Good luck Harry The Owl

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Court case today.

twitter.com/WeAreFairCop

This feeling that the DT's defence of fighting your corner is disconcerting is, I believe, misplaced. It seems to stem from the fact that economically the DT is right of centre and only read by old farts and whatever the British version of neo-cons is.

As someone pretty much in the centre of the political spectrum and with a journalism background I have read the DT, the Times and the Guardian daily for many years - to try and ensure my prejudices were even handed ).

The prejudice against the DT is misplaced I feel (OK shoot me now).
It has pretty much always been a defender of free speech, far more so than the Guardian.

For a long time it has been a huge supporter of women in business, including campaigning, and its coverage of women's sports is unparalleled e.g. today it has a complete supplement on women's health in sport and how it has been neglected with men's being treated as the default, covering issues such as concussion, problems caused by periods and endometriosis, and by bike design in cycling.

While the Guardian has stepped back from supporting women in favour of niche minorities e.g. the trans issues the DT has quietly filled the space, thus it is firmly gender critical.

How this niche lobby group have managed to achieve such extensive regulatory capture if they are as marginalized and oppressed as they claim is an enigma

Stonewall's gay rights reputation and Ruth Hunt's misguided leadership.

@BiologyIsReal that's a good analysis. Might start buying the telegraph every so often. Have started allowing myself to read the mail online recently; there's a lot on there I don't like but they've clearly got their finger on the pulse of what a vast percentage of the population think, and they seem pretty firmly GC.

^The prejudice against the DT is misplaced I feel (OK shoot me now).
It has pretty much always been a defender of free speech, far more so than the Guardian.^

I am of an age to recall the Sunday Times fighting to release the truth about Thalidomide

I am of an age to recall the Sunday Times fighting to release the truth about Thalidomide

So did the news of the world.

It's almost like, despite differing editorial opinions on many things, most free media can agree that things which damage the vulnerable need to be examined and the powerful held accountable...

Reading the Daily Telegraphs defence of free speech evokes a similar reaction in me ... if The Daily Telegraph is cogently fighting your corner, WTF is going on ?

The old saying about the DT was that the politics was bollocks, but the news reporting was the best in the business.

We've gone way beyond the party political with gender ideology. What is at stake is the right to recognise material reality as we see it.

And we are not just talking about factory production here. We are talking about the basic structures that organise our understanding of existence. If the terms "woman" and "man" can mean either sex, and are only subject to a nebulous understanding of gender expression that cannot be formally measured, then we essentially eradicate the social, civic and political recognition of biological sex class.

That has huge implications for all communities and the political sphere. It fundamentally means that the state has to recognise "hyper" individualist access to services and facilities. It means that policies pertaining to a class or community of people can no longer be valid.

This is the logical conclusion to "pregnant people" language. It is a way of fracturing class-based analysis in favour of the hyper-individualistic, which is an approach that is fundamentally unaffordable. It is a way of crashing institutions through overloading them with policies that require hyper-individualistic access.

With gender ideology, you can't get much more fundamental difference in humans than biological sex differences. So it affects pretty much everybody everywhere.

I am still of the mind that a lot of this bollocks started when it become clear that campaigns for equality were actually working. Much easier to simply fudge what it means to be "female" or "black" or "disabled" than actually allow a level playing field.

All of this self-id nonsense pretty much wipes away any ability to realistically identify discrimination - which is the whole point. It's one reason why the major political parties have suddenly become so woke. Fuck all to do with ensuring a fair an equal society and everything to do with a back door attempt to turn back the clock.

It has pretty much always been a defender of free speech, far more so than the Guardian

I don’t think it’s surprising or incompatible with the Telegrah’s traditionally Conservative values. Au contraire. It’s an example of them. After all, in the ideological conflict between freedom and equality, the Conservative position was to emphasize the former. Douglas Murray is the associate editor of The Spectator, another Conservative publication critiical of this aggressive lobby group. Meanwhile, the Guardian? Its self censorship of ‘difficult’ news is off the charts. Where are its brave journalists questioning the current orthodoxy? On mute

"This feeling that the DT's defence of fighting your corner is disconcerting is, I believe, misplaced. It seems to stem from the fact that economically the DT is right of centre and only read by old farts and whatever the British version of neo-cons is."

Yes spot on. I used to do a paper round and the DT readers' homes were quite different than the Times' readers. Many almost scary and if I was unlucky enough to put the paper through their boxes five minutes late, they'd always either be yanking it through, or open the door at the same time as I pushed it through (so it wouldn't go) and then give me a tut and a withering look. Very intimidating - and none of the other people were like that!
So that has clouded my view of that particular paper!

But as someone who used to "identify"* as a leftie, to have the DM and the DT report things I agree on, whilst tG (which I gave up on long ago) is busy implying I'm a bigot, really is disconcerting. The "side" of the media that used to call me a "bleeding-heart" is now the side I see reporting more accurately on women's rights.

But I see that it could be a reflection of a change in how I view the world rather than a change in the media.

What I'm interested in these days is critical thought, even if I disagree with resulting conclusions. I've even come across that in some DM articles, although that's since the change in editor.

You're right BovaryX, if you distill the political spectrum down to its fundamentals, it's essentially a balance between freedom and equality.

Society needs both right wing and left wing politics to keep each other in check and from going off the rails. This is something I have come to appreciate as I get older.

The extreme factions of left and right are equally scary. As we are seeing now, when authoritarianism is on the rise in the name of equality, it is the conservative and right wing parts of the political spectrum that we can rely on to pull us back from the brink the name of preserving the freedom of citizens.

