From Trotsky to Tory. District Councillor for Dunton Green & Riverhead Retweets are not endorsements.
Joined January 2013
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graham clack retweeted
A lot of us were very willing to have a debate without heat, @stonewalluk, and the reason that never happened wasn't because gender critical feminists didn't want one.
While we were trying to get you to listen to our concerns, your former CEO was telling a BBC boss that gay people not wanting to include the opposite sex in their dating pool was 'sexual racism'. While we were pointing out the homophobia inherent in gender ideology, Stonewall ambassador Alex Drummond (a bearded, heterosexual man who'd had no surgery and taken no cross-sex hormones but liked wearing skirts), was going into schools to talk to students about his 'lesbian' identity. @BluskyeAllison, who actually is a lesbian, was subject to unlawful discrimination at her place of work for tweeting: ‘Stonewall recently hired Morgan Page, a male bodied person who ran workshops with the sole aim of coaching heterosexual men who identify as lesbians on how they can coerce young lesbians into having sex with them. Page called [it] “overcoming the cotton ceiling”.’
When the UK Supreme Court upheld women's right to single sex spaces, you issued a statement expressing your unhappiness about the ruling. In her report on your unhappy influence at the University of Essex, you were found by barrister @akuareindorf to have misrepresented the law as it related to women's rights: '[Stonewall have] stated the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is’.
In 2018, you publicly advised schools to shred a research pack saying there were risks to puberty blockers, in spite of the fact that you aren't a medical charity and that there was already credible evidence that puberty blockers are neither irreversible nor harm-free. Meanwhile you produced your own educational packs, recommending a children's book, for ages 5-9, in which the parent 'is neither a man, nor a woman – they’re non-binary.' In July 2022, Stonewall sent out a tweet that read ‘Research suggests that children as young as two recognise their trans identity'.
@thetimes has reported how you've sought to control the language used by NHS trusts and government on their social-media accounts. Organisations would get points from you for replacing commonly understood words with ideologically approved terms, eg, 'birthing parent' instead of 'mother'. thetimes.com/uk/society/arti…
In short, you took a maximalist position on gender identity ideology, which you attempted to enforce by diktat. You refused to acknowledge that you'd hitched your wagon to a cause that, unlike civil rights, gay rights or women's rights, sought to strip rights from others. You sought to curtail everyone's right to freedom of speech and belief by controlling what it was permissible to think and say, through the management and political class. You have argued against women's and girl's rights to their own spaces, their sports and to assemble without men. Your former CEO tried to shame gay women/men into dating the opposite sex if the latter claimed to be female/male.
Your mantra was 'no debate' because, like all totalitarians, you preferred slogans, bullying and infiltration of powerful institutions to talking to opponents. You appear to have had no concern for the lowly people your ideology was harming: gender confused kids, female rape victims, female prisoners, regular people hounded and investigated at their places of work for refusing to accept the new mandates on sex and gender issued from on high.
Your 'activism' has been a disaster for those trans-identified people who really do just want to get on with their lives in peace. You have besmirched the name of an organisation many of us were once proud to donate to, the charity that was partly responsible for securing the legal right of gay people to marry, which a lot of us thought would never happen in our lifetimes. The milquetoast words quoted below do not erase a decade of gender activism that has been disastrous not only for individuals but for society as a whole.
There was once a debate to be had, but until you acknowledge the direct harm you've caused, it is no more possible to debate you than to persuade a person in the throes of a drug-induced psychosis that they are not, in fact, the reincarnated Christ.
graham clack retweeted
Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade.
If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade?
On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare.
There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain.
As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again.
This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.
graham clack retweeted
.@KemiBadenoch says Thomas Sowell made the black conservative idea stop looking like a rare animal. Most black people she knows are socially conservative. Western societies just tell them the left is their assigned side.
She tells the story of a friend who called herself a Marxist at Oxford. After running a tough school, she read Sowell, and built the highest-performing school in the UK where almost every student is on free school meals.
graham clack retweeted
.@KemiBadenoch discovered Thomas Sowell by accident. At 24, a left-wing colleague mocked her for not knowing economics. She typed “basic economics” on Amazon and ordered the first book that appeared. She couldn’t put it down.
It explained why the Nigeria she grew up in stayed poor. When The Vision of the Anointed arrived, she was surprised to see he was black. Unlike most prominent race commentators, Sowell only mentioned race when it was relevant. He treated it as a fact, not an identity.
graham clack retweeted
Andy Burnham has just dug himself a big hole and encouraged the media to delve deeper into what happened with Abu Dhabi, Manchester, and specifically Manchester’s leadership. Councils leaders before him both became honorary presidents of Manchester City.
graham clack retweeted
We Live by the River: 1955
Enjoy this lengthy view into the bygone days of a very quaint London in the 1950s. This is a very special watch. 🤝⏳️
graham clack retweeted
Why do so many care about inheritance tax when fewer than 5% of estates pay it?
Because that statistic counts the dead.
Our new model counts living pensioner households instead. 20% have enough assets to face the tax. Over 50% in parts of London.
