'Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister on Monday. His first significant appointment, briefed to journalists with heavy emphasis on his time working for the Obama campaign, is Matthew McGregor as Director of Political Strategy. McGregor is a former director of Hope Not Hate.'
Okay, so now we see the way the wind is blowing. <Sigh> The hard slog against the gender woo continues and may be even more difficult in the future.
So we have a PM who'll travel in the direction that other people think is right rather than think for himself? And he's appointed a director of Hope Not Hate? That's not a comforting thought.
Brilliant column Graham. As you rightly say - we (I) may not have agreed with a single political point Ann Widdecombe espoused (though I'm always in favour of animal rights) - no one deserves to die like she did. Genuinely shocking. And Hope Not Hate - like so many left-leaning, "we're-the-good-guys" organisations - take no responsibility for their rhetoric of 'soft hate'. Because they're the good guys!!!
I am so tired of cowardly men and women who would rather chant the mantras of their tribes, even in the face of so much violence, hostility and hate towards those who can see what the trans movement really is: a vile, misogynistic men's rights movement. They say they stand for freedom of speech, but in reality - they don't. And use thinly veiled reports to close down that freedom for those whose views they think are abhorrent. That meme with Nazi David Mitchell "are we the bad guys" is EXACTLY these people today.
I found this the most moving article you have written on this substack, and that's saying something. We must all stand up and stand together wherever we have the opportunity.
Abdolutely spot on ,Graham. We all know who the villains are ,on Both sides of the pond and it sure isn't the mythical "FAR RIGHT" that Keir Starmer mentions every chance he gets ( in fact every time anybody complains about the policies of open borders ,men in womens spaces ,the mass indoctrination and medicalisation of vulnerable children ,and all the other attempts by the Wokerati to destroy our civilisation !!). It must be blindingly obvious to everyone by now that left wing ideology ( aka marxism ) is killing people both here and in the US ( for their common sense views ) and the fact that all our institutions and so many "normal" people continue to support it is incomprehensible to those of us whose brains are still functioning !! Thanks ,Graham. Keep speaking up.
Ann Widdecombe's killer is a moderator of r/GreenAndPleasant and its associated Discord channel, look at the flag they're waving https://discord.com/invite/zCFHadGfB7
I keep rereading that. And trying to hope it's not true.
It's depressingly obvious if you think about it but how many of them are still out there and encouraging others. Building their 'communities'. I had hoped that all 'moderators' of that type were on watchlists as at one point pretty much all Reddit moderators appeared to be very luridly nasty trans activists committing multiple bizarre and very public acts and then crimes. Using the online veil to assure their positions with apparent impunity. They all had the same background. Unhinged, obsessed with online 'communities', 'rights', hating women and 'normies' and very obviously effortlessly radicalised and self-radicalising. Pure Queer Theory nonsense and spreading hate. Discord also kept cropping up in my professional meetings and that members of the public (some very vulnerable) were being encouraged to use it by some very naive people with very loud voices. I feel a bit sticky just reading about them.
We have been funnelling anyone a bit different, down, isolated, lonely into these opportunistic online canyons of hate for decades. Where children, teens, adults, then infantilised and poorly socialised adults and very bad actors are massed together. Then setting up charities and giving them government funding to represent these poor, marginalised terrorists. They aren't their so-called self-proclaimed freedom fighters!?
I doubt that any of this will improve under Burnham.
He doesn’t respect women’s human rights to safety and dignity. His stance prioritises men over women, which is a very old fashioned, northern, working class, left wing stance.
Burnham wants to eradicate single-sex spaces as he says that places like toilets and changing rooms should be accessible to men who claim to be women. He’s on record describing people who want men to stay out of women’s spaces (over 80% 4 years ago, probably a lot more now), and to make them exclusively for biological women as having a “minority view”.
