Liz Truss writes in the Mail on Sunday

To early to judge Stamer, though there seems little evidence that he is a conviction politician. I think he is playing a long game. Lie low and let the difficult big characters in his party find their own nooses. Better to pick them off one by one than risk all out open warfare.

He is looking at the next election and aiming to have a party that is electable. If he is successful, it will be an election that the Tories might lose themselves with him never lifting his head above the parapet.

Will we know by then what he stands for? Probably not. Does he stand for anything? I have no idea. The point is you can probably make it all the way to the top by being less objectionable than the competition.

Important to remember that much of this sh**show happened under the Tories though. They moan about Labour not defending women's rights, but defending them against whom? The tories are in government!

Also I think moaning about Labour run councils not supporting tory government policy is unnecessary. And obviously misses new Labour's massive push on education. The tories have a huge majority but to read that defensive article you wouldn't think it.
The anti-woke sentiment is a very compelling argument that stands alone without point scoring.

The problem with Starmer is that he's a good guy but trying to please everyone. He doesn't have a strong ideology, is just a decent manager. He's trying to be nice by going along with the woke, but actually just looks weak. I would prefer him to be prime minister obviously but is it better to have a government of bad people doing good things or one of good people doing bad things?

Why are the “difficult and humiliating process” of applying for a GRC seen as somehow more worthy than the vast numbers of people needing to claim benefits and submitting to all sorts of enquiries especially those for people with disabilities.

I have always wondered how people are gong to manage when they need a POA. The cost of both the financial and health and welfare ones, is roughly equivalent to the cost of a GRC, but older failing people who are less likely to have the money.

A real example of the cherry picking of equalities that Truss refers to.

And that is before I get started on either applying for Attendance Allowance, or applying to the Court of Protection. I am pretty good at paperwork but both applications completely defeated me.

Given the disproportionate sums of money to go into charities supporting the "T" surely the money/advice could have been found somehow.

Instead these charities clearly want politicians to nod towards the specialness of their clause.

The sales of council houses was good for those that bought them. But without replacements being built it was a disastrous policy for nearly everyone else . I generally don’t think the Tories have done much for a large number of the population. Why are the “difficult and humiliating process” of applying for a GRC seen as somehow more worthy than the vast numbers of people needing to claim benefits and submitting to all sorts of enquiries especially those for people with disabilities.

One wonders who was behind this change of policy back in 2007. (I don't mean the political party but wider civil servants and NHS bigwigs.) There must have been a huge push to surreptitiously change policy after the adoption of the GRA in 2004

Which makes Liz Truss' achievements all the more remarkable. All the evidence points to the women and equalities bit of her portfolio being captured. There is little evidence that this is an issue that interested Boris and the boys, plus they had their plates full with Brexit and Covid. Yet she has managed to roll back some of those things that happened behind our backs, and establish a new, more reasonably, normal.

Which, for a female politician, is really impressive.

A direct contrast is the way the knives went out for Priti Patel. Here too was Minister who was trying to push a Department in ways it did not want to go. (Here MN sympathies may lie with the Civil Servants, but not a debate to get into.) And all out warfare with, as far as any of us can tell, both Minister and Civil Servants behaving badly.

The capture has been huge. Truss' achievements, regardless of party or politics, are significant.

I think ward placements in general hospitals can be tricky to define (I have never worked in mental health and understand there may be differences). But most wards are divided into bays, the old nightingale wards barely exist if at all any more. There is usually availability of single rooms. Some of the newer hospitals, eg Southmead in Bristol has substantially (80%) single room provision. Some have a bathroom for each bay (mother's experience at Great Western in Swindon) others have rather poorer toilet and bathroom provision involving a short walk from the bay with designated male and female toilets, floor to ceiling walls/doors and integral wash basin, which is the case in my local hospital.
So I would say that generally it shouldn't be a problem and staff should be sensitive enough to ensure no one is discomfited.
That said, when beds are in short supply it is often the case that new admissions are placed wherever a bed is available and not on the ward most appropriate for their condition anyway. And non clinical bed managers can wield excessive power. I have been outraged by a bed manager demanding removal of a dying person from a single room to the main bay to allow for an admission of someone requiring isolation. Yes the other patient needed a single room but not at the cost of the comfort of the dying person and their family not to mention discomfiture of the other patients in the bay.

I also know that a male to female post operative patient was nursed on the gynaecology ward at my hospital. I don't know where on the ward but I would hope a single room was allocated. I don't understand why this wouldn't have been allocated to a general surgical / urology ward. This is not a gynaecological procedure. 🤷‍♀️
I've no idea who would have been responsible for that bed/ward allocation. I have my suspicions regarding the reasoning behind it.

Placement of transgender patients on opposite wards is not recorded as a breach - and not recorded at all - so the extent/impact on everyone else read women cannot be measured.

So, yet again, no data gathered = no problems with this policy hmm Exactly.

Remember that the 2009 guidance has been superseded by the EA 2010 exemptions.

We will get this turned around - eventually.

The Dept of Health directive of 2009 was designed to ensure that Mixed Sex Accommodation was NOT eliminated but that instead Self-ID would be the norm across the whole NHS

And if our local NHS trust is anything to go by, all ‘breaches’ of single sex accommodation are recorded as a serious event EXCEPT when that breach is caused by a transgender person (even the part-timers) self identifying onto the opposite sex ward (I would be interested to know how many transmen demand to be put on a male ward - obviously we’ve got no way of finding out).

