitted to the male-only, exclusive, London-based private members Garrick Club, a change that would benefit rather privileged women like Creasy. Creasy is a mother who wants better accommodations for working mothers, a change that would benefit Creasy. Creasy takes selfies at a men-only Muslim march because that reminds everyone how non-racist she is, which benefits Creasy. Creasy asserts that ‘trans women are women’, which keeps her in good odour with her party’s most aggressive activists, and benefits Creasy.

However, keeping cross-dressing heterosexual men out of nurses’ changing rooms doesn’t benefit Creasy, because Creasy has never had to mop up other people’s piss, blood and vomit at work. Challenging the notion that a male basketball player becomes a girl if he says he is doesn’t benefit Creasy, who has no sporting ambitions. Speaking up against the patriarchy as practised by non-white men doesn’t benefit Creasy, who wants those selfie-opportunities. Criticising an ideological movement that persecutes, harasses and openly threatens women who don’t believe some women have penises wouldn't benefit Creasy, because she's already fully-signed up to self-id, where any man who says he's a woman must be taken at his word.

As the late Gloria Steinem said: ‘“Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere.’

Creasy the patriarchy-challenger is provably more than happy to cosy up to men and misogynist movements when it suits her public profile and career advancement, no matter the harms those men might be causing less privileged women. By Steinem’s definition, what Stella espouses is not feminism, but Creasyism, and I suggest the emblem for this brave new rights movement should be an indignant parakeet with severely ruffled feathers.

https://t.co/8lvktG2vI6

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@DailyMail I suspect that they are about to get security and this was a softening the public statement from BP.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Please! Is there nobody who can make this virtue-signalling bollocks stop?
Why does he think we give a monkey’s what he thinks?
He has zero qualifications/knowledge to opine on such matters.
He’s ‘sorry’ the world is not a better place than it is. With that sort of penetrating philosophical insight an Oxbridge professorship must surely beckon, toute suite.
He’s just reading a vacuous script his wife wrote for him.
If we had a whip round couldn’t we pay for them to stay in Montecito? I’d contribute.

[Michael Vaughan @MichaelVaughan]

The Test Pitch at Headingley was another belter … it’s now the best pitch in the country … but the ground won’t host a Test until 2029 !!! That can’t be right … England would love to playing an Ashes Test in Leeds …

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@JimmyCully What's the blue nose @mikeparry8 doing with Liverpool supporters at the beginning of this?

[J-LP @johnleeperry]

@AnfieldPapers I thought it was the chef.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Nauseating hypocrisy. You and your party’s green mongering over the years have driven BP and others away. You gave virtue signalling priority over jobs, families, communities. And now you express concern for them. Pass the sick bag. Scotland is truly run by a kakistocracy. But Scots only have themselves to blame. They keep electing self-serving numpties.

[The New Era on X @EditorTNE]

This is the UK's new Business Secretary. He's never run a business. Nor even worked for one. He knows nothing about risk taking. Nor entrepreneurship. Nor meeting payroll. Nor remortgaging his house to provide working capital. Nor hiring staff. Nor skipping his salary so his employees can have theirs. Nope. He couldn't even manage to finish his training to become a solicitor. And now he's Secretary of State for Business for HM Government.