He hasn’t stated how he will keep out men in dresses who aren’t actually gender dysphoric, like rapists ‘Isla’ Blair and ‘Karen’ White, or paedophiles like ‘Amy’ Miller or Toni Prince, or fetishist AGPs. As there is no identifiable difference between a gender dysphoric man in a dress and paedophile in a dress, I look forward to hearing how he plans to keep paedophiles and peeping Toms out of women’s spaces.
He has declared a plan to tackle misogyny. He should start with himself.
He doesn’t seem to have discussed puberty blockers, but he hasn’t said that he will reverse the recent decision to continue with the trial of giving these off label drugs long term to sterilise children who think they are trans.
He supports the ban on “conversion therapy” which, in effect, allows homophobic parents to ‘trans away the gay’ by pushing, their gay children down the route of transitioning. Gay organisations have spoken out against the bill.
I don’t know any women who will vote for Labour while he is PM.
I just read the page taken down by Hope Not Hate following the violent death of Ann Widdecombe, and wow--I am impressed (as a woman myself) by the sheer scope and depth of her misogyny. Also the confident ignorance on which some of her misogynist views were based.
Her comprehensive hatred of women seems to go way beyond that of transactivists, focused narrowly on themselves and their central demand to be "affirmed" as something they are not--even by those who disagree.
But of course neither her misogyny--nor any other of her objectionable views--can possibly justify her murder by some violent extremist: with a suspect now detained and being investigated by the police.
From Hope Not Hate:
"In 2012 Widdecombe wrote in the Radio Times that binge drinkers should be publicly named and shamed, by being arrested and having their pictures published in newspapers. She particularly targets women, bemoaning that they “stagger along pavements in 6in heels, scantily clad, falling off the kerbs, to hail taxis in which they are sick”. [...]
"In a 2018 interview on This Morning, she claimed that the #MeToo movement has “given rise to a lot of very trivial whinging” and called the gender pay gap “very largely a myth”. She also claimed that the playing field is tilted “heavily towards” women.
"She also claimed on Russia Today in 2017, during the scandal around Michael Fallon MP’s inappropriate behaviour towards a journalist, that “I can’t believe that women are being so wimpish these days, wallowing in self-pity, expecting the men always to protect us”.
"She claimed on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018 that the victims of Harvey Weinstein, who has faced numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assualt, “had a choice”. She said “That’s on them. That was down to them. They had a choice”.
"She backed the shackling of pregnant female prisoners receiving care, whilst prisons minister in 1996. She said: “Some MPs may like to think that a pregnant woman would not or could not escape. Unfortunately this is not true… The fact is that hospitals are not secure places in which to keep prisoners, and since 1990, 20 women have escaped from hospital”.
"She told the New Statesman in 2012 that she left the Church of England in 1993, in part due to her objection of women in the priesthood. She claimed::
“I left the Church of England because there was a huge bundle of straw. The ordination of women was the last straw, but it was only one of many. For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England’s compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn’t care if something is unpopular. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned if it’s true it’s true, and if it’s false it’s false. The issue over women priests was not only that I think it’s theologically impossible to ordain women, it was the nature of the debate that was the damaging thing, because instead of the debate being “is this theologically possible?” the debate was “If we don’t do this we don’t be acceptable to the outside world”. To me, that was an abdication of the Church’s role, which is to lead, not to follow.”
"Widdecombe is a longstanding oponent of abortion, tellling the BBC in 1999 that “Abortion is not just a religious belief. Some of my best work against abortion was done when I was an agnostic. It is not [a] moral issue – if I come up and kill you, you do not say it’s a moral, individual issue. We are talking about taking life in the womb”.
"She told The Telegraph in 2014 that she “happen[s] to think it’s a woman’s job” to bring up children"."
I find it hard to see anything objectionable about collecting together the views of a very outspoken politician who publicly represented the ultraconservative wing of Reform UK.
Of course it's a tragedy when any unbalanced, invariably male, extremist murders anyone for their political beliefs. But we cannot therefore suppress the expression of those beliefs, without being guilty of exactly the same "cancellation" policy that we condemn in transactivists, towards expression of gender critical beliefs.
