The Times articles on Stonewall: 26.06.2021

[JessicaYardley]

There is a series of articles in the Times covering different aspects of Stonewall:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stonewall-equality-list-bullies-bosses-and-silences-dissent-cz6k7klf5

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stonewall-ambassador-i-believed-in-the-scheme-to-uphold-rights-but-we-created-a-monster-0c9vvzhfm

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/avon-and-somerset-police-paid-stonewall-thousands-learning-to-be-lgbt-ally-zdqnnvmdn

We have to accept that there was hardly anywhere in government that wasn't captured and they must now be running around trying to work out how they could have allowed illegality to creep into our institutions.

The Welsh and Scottish governments are both trying to show how progressive they are compared to England but in the rush they have ignored the law. Shame on them

Of course it's not just Stonewall that ScotGov is paying to push the TRA agenda...

www.gov.scot/publications/equality-national-intermediary-bodies-funding-2017-2020/

Which of the articles is this in?

I answered this with a screenshot above - but I'm now interested in which article littlbrowndog's snapshot is from because ostracism of dissenting colleagues on internal forums sounds even more distressing and potentially actionable.

These 'allies' who did this tho' - how are they looking at themselves or was this always for CV points and they won't look back at the harm they did to their colleagues and regret it?

It brought to mind another very fine Times leader wrt to the Harry Miller case:

As the judge in Mr Miller’s case, Mr Justice Julian Knowles, put it: “In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.” It is to be hoped that yesterday’s ruling will help to keep it that way. It is vital that the police and other institutions are not driven by the often powerful pro-transgender movement into eroding freedom of expression.

@NonnyMouse1337

The Welsh Government gave even more to Stonewall in 2020.

Total amount in 2020 was £152,909.

I am in Wales. It is incredibly depressing to see this, and also to think about what that money could do in other areas, when so much of Wales is struggling with rural poverty. I am a long time Plaid voter but they have been captured now, as have Cymdeithas, who I saw on Instagram insisting that TWAW in response to a very polite comment on single sex space for women.

I am astonished by the tone of the recommendations from Stonewall ... "We would like to see more engagement from your main account" etc. The arrogance is shocking

@OvaHere

MLM - Multi Level Marketing. Amway, Nu Skin, Herbalife etc...

They operate in a way that means people who join up are always chasing the next level which means investing more money.

Sounds like a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme if you ask me. My kids used to play video games when they were younger, it looked benign enough, but the games wanted to make money and devised them so the child would get more points if they paid to do so by clicking something, I never allowed the children to do that though.

From this. The times

Thanks, littlbrowndog - that's the Leader/editorial piece (I'd posted an archive link for it above but I'd somehow glossed over that horror).

We have kids living in poverty in Scotland. Education gap not closed. Women not getting called for smear tests

Yet my government spends time and money on this

🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

@littlbrowndog

This is my government

This is possibly the most horrific quote of all. Repeated for emphasis:

"As a corrosive example, the Scottish government’s applications have included screenshots of social media activity and the ostracism of dissenting colleagues on internal forums "

That would be Joanna cherry ?

This is all in every respect an inspection for accreditation, to demonstrate that you share the values and principles of the accrediting organisation. It is not a situation in which the applying organisation is listening to partisan positions to inform its own decision making.

This should not be happening.

Sorry, I was referring to the image littebrowndog posted, I had forgotten that images get stripped out of quotes

What a disgrace my government is

Oh and the highest drug deaths in uk which seemed to be a surprise to SG

Thank god some sunlight is being shone on Stinewall's methods now. And with the ECHR and otber oeganisations leaving them, a taboo has been broken and more will follow. I do feel sorry for women in Scotland though :-(

@littlbrowndog

That would be Joanna cherry ?

And Joan McAlpine who was manoeuvred out of her seat. And I haven't seen Sturgeon condemn the fact that a female MSP had to move to safe house after threats (www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-57614736) - couldn't have anything to do with the fact that she signed a letter urging caution over GRA reform....(www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/politicians-urge-scottish-government-not-rush-gender-change-bill-1419191)

Not in the Times but also relevant:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.13029

"Sex and the Office for National Statistics: A Case Study in Policy Capture"