So, yet again, no data gathered = no problems with this policy

That is really interesting @MoleSmokes. Can you upload a photo of the 2007 document?

That's very interesting MoleSmokes

One wonders who was behind this change of policy back in 2007. (I don't mean the political party but wider civil servants and NHS bigwigs.) There must have been a huge push to surreptitiously change policy after the adoption of the GRA in 2004.
I for one was asleep!

The Left absolutely DID DO these things. Single gender NHS wards, falsely publicised as “single sex”, with Self-ID were authorised by the Dept of Health in 2009, under Sec of State Andy Burnham, PM Gordon Brown, Labour Government.

This Mumsnet thread title states 2010 but that relates, I think, to later confirmation under Tory Sec of State Andrew Lansley:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3396859-Weve-been-lied-to-about-Single-SEX-wards-since-2010

Dept of Health Directive to the NHS, May 2009, “Eliminating Mixed Sex Accommodation”

(An outright lie. The directive enshrines choice of accommodation based on self-declaration of gender rather than biological sex.)

webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130104221201/http:/www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_098893.pdf

I recollect that NHS Medical Records were recording Gender as the basis of assignment to wards by 2007 but I have not been able to find any archived records of authority for this.

What I do still have is a copy of the Out Patient Record that I was instructed to amend to add “Gender” to in 2007, in order that patients could be assigned to the correct accommodation for their Gender rather than their Sex. Gender was to be determined by asking patients, “Have you changed sex since you were last seen?” Confusing, no?

I refused to ask this question, on the grounds that my patients would think I had lost my mind and that they would anyway be asked this question if they were to be admitted as an In Patient. This was a Mental Health Trust so the policy by 2007 was to ensure that any man who decided to self-ID as female would be admitted to a “Single Sex” Women’s Psychiatric Ward.

The Dept of Health directive of 2009 was designed to ensure that Mixed Sex Accommodation was NOT eliminated but that instead Self-ID would be the norm across the whole NHS.

no chance of Liz Truss ever being PM because of the double standards applied to women and men's private lives.

Depressing, but probably correct.

There are some quite wrong things in there (league tables, Thatcher) but a lot of good, too.

Siân 'Please never join thanks!' Berry

Sian "I deleted all my retweets of Aimee Challenor when the shit hit the fan" Berry

Also interesting is that for the first time Liz Truss heads the Conservative Home survey for the most popular Cabinet member amongst Tory members. Beating Rishi!

www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2020/12/truss-tops-our-cabinet-league-table-for-the-first-time.html

Interesting in part because she is not a member of the Boris boys club, and therefore subject to repeated rumours that she would be sacked.

My guess is that quite a lot of her votes came from women.

No, I think Liz Truss does care about women. She has got herself to a very prominent position in politics, and she must realise how tough that is for most women.
To me there are two kinds of tories. There are the Cameron/Johnson pig-fucker Eton twats who genuinely think working people are pointless scum. The there are the kind who I think of as optimistic conservatives. They despair of the culture of people sat waiting for the state to spoon feed them, and believe in pushing people to help themselves, un hindered by background, race or sex. I think these type do mean well, and are of the "teach a man to fish" school of thought, and part of me respects that when compared to Labour's paternalistic, patronising low expectations of the working class. However, I am deeply pragmatic, and I know that a lot of the population just can't fish, for a lot of reasons, so we need the safety nets, we need healthcare free at the point of delivery, and we need some protection against rapacious big business. I no longer believe ion Labour=good and Tory=bad. There is good and bad on both sides.

I think Liz Truss has nailed it with this approach to inequality. I don’t think they will follow through on making genuine change, but attacking wokeness is a popular move. Labour has no one to blame but themselves if the Tories successfully claim this space.

@AnyOldPrion no chance of Liz Truss ever being PM because of the double standards applied to women and men's private lives.

I'm not going to get the bunting out, I'm remaining watchful and very cautiously optimistic.

Reasons being the political Civil Service and many Government Departments have been so captured by this ideology and if Liz Truss is shuffled out we are back to Ground Zero.

My trust and faith in politicians, political parties, the Civil Service, Unions, Government Departments and institutions is at a record low.

I think the Tories are nailing this.

See also Kimi Badenoch resisting critical race theory and a cabinet full of successful BAME politicians.

The Labour party now represent a professional middle class elite, with thier own woke doctrine, and the working class know it, and told it where to go in the last election.

And a narrowing sliver of that demographic, at that. They’ve already turned their back on women and let their Jewish voters and constituents down.

So, I am very surprised to find myself considering voting Tory.

Same here. I will vote tory if they are the party to defend women's rights and freedoms. Never ever in a million years thought I'd even consider it but here we are!

Hmm, Liz Truss is saying the right words about women's rights but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

I'm slightly sceptical due to some of the other bobbins in the same article, eg free schools don't benefit working class kids and weren't intended to, Tory housing policies have ensured house prices are sky high, there is no affordable housing and council houses have all been sold off. School league tables did not improve standards but did ensure teachers in state schools focused on ensuring children there jumped through random useless hoops rather than getting a good, rounded education.

So an all-round hmm.

Truss is bright enough to know that the Tories can garner support through a culture war that opposes wokism, and Labour is very foolish to fall into that trap. The LibDems are beyond hope as far as that is concerned.

Still not convinced that Truss cares about women's rights, just wants women's votes by making us think she does.