What exactly has Andrew Neil done?

[RhymesWithOrange]

AN is acting churlish because women are not falling over themselves in gratitude for his support for women's rights in the face of gender self id.

Can someone tell me exactly what he's done bar send out a few tweets? Which are of course most welcome. But he's not exactly in Maya/Allison/Jo/Rosie/JK/Raquel/LGB Alliance territory, is he?

He posted a link to the Chloe Cole speech in the USA the other day saying 'what have we become'.

And people pointed out 'we' didn't include them, as they have been speaking out about it, including in his own bloody publication, for years.

I'm not judging him harshly on this. He says he had no idea and when someone pointed out the "we" issue, he said:

"I understand that. But we allowed it to happen. In my case because I had no idea such things could be done to young, vulnerable people. I feel ashamed and angry. It must be stopped."

twitter.com/afneil/status/1685032706139197440?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

Looking through his replies, he is a bit "shopping trolley" on this but he seems to have woken up/stumbled into it. And from his replies and retweets, he seems willing to find out more.

To be fair to Andrew Neil, I've seen him ridicule MPs on the Andrew Neil show over their lack of ability to define a woman.

I’m wondering if Helen Joyce has got to him!

Helen did a great interview with the Mumford and Sons chap on the Spectator podcast that made M&S chap’s eyes go very wide.

Helen must have some good contacts with the Speccie through the Economist?

Like it or not Andrew Neil is probably the most influential political journalist the UK has ever had. If he takes this up beyond a tweet or two it will be significant.

We can mock him for being a part timer/ late comer when it’s all over.

I suppose if you don't look into it very much, it could be possible to not believe that doctors, psychologists and parents would allow this to happen. It's genuinely horrific stuff. You could easily imagine it's the fevered imagination of people who would believe any lurid conspiracy.

Bev Jackson's sensible tweet

Why are so many people laying into@afneil and@wesstreeting? Yes we wish they’d spoken out sooner. Yes we wish they’d known about the horrors of child “transition”. But if we want to stop this thing, we want to encourage people to change their minds - publicly. Not berate them.

I dislike him very much. But we need to keep a "golden bridge " open for these dicks who claim they were unaware. Or else they will claim the world was just waiting for them to speak about this mess rather than those nasty women. I'm not sure how much patience I have for that but I think we'll have to get used to it.

Plus he said he was ashamed which I, for one, appreciate.

Unfortunately it is in the nature of twitter in encouraging an inability to control one's impulses.

I actually quite like Andrew Neil, though he's become more crotchety as he's aged. I had an encounter with him once at a Labour party conference and I thought he was empathic and sensitive, despite his media carapace.

I find this to be true, I'm lucky that my place in life isn't dependent on what others think/say about me so I've been able to be very vocal- the reality is that most (well less now because the message is certainly filtering through) people haven't thought about what it means to be trans, so have no idea of the experiments that are ongoing.

But then I was like that, it was MN that brought this issue to me, my 2018 posts were broadly supportive of the trans movement, it was posts on here which made me question- now I'm a gardener.

Whilst it is important to highlight the work that has gone before I agree with the term 'golden bridge ' and we still need sunlight, especially as we go into an election year.

Not very sensible because it's a perfect example of political leaning over honesty in the way it gives a free pass to a politician who not only fully understood the issue but actively exploited it to target women in his own party. A civilian like Neil doesn't have to pay any attention, he is free to concentrate on his own priorities and field of expertise. A politician deserves no such consideration and when that politician has behaved like Streeting then the only response should be career-ending condemnation. Replace 'women' with any other group you choose, no one would be defending Streeting. Value yourself the way you value others and hold him responsible.

He's chairman of GB News isn't that enough ?

Exactly. Equating the two men is political bias

Neil hasn’t been part of bullying in a party which tried to silence one female voice

Interesting how quickly people accept that they’re the same

This! It all sounds utterly mad when ppl first come across it. You can’t believe that educated professional people would say “it’s fine for a rapist to go to a woman’s prison provided they call themselves Isla & pop on some pink leggings”

or “the female rape victim who is asking for a female single sex space for their support group is the one being unreasonable”

it sounds so completely crazy - until you realise it’s true

People definitely assume that like most medicine gender health care is evidence based. Saying that it isn't sounds more like being a conspiracy theorist than the truth and yet it's the situation we find ourselves in. Nobody wants to believe we're actually harming the "most marginalised" by giving them what they claim to want

I agree with Bev, we need to welcome the converts not berate them. We need to stop this dangerous madness and that’s the priority. We rightly criticise the TRA side for its purity spirals, let’s not go there ourselves.

Only for a couple of months!

he was part of the set up and left quite dramatically (which was how come Farage squeaked into what was meant to be AN’s prime time slot)

https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/24/andrew-neil-almost-had-breakdown-at-gb-news

GB news is a mixed bag but I’m glad it exists (even if I only really watch the Andrew Doyle show). It’s definitely shaken up the established news outlets a bit, which is always a good thin

I do have some sympathy with him, we all have our eyes opened at different times and once the penny drops, it’s seems absolutely shocking that it’s happening.

Standard surely. People peak, are completely shocked, can't understand how it could have happened.

Happened to me six or seven years back. AN and Wes may only have caught on to the scale and importance of the issue recently. But they have caught on. We need others to join them.

My observation is that many men don't really believe men can become women but don't consider the issue important. Then they grasp some of the many implications, in ANs case the issue of detransioners. I am happy to welcome him, and others, to the coven.

AN and Wes may only have caught on to the scale and importance of the issue recently. But they have caught on.

What is Wes actually proposing? Bar letting a GP give a certificate, when happens after you get it?

I'm not sure Wes or Labour have faced up to child transitioning at all. Mostly it's Labour and LDs captured:

twitter.com/banctorg/status/1524325233276112896?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

But AN seems horrified by child transitioning and surgeries. I agree, when you first hear about it, you can easily think it's made up. However, he heard Chloe's own words - and believed her.

I agree. For me he is one of the slimiest politicians in Parliament today, and I don't see anything but self interest and expediency. However I recognise others will much prefer him to AN (again I am not a fan, but don't particularly dislike him either.) It was more in hope that Wes' conversion that others seem to believe he has had, is genuine. If it is he is welcome in the coven.

I'm sure he's been well aware of everything that's gone on, and feels that now is the time he can openly push things further in the right direction without getting cancelled. His 'what have we become' tweet is a bit disingenuous and designed to protect himself IMO. But I think it's absolutely great that detransitioners' voices are being amplified.

Late to the game men like AN are a bit irksome mainly because you know they've probably paid scant attention up until now because it's one of those things that women were making a fuss about so probably deemed it not worthy of close scrutiny.

WS is not in the same category though. He is an elected politician. He chose to be part of a group back in 2017/18 that witch hunted women who were Labour party members for wrong think (by keeping lists of those women) and had them chucked out of the party after drawn out interrogation processes. Venice Allen was one of those women, there's probably still old threads on here about it.

The press doesn't seem to have picked up on that as story, perhaps because it was the earlier days of this madness so not a well known occurrence. It did happen though so frankly his measly mouthed, weak apologies are nowhere near enough.

It's true that Wes can be considered a bit of a weathervane because I'm assuming he is ruthlessly ambitious therefore wants to be on the optimum side of any issue and is willing to flip flop as necessary. I don't think for a second he gives a crap about women and the harm this has all done.

Men who wake up and smell the coffee are one thing.

Men who wake up, smell the coffee and then blame women for not making the coffee earlier in the day is another.