Thread:
graham clack retweeted
I was a very fortunate kid. My dad's GP surgery sat between the Dell and Hampshire's County Ground, so at weekends I could go to a game and get a lift home afterwards. It left me with a passion for both sports and a belief that sport opens a window onto who we are.
When I was growing up, the Tebbit test was a matter of intense debate. Which side did you cheer for at the cricket? For all the criticism it received, it was a test anyone could pass. If you supported England because you saw it as home, you were part of the team regardless of the colour of your skin. Born in Southampton, 10 year old me passed it without even knowing about it.
Giving the @MCCOfficial's Cowdrey Lecture on Thursday made me think about cricket's place in our national life and the current arguments about identity.
In Britain we've built the world's most successful multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy. I was a beneficiary of it. Whatever issues people had with me as PM (and there was no shortage) my race and religion weren't among them. I could read a lesson at the King's coronation or light Diwali diyas on Downing Street with my daughters without controversy. Foreign leaders assumed these must be huge symbolic moments. For most Brits, they just weren't that big a deal.
But Britain's democratic achievement is now under strain. Some of the challenges are ones I've written about before, like Islamism, and the failure of governments, including the one I led, to adequately control immigration. But something else is going on - a risk that we start equating skin colour with nationality.
After I left office, a debate kicked off here on @X about whether I was English at all, because I was a "brown Hindu". During the election campaign I'd been shocked when footage was broadcast of someone calling me a "Paki." It was shocking precisely because it was so unusual. That kind of abuse had simply not been a feature of my political life. But the Englishness argument was stranger still. Call it the reverse Tebbit test. If you're not white, it no longer matters who you support at the cricket, because you can never be English. It's a test no non-white person can ever pass.
I have no truck with people who offend our sense of fairness and come here illegally; I spent half my premiership trying to deport them to Rwanda. I think the bar for legal migration should be high. It is entirely possible to want a radical reduction in immigration and a far more robust approach to integration, and still totally reject the attempt to turn Britishness into a DNA test.
If you're born and brought up in England and view it as home, what are you other than English? Denying people their Englishness or their Britishness because of the colour of their skin is a recipe for alienation and a two-tier society. How are children who hear this meant to feel?
Sport can play a small but significant role here. Cricket is played by nearly every major ethnic group in this country. Ask what my largely white rural constituents in the Dales and the British-Asian kids in Bradford have in common, and the answer is cricket. If cricket can produce England teams in which every kid can see themselves, the impact reaches far beyond the boundary.
As I write in @thetimes today, we must all be on the same side, cheering for the same team.
We cannot allow race to be reintroduced into our politics. We cannot allow Briton to be set against Briton.
graham clack retweeted
I see that Stella Creasy is accusing me of leading a pitchfork mob against her, because I opined that she is less likeable and more hypocritical than the wild parakeet she mistook for an escaped pet.
For those who don’t know, Creasy is an elected politician and self-proclaimed ‘old-fashioned feminist’ who is ‘still fighting the patriarchy’. She’s more than once publicly defined herself against me (and my reaction was not to accuse her of leading a mob, even though I was probably averaging a dozen death threats a day at the point when the article below appeared.)
I thought it might be instructive for those of us who don’t share Creasy’s brand of ‘feminism’ to examine her campaigning record, so we can learn to do better.
Creasy wants women admitted to the male-only, exclusive, London-based private members Garrick Club, a change that would benefit rather privileged women like Creasy. Creasy is a mother who wants better accommodations for working mothers, a change that would benefit Creasy. Creasy takes selfies at a men-only Muslim march because that reminds everyone how non-racist she is, which benefits Creasy. Creasy asserts that ‘trans women are women’, which keeps her in good odour with her party’s most aggressive activists, and benefits Creasy.
However, keeping cross-dressing heterosexual men out of nurses’ changing rooms doesn’t benefit Creasy, because Creasy has never had to mop up other people’s piss, blood and vomit at work. Challenging the notion that a male basketball player becomes a girl if he says he is doesn’t benefit Creasy, who has no sporting ambitions. Speaking up against the patriarchy as practised by non-white men doesn’t benefit Creasy, who wants those selfie-opportunities. Criticising an ideological movement that persecutes, harasses and openly threatens women who don’t believe some women have penises wouldn't benefit Creasy, because she's already fully-signed up to self-id, where any man who says he's a woman must be taken at his word.
As the late Gloria Steinem said: ‘“Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere.’
Creasy the patriarchy-challenger is provably more than happy to cosy up to men and misogynist movements when it suits her public profile and career advancement, no matter the harms those men might be causing less privileged women. By Steinem’s definition, what Stella espouses is not feminism, but Creasyism, and I suggest the emblem for this brave new rights movement should be an indignant parakeet with severely ruffled feathers.
telegraph.co.uk/women/life/s…
graham clack retweeted
My favourite Parliamentarian question - The "President of Europe" Speech (sometime during the Brown years)
graham clack retweeted
100%. 👇
Laura Trott is generally spot on when it comes to education.
If only she were the Education Secretary instead of Shadow.
graham clack retweeted
It is insane to see this 5th April 1982 interview with Margaret Thatcher from the vantage point of today.