Violent extremism has to be countered by other means than suppressing information--unless it is direct incitement to violence. I am no "information absolutist".
The regrettably uncritical attitude of "Hope Not Hate" towards transactivist claims seems most likely attributable to transactivist journalist Owen Jones, with "Education" listed as his role at Hope Not Hate.
The obsession of Nick Lowles, HNH's founder, is with Reform UK as the latest political manifestation of a far right British ethnonationalism, now openly encouraging race riots; and with Nigel Farage, its racist, money-obsessed narcissistic figurehead.
Plus Reform's (and Farage's own) funding by a few rich men including cryptobillionaires, by donations suspected to be the proceeds of crime subject to money laundering. Plus Farages's crusade for cryptocurrencies, and his close association with a multimillionaire gambler and convicted fraudster.
The publicly expressed views of Ann Widdecombe, as a prominent spokesperson for Reform UK, therefore not surprisingly featured on a HNH information page.
This page was rightly taken down following Ann Widdecombe's violent death--and is rightly still available for us to read if we look for it.
Good grief: that was an education. No flies on Glinner. How depressing the police would still rather arrest you than listen to you. Thank you for being on it. Again.
'Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister on Monday. His first significant appointment, briefed to journalists with heavy emphasis on his time working for the Obama campaign, is Matthew McGregor as Director of Political Strategy. McGregor is a former director of Hope Not Hate.'
Okay, so now we see the way the wind is blowing. <Sigh> The hard slog against the gender woo continues and may be even more difficult in the future.
Andy Burnham's record on this is of blowing with the wind. A conviction politician tacks against it when it blows the wrong way.
So we have a PM who'll travel in the direction that other people think is right rather than think for himself? And he's appointed a director of Hope Not Hate? That's not a comforting thought.
Thanks Graham for continuing to highlight so diligently and thoroughly this dangerous and potentially inflammatory activity.
Brilliant column Graham. As you rightly say - we (I) may not have agreed with a single political point Ann Widdecombe espoused (though I'm always in favour of animal rights) - no one deserves to die like she did. Genuinely shocking. And Hope Not Hate - like so many left-leaning, "we're-the-good-guys" organisations - take no responsibility for their rhetoric of 'soft hate'. Because they're the good guys!!!
I am so tired of cowardly men and women who would rather chant the mantras of their tribes, even in the face of so much violence, hostility and hate towards those who can see what the trans movement really is: a vile, misogynistic men's rights movement. They say they stand for freedom of speech, but in reality - they don't. And use thinly veiled reports to close down that freedom for those whose views they think are abhorrent. That meme with Nazi David Mitchell "are we the bad guys" is EXACTLY these people today.
Excellent summary of that bunch of frauds. They propagate and spread the hate. Hope You’ll Hate is a better name.
I found this the most moving article you have written on this substack, and that's saying something. We must all stand up and stand together wherever we have the opportunity.
"Stochastic terrorism" is the term that these sniveling bastards use for what they do
Thanks, I hadn't heard the term before and see it fits perfectly.
It was invented to use against the political right, so using it in this context is also poetic justice.
Excellent infrmative article Graham. Thank you.
Abdolutely spot on ,Graham. We all know who the villains are ,on Both sides of the pond and it sure isn't the mythical "FAR RIGHT" that Keir Starmer mentions every chance he gets ( in fact every time anybody complains about the policies of open borders ,men in womens spaces ,the mass indoctrination and medicalisation of vulnerable children ,and all the other attempts by the Wokerati to destroy our civilisation !!). It must be blindingly obvious to everyone by now that left wing ideology ( aka marxism ) is killing people both here and in the US ( for their common sense views ) and the fact that all our institutions and so many "normal" people continue to support it is incomprehensible to those of us whose brains are still functioning !! Thanks ,Graham. Keep speaking up.