FOI responses show friendly exchanges between Stonewall and ONS, a quick turnaround of emails, and ease in securing meetings. This is in contrast to the experiences of the signatories of the 2019 letter of concern.38 For example, the CEO of Stonewall had three personal meetings with Iain Bell in 2020.39 Emails exchanged prior to the ONS round table show Stonewall suggesting additional invitees, and cautioning: ‘I'd strongly recommend that careful thought is applied to how the ONS can practically ensure that, depending on who is present at the roundtable, this is not a hostile environment for trans attendees’, to which ONS responded: ‘I fully empathise with your words around ensuring that a hostile environment is not created and I can reassure you that ONS will consider very carefully how the meeting will be conducted—I will also arrange for a colleague to take a call with yourself ahead of this event to run through your thoughts or any concerns you may have.’ There were in fact no trans attendees present at the event.40

ONS is a Stonewall Diversity Champion, and a member of the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. Member organisations make an annual submission and are scored by Stonewall under various criteria, and given advice on how they can improve. The score organisations receive translates into a ranking, with employers competing to be in the Stonewall top 100. Essentially, organisations pay to be lobbied and trained in line with the view that gender identity should always supersede sex.41 Stonewall has pressured employers to silence or sanction feminist critics.42

FOI requests regarding this aspect of the relationship between ONS and Stonewall have met with claims by ONS not to have kept copies of their submissions or correspondence: ‘The ONS last made a submission to the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index during 2018. We do not hold a record of the submission due to staff changes since then. The ONS does not hold any correspondence that relates to conditions the organisation was expected to fulfil or any policies the ONS was required to change to meet any standards.’43 These claims to have no record of documentation regarding ONS's relationship with a major lobbyist would seem to represent exceptionally poor record keeping at best.

You know what one of the worst aspects of this is? The fact that so many people knew that this must be what was happening - and yet there was no way to raise this that didn't flag someone as a transphobia, bigot, or conspiracy theorist.

We've been working among colleagues who were encouraged to ostracise and report colleagues to prove their own allegiance to a greater scheme for which their body/company/organisation was competing for recognition from Stonewall - a lobbyist that lost its sense of proportionately and any sense of a moral compass long ago.

What makes this fundamentally any different to a protection racket? The stonewall league table is providing 'protection' for other organisations to not be shamed publicly for not meeting Stonewalls diversity demands. How is this any different to a shop owner being threatened to pay up every week or have their business destroyed? It's exactly the same. They need to be held account for this. And businesses need to stop funding them and walk away.

Sounds like a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme if you ask me.

Yes that's what I meant. MLMs are also basically that with a few tweaks to keep them technically legal.

I noticed in the article it mentioned a hard sell approach was used to get companies to sign up, described as being like a pitch for a timeshare.

Companies that do poorly on the Index are encouraged to spend more money on conferences to help them address their failings.

Seems like there's always another level to reach, another hoop to jump through.

What makes this fundamentally any different to a protection racket? The stonewall league table is providing 'protection' for other organisations to not be shamed publicly for not meeting Stonewalls diversity demands.

And worse than that. Even paid up companies in the index can have their place in the list improved by compliance, or be demoted for not denouncing colleagues.

As far as I can tell the scoring on the index is very subjective and is therefore open to, and quite possibly used for, manipulation.

What makes this fundamentally any different to a protection racket?

It isn't

gibbons just thinking that. The amount going to Stonewall to deliver a training course is probably a fraction of the amount of staff salaries to attend a course and ditto the amount of time spent on preparing submissions, time allocated from Comms teams for social media etc.

I'd like to know the true amount, that tax payers have subsidised to remove the rights of women.

The council was also penalised because its internal LGBT network had only gay leaders and no transgender ones. In a letter, sharing Stonewall’s feedback for improvement, a council representative wrote: “Suggestion: Better use of social media accounts. Would like to see examples from the main account because of the reach it has. Need more on trans, especially as they are currently under attack in the media

This is unbelievable. So the more the country wakes up to what is going on with gender ideology, the more stonewall try and strong arm people into supporting them in the face of it.

And, of course, it's all about the T.

The alacrity with which people sign up, and the ease with which they are persuaded that the Ponzi scheme is worth joining, does make me wonder what is in it for these people. Many of them seem to be of exactly the same mind as stonewall. They're not hearing alarm bells, they're hearing fanfares.

I see the latest Zoom update (5.7.0) now provides support for gender pronouns - I loathed this already as it's in so many of my virtual meetings and now it's part of the Basic accounts (visible by default) and off by default for all other accounts and to be enabled by the admin or account owner.