Parents force council to suspend transgender advice (Times article)

[Igneococcus]

Warwickshire council suspending "Trans toolkit" guidance:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/52809460-8657-11ea-b876-ef9d21d57c48?shareToken=6ba92097e2979fe015f12b4c1da6f12c

Yes and that’s exactly how regulatory capture takes hold. Organisations don’t resist political lobbying because they don’t want to risk not being in control of their own narrative. PR issues and stakeholder relationships then shape their policies, as you say, regardless of the law.

Heres the comment from 'Dominic Cummings' under theTimes article. No idea if it's the real one although the back handed compliment sounds like him. If its the real deal then well done ladies!

"Fightback and the decisions by Liz Truss were initiated by Mumsnet. For once they did something useful."

Can't be, surely? But if it is.

Do wonder how many of those excellent comments were left by MNers.

I'm a regular Times commentator. On trans issues there is no support whatever for the TRA position.

A spokesman for Oxfordshire council said it was confident that its Trans Toolkit would be found lawful in court.

This bit in the article had me wondering a bit. Where is this confidence coming from? Are they banking on the fact that the lobby groups pushing this so called Trans toolkit are being genuine with how they've presented the EA in their toolkit? Or are they really this stupid?

I’m guessing from that ‘confidence’ the answer could be ‘really this stupid’

Brilliant news

Or bravado: they're unlikely to release a statement along the lines of 'ah shite we fucked it up and now they've got us bang to rights'.

Where is this confidence coming from? Are they banking on the fact that the lobby groups pushing this so called Trans toolkit are being genuine with how they've presented the EA in their toolkit? Or are they really this stupid?

I spoke to someone at my local council about some similar guidance to this. They assured me that it had been checked by the council's legal team and was found to be legally compliant. My assumption is that their legal 'experts' don't have a good understanding of equalities legislation.

I'm not surprised they said that. They would look like total numpties if they saud anyrhing else. The Director of Education and Head of Legal at OCC have both left apparently. Baling out before the shit hiits the fan.

Looking at the comments so far, literally all they have is that its the girls fault if a boy beats another boy up.
Once again the very articulate regulars putting them straight..

A spokesman for Oxfordshire council said it was confident that its Trans Toolkit would be found lawful in court.

Its a badly advised comment, uneccessarily defensive & will not age well. The complaints about the toolkit concern the Safeguarding of girls.

Oxford LA should be more open to considering potential breeches of its Safeguarding responsibilities.

I'd be willing to open a book on the legal team looking - as all LAs etc have looked when making trans based policy - solely at trans people when they checked the legalities. All the impact assessments that looked only at trans people and no other group, because they weren't considered relevant, all the lack of impact assessment because no other group was relevant. I bet the legal team checked very carefully around everything in law to ensure that the legal requirements for trans people were complied with, but I very much doubt they thought equally and thoroughly about girls. FOI requests repeatedly show this. There is never evidence of fair and equal consideration; the Welsh parliament can't even find minutes of meetings or emails where impact was considered at all. Not a single line.

It's quite likely in a captured organisation this didn't even occur to them.

Hopefully it will also come out during this that the head of the EHRC was previously the head of Stonewall, and how much their advice and guidance to LA legal teams for example has been Stonewall law instead of actual law as it has been in so many other contexts.

It needs to be made very clear to this government that this niche political lobby group reinterpretation of law to their personal agenda and dissemination of this imaginative interpretation allowed to form local policy on the ground has been allowed to happen on their watch, and has effectively usurped parliamentary authority. Because what other lobby group could now effectively walk in and take over policy on the ground like this without the government noticing?

Or bravado: they're unlikely to release a statement along the lines of 'ah shite we fucked it up and now they've got us bang to rights'.

Yes that was my thought. At the moment, they have nothing to lose by this.

All the impact assessments that looked only at trans people and no other group

Agree. They don't seem to understand what an EIA is actually for. It's a tool to check you're not inadvertently discriminating against one or more of the 9 protected characteristics, irrespective of whether the policy is intended to promote equality for a different one.