Ann Widdecombe's killer is a moderator of r/GreenAndPleasant and its associated Discord channel, look at the flag they're waving https://discord.com/invite/zCFHadGfB7
I keep rereading that. And trying to hope it's not true.
It's depressingly obvious if you think about it but how many of them are still out there and encouraging others. Building their 'communities'. I had hoped that all 'moderators' of that type were on watchlists as at one point pretty much all Reddit moderators appeared to be very luridly nasty trans activists committing multiple bizarre and very public acts and then crimes. Using the online veil to assure their positions with apparent impunity. They all had the same background. Unhinged, obsessed with online 'communities', 'rights', hating women and 'normies' and very obviously effortlessly radicalised and self-radicalising. Pure Queer Theory nonsense and spreading hate. Discord also kept cropping up in my professional meetings and that members of the public (some very vulnerable) were being encouraged to use it by some very naive people with very loud voices. I feel a bit sticky just reading about them.
We have been funnelling anyone a bit different, down, isolated, lonely into these opportunistic online canyons of hate for decades. Where children, teens, adults, then infantilised and poorly socialised adults and very bad actors are massed together. Then setting up charities and giving them government funding to represent these poor, marginalised terrorists. They aren't their so-called self-proclaimed freedom fighters!?
Thank you again, Graham. On it, as ever. Very concerning that ‘No Mandate Eyelashes’ has Hope Not Hate as his close advisors. We watch, we see.
Hope not Hate are such a bunch of bastards.
I was not a fan of Ann Widdecombe but, as you also write, this was a vicious murder on a vulnerable 78 year old woman.
Luckily for me, I've started reading the Times, rather than the poxy Guardian and the coverage of Ann Widdecombe has been rightly sympathetic.
Didn't care for Starmer either but Burnham is bad news.
Hate not Hope love putting targets on people’s backs. Absolute hypocrites. Another extremely well-written piece.
They don't hate these people, see, they just hope someone will kill them.
I doubt that any of this will improve under Burnham.
He doesn’t respect women’s human rights to safety and dignity. His stance prioritises men over women, which is a very old fashioned, northern, working class, left wing stance.
Burnham wants to eradicate single-sex spaces as he says that places like toilets and changing rooms should be accessible to men who claim to be women. He’s on record describing people who want men to stay out of women’s spaces (over 80% 4 years ago, probably a lot more now), and to make them exclusively for biological women as having a “minority view”.
He hasn’t stated how he will keep out men in dresses who aren’t actually gender dysphoric, like rapists ‘Isla’ Blair and ‘Karen’ White, or paedophiles like ‘Amy’ Miller or Toni Prince, or fetishist AGPs. As there is no identifiable difference between a gender dysphoric man in a dress and paedophile in a dress, I look forward to hearing how he plans to keep paedophiles and peeping Toms out of women’s spaces.
He has declared a plan to tackle misogyny. He should start with himself.
He doesn’t seem to have discussed puberty blockers, but he hasn’t said that he will reverse the recent decision to continue with the trial of giving these off label drugs long term to sterilise children who think they are trans.
He supports the ban on “conversion therapy” which, in effect, allows homophobic parents to ‘trans away the gay’ by pushing, their gay children down the route of transitioning. Gay organisations have spoken out against the bill.
I don’t know any women who will vote for Labour while he is PM.
I just read the page taken down by Hope Not Hate following the violent death of Ann Widdecombe, and wow--I am impressed (as a woman myself) by the sheer scope and depth of her misogyny. Also the confident ignorance on which some of her misogynist views were based.
Her comprehensive hatred of women seems to go way beyond that of transactivists, focused narrowly on themselves and their central demand to be "affirmed" as something they are not--even by those who disagree.
But of course neither her misogyny--nor any other of her objectionable views--can possibly justify her murder by some violent extremist: with a suspect now detained and being investigated by the police.
