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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Starmer's new Cabinet Secretary, sigh

78 replies

fanOfBen · 20/02/2026 11:05

https://archive.ph/vPJLN
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/20/starmer-cabinet-secretary-staff-join-non-binary-book-club/

"As part of an annual review, she set the employee a target of joining the department’s “gender non-conforming book club”, where government workers supposedly read Middlesex, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides about an intersex American, as well as books about people transitioning gender, the source said."

And lots more.

OP posts:
MsGreying · 23/02/2026 10:39

Imnobody4 · 20/02/2026 17:00

Why are all the Telegraph bashers ignoring the Guardian article posted above.
Appointment of Antonia Romeo as head of civil service shows ‘poor judgment’, say former colleagues | Civil service | The Guardian https://share.google/7ubpSC0GxX93Ceogx
On the complaints;
Hitchens found that she had a case to answer on her management style, but not on her financial affairs. His finding was overturned by the Cabinet Office however, which said she had no case to answer.

And given Gordon Brown is claiming ignorance by his current investigations of AMW then I think we should assume that no one will own up to a cabinet office decision if pushed.

SionnachRuadh · 23/02/2026 10:59

I know people who have worked in Propriety & Ethics, and maybe a few who still do, and I think they'll be surprised to discover in the Times that they are Whitehall's equivalent of Nixon's "plumbers", who get to go around doing cool stuff like cracking safes and shredding confidential reports. Bonus points to the Times for calling them a "shadowy" unit.

It sounds a lot more exciting than "Simon McDonald has written a memoir and he's got a section in it about this dreadful pushy woman he used to work with, and he doesn't name any names but everyone will know who it is"

In reality, 90% of what they do is answering queries from departments saying "we'd like to appoint Sir Bufton Tufton as chair of Great British Widgets, do you think there's a conflict of interest" and the rest is producing reports for the PM saying "we regret to tell you that Peter Mandelson is a bit dodgy and scandal prone, are you sure you really want to appoint him"

Ian Fleming used to occasionally put a scene in his James Bond novels where Bond was doing his desk job at MI6, and I sometimes think you could get a good Reggie Perrin style comedy about Bond spending all day in his office getting emails from M reminding him of the service's sexual harassment policy, and telling him that Cabinet Office guidelines require him to work in the office at least three days a week, and that under the expenses policy the next time he goes on a mission he'll have to stay in Travelodge.

UtopiaPlanitia · 23/02/2026 13:59

I think that all this juggling of personnel is going to amount to more of the same with this government.

They remind me somewhat of regimes in Eastern Europe in the late 80s who continued trying to do 'business as usual, comrade', while institutions and the economy increasingly deteriorated and the politicians/administrators couldn't solve the crisis using stale ideology.

Other things in common are that we have recent governments borrowing heavily from foreign banks, infrastructure decay, repression of dissent/speech, and we've had harsh austerity measures that became the new normal. It's also safe to say there is growing public discontent with the state of how crap and grim everything has become.

None of it is happening to the level it did in Communist countries but it is happening and it does appear that our ruling class are also very out of touch with how the populace is feeling about everyday life.

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