At this point, the Argentinians had just invaded and seized the Falklands.
You can actually see what they call an "iron will" in her eyes, and hear it in every measured, authoritative word. There's no bluster or misplaced confidence, just a quiet conviction.
She was a totally different type of leader unseen in a long time, which Britain sorely needs today.
Thatcher’s government staked everything on retaking the islands after Argentina's invasion. Polls showed her deeply unpopular beforehand; victory, thanks to the "Falklands Factor," delivered a landslide in 1983. Defeat almost certainly would have forced her resignation amid national humiliation, collapsing Conservative support and likely ushering in a Labour government amid economic strife and union unrest.
More than politics was at stake. Giving up would have meant abandoning British citizens to a right-wing junta’s aggression, a Suez Crisis on steroids for the television age. Images of surrender would have flashed around the world, signaling weakness. It would have shattered the idea that Britain still stood ready to defend its people and its territory.
Watch how she explains why fighting was not just necessary, but morally imperative. Listen to the way she deftly handles questions about America, praising their diplomatic efforts while making it crystal clear that this was Britain and only Britain's responsibility to shoulder alone. And when the ITN interviewer asks her at the end if she's prepared to resign if she fails?
Trust me.... just watch how and what she answered it with.
This type of leadership feels like an extinct species now. It’s exactly the kind of clear-eyed, unflinching European voice the West could use more of today.
(Javier Milei has long been an open admirer of Thatcher for precisely these reasons btw)
graham clack retweeted
Britain is increasingly becoming an economic dictatorship – but it’s the judiciary, not a military junta, who are in control.
Last week, the GMB Union’s branch in Leeds announced that more than 4,000 women have begun a legal case against the City Council for ‘pay justice’.
These are not claims brought forward by women who are being paid less than their male counterparts for doing the same job. That has been unlawful since 1970 and rightly so.
This claim is the latest in a long series, based on the vague concept of ‘work of equal value’.
The argument is that completely different jobs – like teaching assistants and bin men – have ‘equal value’ and should be paid the same.
The arbiter is not the employer, nor the taxpayer who picks up the bill, nor the individuals who decide to apply or not apply to be teaching assistants or bin men. It is an unaccountable employment tribunal judge who gets to decide whether fundamentally different jobs are as ‘valuable’ as each other.
To state the obvious, bin men waking up at 4am to do manual and smelly work in all weathers is clearly not the same job as being a teaching assistant.
This is not to say that teaching assistants are paid enough for the work they do, often working with children with specialist needs.
However, there is no reasonable way to compare their jobs to those of bin men. They are fundamentally different, appealing to different people, and providing completely different services.
These cases are not always a great victory for the British worker either. The end result of the Birmingham City Council case was not higher wages for teaching assistants, but a proposal from the council to cut the pay of bin men by £8,000 per year.
A compensation claim was paid, but this was so unaffordable that it forced wider job losses and pay cuts and resulted in sky-high rubbish piles filling the streets for months on end.
The pursuit of equal outcomes did not lift the women up, it simply pulled the men down.
The absurdity of trying to compare completely different jobs can be seen in the Next case, where a judge ruled that retail workers on the shop floor should be paid the same as those working in the warehouse.
That was despite the company struggling to recruit for the warehouse roles and shop staff refusing to move to warehouse roles on higher wages when offered the chance.
One shop worker even told the tribunal that she would only have considered moving to the warehouse if she were paid “a lot more money”.
In a sane world that would be clear evidence that workers were not willing to do the two jobs for the same wage. Nevertheless, the court decided the two jobs were of ‘equal value’, leaving consumers to pick up the bill.
These vexatious claims undermine fairness and reward grievance. Even Barbara Castle, the architect of British equal pay laws, rejected ‘equal value’ claims as too abstract.
Many factors determine the value of a job: how many people are willing to do it, what qualifications they need, how unpleasant the work is, and what alternatives are available.
The most effective way of balancing these competing factors is through price signals in the market.
If employers advertise jobs and wages, employees are free to either accept or reject them. This is both more objective and fairer than a judge poring over thousands of pages of subjective ‘job evaluation studies’.
It is a Soviet method of setting levels of pay where the person choosing wages is absolved of any accountability for the impact.
Wages are not the only area where this is happening. Bad political decisions have piled up legislation and handed unelected court officials powers to set prices in huge swathes of the economy, from rents to energy costs to council budgets.
This is not only undermining democratic accountability, but it is also picking away at a fundamental truth: growth comes from economic freedom.
graham clack retweeted
A council is forcing homeowners to rip out their air con, saying they should ‘open a window’ instead.
Why? Because of their Soviet ‘cooling hierarchy’ policy.
This is mad.
We have to end the de facto air con bans in Britain and Make Britain Cool Again!
graham clack retweeted
Blocking healthy children’s puberty is WRONG.
“This is wrong… you don’t need a medical degree or a science degree to know that it is WRONG!”
@jamesmurray_ldn, or whoever is Health Secretary in a fortnight, should listen to @Jonathan_Hinder and #StopTheTrial