What is always important is not which side of the political spectrum you are on or which tribal camp you fall into, but developing and maintaining critical thinking skills that enables you to assess information and gives you a healthy dose of skepticism whenever any important political decisions are being made.

Even though I am naturally very drawn towards left wing policies, I have no problem with supporting more centrist or right wing ideas if they are sensible and pragmatic.

I'm ecstatic at some of the news coverage, it really did seem so hopeless at time but I am in awe of how eloquent and calm Maya has been and how brave Harry is to have pushed this into the spotlight for the world to see. No doubt at a huge emotional and financial cost.

I have personal experience of gonna through the legal system (nothing related to FWR) but I can tell you there is nothing but raw emotion when a judge agrees with your stance and validated that you are right. It strips away everything else and left (at least it did with me) a sobbing heap as years of stress, questioning yourself to your core and utter disbelief that you are even in this situation begin to ebb away.

There is nothing like it and I'm eternally grateful to you all who push and stand up for themselves, because it is a slog with no guaranteed outcome, so a heartfelt thank you from myself. The judge was asking some important questions in these cases and it seems others are waking up to the fact that there needs to be debate, not just to accept everything blindly because you'll be labelled a nasty bigot if you don't.

political spectrum you are on or which tribal camp you fall into, but developing and maintaining critical thinking skills that enables you to assess information and gives you a healthy dose of skepticism whenever any important political decisions are being made

Nonny, I absolutely agree with you about this. Critical thinking and skepticism. Unfortunately, we are in an era where both seem critically endangered. Especially in academia, which seems to be at the epicenter of the totalitarian tendencies

The "side" of the media that used to call me a "bleeding-heart" is now the side I see reporting more accurately on women's rights.

I now realise that, twenty years ago, I was a "bleeding-heart." It took two decades of life experience and involvement in the guts of community and local politics to make me realise that things were never easy or simple.

Because if solving a problem was easy and simple, it would have already been done.

I used to be perceived as a radical left-winger, which goes to show what the hard left is like. But here's the rub. If you are a pragmatic, practical person of the left, now matter how radical you are, you inevitably use a similar style of mental processing to those on the right by virtue of the fact that you ask three questions: how can this objective be realistically achieved? Will this policy have the positive effect we want? Is there a possibility that this policy will have a detrimental effect?

Asking those questions automatically puts you in the same field as those on the right in the eyes of a lot of the left , and is pretty much the downfall of the left in Britain.

I'm afraid to say that gender ideology is the first time many people will have actually faced a political phenomenon that directly affects them and where it has become apparent that few in the current political sphere have bothered to ask those three questions.

Will this policy have the positive effect we want? Is there a possibility that this policy will have a detrimental effect?

This. I think that last question is particularly significant. Because even asking it in certain forums is enough to be denounced. I am thinking of Guardian comments....

The prejudice against the DT is misplaced I feel (OK shoot me now).
It has pretty much always been a defender of free speech, far more so than the Guardian.

Me too, BiologyIsReal. I took out. Telegraph sub after Trump's election, as a purposeful "step outside my bubble" move; so many of my US friends seemed to have been completely blindsided by his election, and I didn't want to lose touch with what the other side was thinking and be caught on the hop in a similar way.

It's a surprising newspaper in many ways - regular columns by Julie Bindel and Joan Smith, excellent coverage of women's sports, initiatives for women in business, their deputy editor is a remainer (and most of their cartoonists, I suspect), and they carry a much wider range of political opinions than the Guardian.

Okay, there are downsides - the hagiography of Boris Johnson and the occasional article by Garage, but as you say, it doesn't live down to its stereotype.

Thank you, Nonny. I've been really struggling with the fact that I seem to have slid from being staunchly on the left to someone who is reading stuff in the Telegraph that I agree with. I've come to the conclusion that age and experience and running a business and so on have made me much more pragmatic and grounded and willing to consider more centrist solutions than when I was younger. Which is why I'm currently looking at Labour's borrowing plans, as well as their transgender policy, and wondering whether this is really a good idea – particularly if we're going to leave Europe.

Packing, your contribution has really hit home too. Yes, critical thinking and pragmatism can lead one to unexpected conclusions.

I've just caught up with this thread! I was one of the other (non FairCop) live tweeters yesterday and Weds and it's been great to look over the reactions on here (and to see some of my tweets quoted, I feel like I was doing an actual service as a tiny part of the effort, even if it was partly gif-based...)

I'm a regular Mumsnetter too but don't want to out myself (NC here) as I tweet under my real name and basically bare my soul on here!

Thanks for your efforts, Camberwell!

CamberwellMcGee there was nothing tiny about your effort. What you did was a huge part of helping shine a light. It really is appreciated.

Thank you Camberwell!

Thank you Camberwell ♥️

I feel like I was doing an actual service

Not feel like. Were!

Thank you.

Friends used to scoff at me for reading the Telegraph but I love the crossword (and the letters). I remember the advertising billboards saying 'Hard news and an infernal crossword'.

I've gone over to The Times recently because of the GC coverage but there's no reason I can't do both. I can't finish The Times crossword often.

I've come to the conclusion that age and experience and running a business and so on have made me much more pragmatic and grounded and willing to consider more centrist solutions than when I was younger

I also think a lot of what was taken as being left-wing in the past, is different from modern leftist discourse.

Following from afar, I love the Labour manifesto but am really concerned about their borrowing plans too. Here in Mexico, the president has implemented an austerity programme aimed at cutting out a lot of middle men, lowering top government salaries and combatting corruption, while at the same building up a miniscule bur previously absent system of financial support for the poor. Different realities from one country to another, but I am so glad he is doing all that without getting the country further into debt.