Wednesday 17th June 2026

[refitman]

Morning all.

[Frog222]

Morning it is !

I didn't read it all, but a taste ! --

Mary-Ann Stephenson looked like she was coming apart on an atomic level. The new chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was speaking to MPs on the women and equalities committee last week, which is an ordeal at the best of times. On this day, it seemed as if it had extracted her will to live.

It was possible to feel really quite sorry for her. She is not vindictive. Unlike her immediate predecessor, Baroness Falkner, she is not witless or incompetent. She had not created this situation and she was not its author. But sympathy only takes you so far. The basic reality is that the EHRC and the government have presided over a profound failure of political leadership. Business owners and managers across the country have been left exposed to legal challenge, without any meaningful guidance from the authorities.

Who knows what form that challenge will take? Perhaps it’ll come from a trans person using European human rights law. Perhaps it’ll come from a gender critical campaigner using domestic law. There is no safe route, whatever you do. There is certainly no safe way to provide a trans-inclusive service. But there is also no safe way to provide a trans exclusive service, particularly if it’s a necessary service.

Those legal claims will come. And someone - a cafe owner, or a hospital manager, or someone who runs a local library, or the owner of a regional swimming pool - will be punished for something they could not have controlled. They will have been utterly failed by the political class.

Stephenson was asked how the EHRC’s updated code, packed with new guidance on trans people, would make people’s lives better.

She could not answer this question, but she marched her way valiantly through a series of words in the desperate hope that they might reveal a clearing.

Comments (some fun !) and full read ---

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-ehrc ... d/comments

[Frog222]

Anotherdayonearth 17 hours ago
Naomi Klein's warning of the Oligarch Freedom Cities sounds closer to reality...

But it’s not just the flamingos that people care about, is it? Albania is far from the only country to be dealing with billionaires and crypto colonialists who seem to think the entire world can be bought or plundered. Belgian crypto investor Olivier Janssens, for example, has been attempting to build a libertarian paradise called Destiny on the island of Nevis, with its own court system. Then there’s Próspera, a private Peter Thiel-backed city in Honduras, with its own laws and police force.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... on-has-say

Have those "special economic zones" in the UK got their own police forces and courts yet ?

[Frog222]

Peter Thiel who created and I suspect still owns JDVance ...




Kinky lot too --

[Frog222]

BRILLIANT , what could possibly go wrong ?

[Frog222]

Youtube has asked me to do the age-check thing. Not so far !


https://bsky.app/profile/kaitensatsuma. ... ilwav3gs2t

[Frog222]

UKLawyersForIsrael terrorising again --

[Frog222]

Crazy stuff on that MOU !

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/ ... t/comments