6 London councils to ignore EHRC guidance

Janice Turner (a Southwark resident) in the Times:

Eddie says he’ll speak to leisure services. I say I’d like McAsh himself to tell female residents whether he will comply with the EHRC. Many hours pass, in which great minds at Southwark town hall must be thumbing frantically through Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/77fbe275-dc42-4617-9d55-1592d5e1135f?shareToken=1bae794735b30989ff8a83e81124229e&ver=article

On thinking a bit more - is a legal challenge something the JKRWF might find? I mean, I know we’d need to have instructed a solicitor & have a costs projection even to apply, but…

I do wonder about how the Green vote will stand up here in Lewisham, especially if Northern Andy can refresh the reputation of the Labour Government.
I used to wonder about my dads attitude to society, he always seemed to expect incompetence everywhere. He himself was a skillful and personable multi trades professional, its taken many years but I get it now. Many maybe most people aren't really very good at critical thinking. Or maybe just were never taught how to do it and why it is important. So thanks Dad.

Good grief, I must be positively tripping over MNers whenever I leave the house…

Lewisham has been failing to fulfil its statutory duties & requirements for its disabled residents for years. About 14.5% to 15.2% of Lewisham’s population is known to be disabled; but of course meaningful change costs money. Empty virtue signalling isn’t going to cut it. The Lewisham Mayor’s manifesto mentioned his desire to work with the Disabled People’s Commission. Which finished years ago. No sign of him taking an interest in the successor organisation yet.

By comparison, 1.02% of the population over 16 is thought to be trans - however, around 16.2% of the population’s height="1278px" width="100%" src="www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc2205/fig5/index.html"></iframe> main language is not English; & approximately 3.3% of the population either cannot speak English well or cannot speak it all - something we know caused issues with the former statistic. Lewisham also has a large religious population: 43.8% Christian; 7.4% Muslim; 2.1% Hindu; 0.3% Jewish (worth noting the Synagogue is Orthodox); & 0.2% Sikh. They might like to recall that religion is ALSO a protected characteristic - and indeed that GC beliefs are protected under the EA too.

Will also write; & will alert people I know are TERFy locally…

“The Building Regulations can be contravened by not following the correct procedures or not meeting the technical performance requirements. If the building owner or those responsible for the works contravene the Building Regulations, the local authority may prosecute them in the magistrates’ court.” (From Approved Document T 2024)

So the local authority take themselves to court?!

Can the local authority decide they are above national Building Regulations for toilets?

“We say this to you in no uncertain terms: Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are fundamentally valid.

Luckily, I'm the head of all of these councils, so I'll make sure that the law is followed by them all. I mean, I've never been elected or employed by them, or even lived anywhere near those areas; but trans councillors are councillors, so my identity as their leader is fundamentally valid, unless you're a nasty fascist bigot.

I don't know if it's a result of utter stupidity or a deliberate misogynistic agenda; but they all automatically centre the trans people and their desires, and have no interests or thoughts whatsoever about considering women as humans with the same level of respect. What they're really saying is "Transwomen are women who matter; but actual women are worthless".

Maybe they see themselves as some kind of modern Robin Hood... except instead of robbing the rich and giving to the poor, they want to rob those who have enough, so that they will no longer have anything, in order to give it to others who also have enough, but want what others have in addition. It's literally like giving your two children a cake each and one of them screaming at you about how much you hate them and ignore their rights and safety and personal dignity, because they wanted both cakes and you haven't automatically taken their sibling's cake away to give to them as well.

@TakingMyChancesWithTheRabbits Omg your dad sounds awesome. I worked for Lambeth for a while and there were so many really solid and hardworking staff who I really admired. I do like Linda Bellos now, I expect I was young and stupid, actually I know I was.
And shame about the surcharge change, but councillors can still end up in court if they break the law. One of the things I learnt at Lambeth, funnily enough was to be quiet when doing dodgy things. You know rather than make a film about how exactly you intended to break the law. Kids today dont have the skillz.

It was mentioned upthread that councillors can’t be surcharged any more. I googled it and that is sadly right. It looks like Blair got rid of the liability for councillors. I think it should come back ASAP. Especially if they get greater devolved powers.

I can see some absolute nuts wielding power locally and regionally, whether Green or Reform.

My Dad used to work for Lambeth around then (which is why I remember the surcharging thing, as a loud of councillors got done like that in the mid 80s), and he always liked Linda Bellos because she "straight". Which he then had to clarify he meant in the "honest and direct" sense, as she was fairly publicly lesbian even back then.

I haven't read the whole thread, so this might have been mentioned but local authorities have legal duties to enforce/uphold a range of laws [food safety, health and safety, environmental protection etc.] If they fail to do this any person affected can report them to the ombudsman service. You will need to go through the council complaint process first but the LGO has quite strong powers to get them to follow their legal duties. This is what I would do if it was my council.

https://www.lgo.org.uk/

I very rarely mention individual incidents on here but the document I sent various people lists some of the many verifiable incidents that have taken place very recently, mostly in the U.K. It’s taken some long walks and long breaks to get through it.

It puts being ‘verbally abused’ (ie shouted at to get out of the ladies) into context.

That’s awful 😞

It seems that Islington Council have done the same. This is Emily Thornberry' response

A reminder that yesterday, today, tomorrow and always: trans women are women and trans men are men. Proud to represent a Borough that recognises that protecting women doesn't need to come at the expense of trans people's safety and dignity

Twat

Yeah, that too.

