Category: activism
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Left, right and left behind

This article is, ultimately, about the row about ‘drag’ (!) which I think offers a good opportunity to think about the left/right confusion in the women’s campaign… Is ‘queer theory’ left wing? Is ‘gender critical’ theory right wing? How many people are sufficiently academic, sufficiently fond of critical reading and sufficiently practiced in critical thinking…
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How the Gender Identity Industry Broke Politics

Before the world went mad, when I was still Vice-Chair of a Labour CLP, and active with my union, and had a seat on the committee of my favourite lefty group, I started hearing really weird things about sex and gender, including being told by a couple of therapist friends I knew that they were…
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Not the Forde Report

When I was out and about in Wales, one of the things I enjoyed was taking photos of any Welsh language signs and posters, so I could check out the meaning later, and learn some new words. I took this one by accident because I didn’t know Splott was a name, so wondered what a…
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Please don’t waste your valuable time and skills on party politics

I left the Labour Party last year. They had the audacity to suspend our elected delegate mid-conference. It was one of those ‘retrospective suspensions’, where they’d suddenly make a rule against something, then suspend someone for having done that thing before they made the rule. For that reason, I resigned retrospectively. It wasn’t just because…
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Fed up with long, complicated blog articles?

I had a couple of complaints last week that my blogs are getting long – sorry, here’s one for you – it’s so short that it fits in the header pic, so you can just share it like a meme, if you want. Please send it to your MP – too many of them still…
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Two more reasons to celebrate Mo Farah

I nearly didn’t write a blog about Mo Farah. I nearly settled for a Facebook comment… … That’s because – well, he’s famous already, it’s a headline story already, so it doesn’t need one more telling from me – but then I realised there’s something missing from most of the big media stories. Yes, we…
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Macy Days and UK Ways

Or: What’s with ‘the hostage video’? Look what happened – first, we had a clear and refreshing statement, made by an adult women, voluntarily discussing ‘The Issue’ on a show she presumably volunteered to go on. She seems quite relaxed, and happy to chat on volatile issues like the US flag, and what a woman…
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Find the human – then find some more humans

Avanti Lentemente (forward, slowly) This is the story of a train ticket. It is quite long but it contains a big welfare issue (actually, the biggest welfare issue) and a potential time-saver (actually, a life saver) for humans everywhere. One day back in June, I turned up at Penrith station with the intention of getting…
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Place the blame, move on

Last night, I posted a Jonathan Pie rant on my social media feed, because his traditional five-minute rant had managed to include more of the salient points in our current affairs than the entire week’s output from the BBC. Tory MPs are lining up to say yes, they too have realised Boris Johnson is irresponsible,…
