Beth Rigby interviews Iain Anderson

I've only seen two extracts posted by Cathy Devine (a stalwart for women's rights) on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/cathydevine56/status/1682166636122447874?s=61&t=ONvRKaVGQGpQEV6-b6Z5EQ

https://twitter.com/cathydevine56/status/1682157310888628225?s=61&t=ONvRKaVGQGpQEV6-b6Z5EQ

Beth did a good job in her interview and the backdrop of the photograph in the clip on transgender women in sport was extremely effective as she asked him to look at the 3 winners. He was clearly very uncomfortable but I agree with the posters who think there is clearly some debate in Stonewall about their strategy.

Anderson also spoke about the rainbow laces campaign in football. Somebody should have warned him about that. One of the biggest rainbow laces 'allies' in the Premier League, Jordan Henderson, is about to sign for a club in Saudi Arabia. Not a good look for evidence of the campaign leading to changed attitudes.

Yes. I fully believe that stonewall have realised they have significant issues. They sent this man in hopes of showing their reasonableness, Nancy is gone now so we are all reasonableness…. Don’t you see? But it was a huge fail because it has shown that even their chairman fully realises there is major issues in their over reach and their full alignment with the most extreme trans demands.

And now they have a significant hurdle to get those extremists back on board because they were a huge part of their membership and, I would suggest, their staff (paid and volunteer).

Simon Edge has pointed out that you can always spot someone who's been Stonewall-trained because they refer to the "Equalities Act" rather than the "Equality Act". Makes me wonder if Stonewall do it deliberately or whether it's a mistake.

I haven't watched the whole thing, but luckily there are lots of short clips on Twitter. This clip where Beth Rigby shows him a picture of Lia Thomas winning a gold medal and the two women who came second and third gives a pretty good idea of his incoherence when asked a straight question:

https://twitter.com/treesey/status/1682135263961657346

To me it felt as though Stonewall have realised they have a problem and have had a bunch of management meetings to figure out how to improve their image. A PR person has said, “let’s get you on a mainstream channel, exclusive interview, prime time, loads of people watching and you can show how reasonable you are and how reasonable our stance is.” Then they’ve sold the idea to Sky TV.

And then it’s gone horribly wrong…

Exactly.
It's almost as if the problem isn't some terrible shouting on all sides, but the fact that your position is incoherent, intolerant, and falls apart the minute you look at it.

But no, it's those nasty Twitter bigots to blame...

I think that Beth did very well. She could have come back easily with the sports question of but why was it ever proposed they complete against women? And point out that they can still complete in the male category or ‘open’ if it is called that.

What she did early on though was point out the absurd circularity of ‘women’s spaces’ remaining ‘safe’ while Anderson kept rounding back to the ‘Twaw’ and ‘there is the exceptions’ everytime. As she pointed out, he used ‘women’ and he means males as well, when women want single sex. So he is obscure and showing how Kier Starmer does it.

All while ignoring that Stonewall has been proven to encourage organisations to prioritise the dismissal of using those exceptions if any organisation wishes to be considered a stonewall champion. Again, if Beth was better versed in this topic, she would have skewered him. Emma Barnett did skewer Nancy like that before where a Nancy denied something and Emma pointed out that stonewall are on record for rewarding behaviour that was the opposite to what Nancy declared.

Was it language for mothers? or was it selection of caters? I cannot remember specifically. But it was clear in Stonewall’s reward scheme that they were at complete odds with what Nancy said. Nancy lied because she knew it was not acceptable that Stonewall did that, but it couldn’t be said on national media.

Either way, Anderson tried the Starmer approach and I hope Starmer took note. It fails, every times a good interviewer doesn’t allow the lie to continue.

And then all the deception is exposed.

The Wizard of Stozwall

What rights does India want that India doesn't have?

Also clearly scared that people see through the forced teaming of the T with the LGB.

Nancy Kelly ruined their business model and fucked off.

It's brilliant tv.

He says the whole problem is the 'megaphone' debate and he wants people to calm down and discuss rationally.

Beth says ok, and calmly sets out the perceived problems and lo and behold, he doesn't want to talk about them after all!

He wants to fight? They are all getting punchy now.

Anderson obviously didn't test out his latest waffle on the usual box of frogs before his half hour of uhming.

IW is not happy.

I love when they manage to piss their own supporters off

One of my fave series episodes ends with the boss saying to his team "Well gentlemen, I'll listen to any reasonable comments on my report, but once you've finished, I'll tell you how it's going to be..."

I believe this was the Stonewall "consensus".
That held up until last year.
2023 isn't last year. The consensus isn't holding.

And he said women should have the right to choose a female carer

It's all very well him saying that but in reality because of what his organisation has been pushing for providers of said care now have it written into policy and contracts that women do not have a right to same sex female carers.

It's not explicitly put that way of course but when policy states that staff must be treated as the gender they identify as the result is the same.

He's being extremely disingenuous here or he's too stupid to understand exactly what Stonewall and others have done to women who need personal care.

I watched that wondering why the hell he’d agreed to an interview. I think that was his attempt at softening Stonewalls position, without upsetting the TRAs. Two minutes in to the interview, he discovered it was impossible to soften the position without them losing it, hence the umming, sweating and looking very uncomfortable - he/they are backed into a corner now.

This could be interesting.

Desperate stuff.

He seems to have a plan for a conversation but with who? What was wrong with having the conversation then?

Did Labour leadership ask him to sort it out?
He's got no chance, he's got nothing to say about actual impacts of the law. If he's labours hope for a reconciliation with alienated voters they're completely fucked.

And he said women should have the right to choose a female carer. The men are going to hate him for that. Labour will be fighting itself over this for the next year.

What an inept man.

The picture of Lia(r) Thomas standing next to the women competitors is always so illuminating and then he had the balls to say 'we want everyone to be able to compete' well, except for the women that Thomas has excluded, eh? They're not very included by his massive male body are they?

Beth, though very good, missed the opportunity to point out that Thomas can and always has been able to compete against the other men. No-one's banning Thomas from competing.

The other thing was all that facial tension - grimacing, blinking, wrinkling his nose. He felt really uncomfortable. Talking disingenuous waffle like the Devil’s got a poker up his backside.

Filibustering until the time was up.

”Well EVERYONE deserves, unreservedly, to uh, do whatever it is they wish to do and be fulfilled in their lives in the way they choose and of course EVERYONE has the right to say which way they want things to be for them, no one would disagree with that, I certainly wouldn’t uhm disagree, nor would I suggest anything different, and EVERYONE a must be included of course and be able to decide what they prefer….”

Good grief.

How could he bear making such a tit of himself? Is he getting paid a lot?

Just watched this bit of car crash TV.

I don't think he believes his own nonsense or that of Stonewall. If he does he certainly can't explain it or defend it with any coherence.

I suspect his actual position is that he knows TWAM but thinks they should be allowed to do whatever they want.

Any women or girls objecting don't matter because it's not important that we live fulfilled lives, feel included and safe or even have fair sports if that gets in the way of something a man with a gender identity wants.

What an absolute weasel. He didn't answer a single question. He wants to 'have a conversation', just not with anyone who disagrees with him. Fottfsofatfosm.

It sounded like he was just hearing about it for the first time...

a transcript of this would be absolutely hilarious, one that included all 'umms' and stutters and repeated words.

I wouldn't even employ him to hand out free ice creams, nevermind instruct our civil servants what to think.