What an absolute waste of time and money. Why can't Councils focus on things they can actually make a difference with? Like fly tipping, air quality, safer streets.

I will refrain from saying how I feel about that letter.

The vast majority of people don’t feel comfortable using public toilets in any survey I have seen.

Since Bridget Phillipson’s department got a very long report of mine in April, at least two more men have been convicted of raping young women in non domestic toilets. I expect there would be more if I looked harder. There will also be more people who have died in toilets - but not murdered as people are suggesting happens or will happen. It will be drug overdoses, self-harm, cardiac arrests, and other heart and neurological conditions. Deaths can sometimes be prevented if the design enables other users in the washroom to see the toilet user has collapsed.

If they want real data and evidence for toilet provision, I can discuss. I really want everyone to be safer in toilets.

I reckon 6 people. 5 said yes

‘Summer of sex’ Labour MP in row over transgender guidance

https://www.thetimes.com/article/125221c6-951f-46c6-b14b-ee663c418dc8?shareToken=6a51fad8674cee9aa082b2d1d6aaf5d3

I'd like a comprehensive, reality-based definition of "unsafe" first, before I'd consider if it's true or not. I don't believe anyone has ever defined the term in a way on which all have agreed. Or a definition for which the goalposts are not constantly moved.

And they are quoting the Good Law Project as an authority, poor saps.

I wonder how many trans people were questioned to come up with the figure of "84% of Trans+ people feeling Britain is unsafe"; as many as a hundred?

So many threads mentioning toilets today!

Cut and pasted from another post of mine on another thread. TLDR They don’t know what they’re doing.

This is a screenshot of building regs highlighted in document T.

You have to make sure women and men are provided for first. Then add unisex.
This is the document if the screenshot didn’t come out well
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6901feb971b575684c3cf7c4/ADT_2024_rev16Jun25.pdf
“The Building Regulations can be contravened by not following the correct procedures or not meeting the technical performance requirements. If the building owner or those responsible for the works contravene the Building Regulations, the local authority may prosecute them in the magistrates’ court.”

You may see in Approved Document T that it does not mention door gaps! I have it confirmed they can be there in single sex designs C and D they are just not mentioned. In a lot of the text you can see it’s implied but HSE said they were trying to keep the document manageable and short for general readership. Which is why my campaign started to show the importance. I want to get the advantages stated in them and put as an option in the cross section diagrams. This is the document most people will look at. I have spoken to the Health and Safety Executive and the Building Safety Regulator who confirmed the dimensions for optional door gaps in British Standards BS6465 are correct.
British Standards BS6465 has 4 parts that cost ££££ and go in to a lot of technical detail including calculations for men v women’s toilets, positioning of hooks, circulation space, widths, heights etc. It’s many pages long. I have parts of it. That’s where my ‘ventilation, cleaning, prevention of misuse and supervision’ comes from when I talk about the advantages of not having fully enclosed toilet compartments. Approved Document T is based on BS6465.

This is why I roll my eyes when people think they know better and think it’s ok making single sex toilet washrooms into ‘inclusive’ toilets by adding full height doors and partitions round the toilet.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time over decades refining all of these documents, based on the biological needs of men and women. Nothing makes sense in these documents if ‘women’ doesn’t mean biological women and ‘men’ doesn’t mean biological men.

Sadly not all the councils are getting the same push back...

And yet again....

If local or national government representatives are modelling that law is a matter of personal choice and conscience and can be ignored at will -

then it's time to ask why they feel parking charges, council tax and other inconvenient or disagreed with laws should be obeyed by those living under those councils.

The leaders of six London boroughs — Lambeth, Hackney, Haringey, Lewisham, Southwark and Waltham Forest — made a joint commitment to keep their services “inclusive” and warned the rules “will feel like an attack” on transgender and non-binary residents.

Entirely happy to be exclusionary and discriminatory to, and to make their proud public attack on, women and gay people however.

Enough with this now. Those who don't believe in equality and legal protections should be permitted to parts of the population they dislike, should not be eligable to hold any position of local or national government where objectivity and public service is required. I don't care if they're anti woman, anti gay, racist, whatever. They can go put a black shirt on and play their personal politics games in other roles, and parties pushing for this should be openly campaigning on their prejudiced tickets but not again permitted into public office where objectivity, equality of service and the Nolan principles are required. I include the 160+ MPs who apparently lack the brain or integrity to understand this and signed their name to an anti-woman and anti-gay, anti equality and anti inclusion petition to parliament.

For those living locally who can complain:

PLEASE TELL THEM - using the word 'equality' or 'inclusion' as a means of justifying their prejudice and personal anti-woman/anti-gay agenda is wholly unacceptable. They are openly NOT considering women and gay people as equal to these men, and do not wish to follow the law that permits their inclusion.

'Inclusion' and 'Equality' are not words exclusively referring to trans identified men. This has now got to be shouted from the rooftops and exposed, in the press, in every letter, everywhere possible. This is a lie, this is a con, this is an attempt to decieve and justify the absolutely bloody awful. No man is hurt by women and gay people being permitted the equal, parallel, accessible services that they need alongside his. He is merely peeved at worst.

And they can stop using the phrase 'LGBT+' too if (and they always do) they merely mean 'trans activists'. If they don't have the guts to honestly face and justify what they want then they already know they shouldn't be doing it.

Checking the reactions, even if you charitably interpreted all the other emoji reactions as pro trans including the angry face ones, the lol faces are still over double the amount.