From Hope Not Hate:
"In 2012 Widdecombe wrote in the Radio Times that binge drinkers should be publicly named and shamed, by being arrested and having their pictures published in newspapers. She particularly targets women, bemoaning that they “stagger along pavements in 6in heels, scantily clad, falling off the kerbs, to hail taxis in which they are sick”. [...]
"In a 2018 interview on This Morning, she claimed that the #MeToo movement has “given rise to a lot of very trivial whinging” and called the gender pay gap “very largely a myth”. She also claimed that the playing field is tilted “heavily towards” women.
"She also claimed on Russia Today in 2017, during the scandal around Michael Fallon MP’s inappropriate behaviour towards a journalist, that “I can’t believe that women are being so wimpish these days, wallowing in self-pity, expecting the men always to protect us”.
"She claimed on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018 that the victims of Harvey Weinstein, who has faced numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assualt, “had a choice”. She said “That’s on them. That was down to them. They had a choice”.
"She backed the shackling of pregnant female prisoners receiving care, whilst prisons minister in 1996. She said: “Some MPs may like to think that a pregnant woman would not or could not escape. Unfortunately this is not true… The fact is that hospitals are not secure places in which to keep prisoners, and since 1990, 20 women have escaped from hospital”.
"She told the New Statesman in 2012 that she left the Church of England in 1993, in part due to her objection of women in the priesthood. She claimed::
“I left the Church of England because there was a huge bundle of straw. The ordination of women was the last straw, but it was only one of many. For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England’s compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn’t care if something is unpopular. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned if it’s true it’s true, and if it’s false it’s false. The issue over women priests was not only that I think it’s theologically impossible to ordain women, it was the nature of the debate that was the damaging thing, because instead of the debate being “is this theologically possible?” the debate was “If we don’t do this we don’t be acceptable to the outside world”. To me, that was an abdication of the Church’s role, which is to lead, not to follow.”
"Widdecombe is a longstanding oponent of abortion, tellling the BBC in 1999 that “Abortion is not just a religious belief. Some of my best work against abortion was done when I was an agnostic. It is not [a] moral issue – if I come up and kill you, you do not say it’s a moral, individual issue. We are talking about taking life in the womb”.
"She told The Telegraph in 2014 that she “happen[s] to think it’s a woman’s job” to bring up children"."
I find it hard to see anything objectionable about collecting together the views of a very outspoken politician who publicly represented the ultraconservative wing of Reform UK.
Of course it's a tragedy when any unbalanced, invariably male, extremist murders anyone for their political beliefs. But we cannot therefore suppress the expression of those beliefs, without being guilty of exactly the same "cancellation" policy that we condemn in transactivists, towards expression of gender critical beliefs.
Violent extremism has to be countered by other means than suppressing information--unless it is direct incitement to violence. I am no "information absolutist".
The regrettably uncritical attitude of "Hope Not Hate" towards transactivist claims seems most likely attributable to transactivist journalist Owen Jones, with "Education" listed as his role at Hope Not Hate.
The obsession of Nick Lowles, HNH's founder, is with Reform UK as the latest political manifestation of a far right British ethnonationalism, now openly encouraging race riots; and with Nigel Farage, its racist, money-obsessed narcissistic figurehead.
Plus Reform's (and Farage's own) funding by a few rich men including cryptobillionaires, by donations suspected to be the proceeds of crime subject to money laundering. Plus Farages's crusade for cryptocurrencies, and his close association with a multimillionaire gambler and convicted fraudster.
The publicly expressed views of Ann Widdecombe, as a prominent spokesperson for Reform UK, therefore not surprisingly featured on a HNH information page.
This page was rightly taken down following Ann Widdecombe's violent death--and is rightly still available for us to read if we look for it.
Thanks for the link.
Good grief: that was an education. No flies on Glinner. How depressing the police would still rather arrest you than listen to you. Thank you for being on it. Again.
Excellent analysis, Graham.
This all links in to the Amnesty Report
have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-anti-rights-part-2
Dusty