Carl Gardner

Maybe it's not that helpful for us to discuss an organisation you know lots about, and I know nothing about. Maybe I've misunderstood what you're actually requiring of people, I don't know.

Your analogy to a safety officer is an interesting one - maybe helpful, maybe not! Are you saying you think everyone should accept and comply with guidance from the EHRC (who are arguably the national "safety officer" as regards equality)?

Can you understand that to some people (who are as committed to equality and inclusiveness as you, but just have different beliefs about what they require) that sounds like an intention to discriminate against them because of their beliefs?

Free speechwriting tip for the PM: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

I don't understand what you mean here, sorry.

Okay. But I don't think anyone objects to trans inclusion in that sense, or that it's what advocates for trans inclusion mean by it.

Yes, I do see what you mean.

Yes. My point is that if you want that, then the freedom to set their own rules must go both ways. I think before the FWS case some people argued that e.g. the WI had legally to be trans-inclusive, and that that was fine.

Yes, I understand.

I agree that the freedom of association point cuts both ways. If associations should be free to decide this for themselves, then they should be free to go either way. It's a possible compromise but I wonder if associations would want actually want that freedom and responsibility.

David Lammy expected to water down plans to scrap most jury trials Justice secretary suggests he will stick to Leveson’s recommended three-year sentence threshold in England and Wales, after ‘cabinet feedback’

In all the jury kerfuffle what isn't being discussed and should be is magistrates. The mixed bench proposed by Leveson to replace juries has been quietly dropped in favour of a single judge. And mags sentencing powers are going up again to 18 months (+up to 2 yrs) www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...

It may have been without complaint because until FWS, people assumed it was lawful. Presumably the WI thought so.

Note that he rightly uses the correct term: “murdered”.

I hope it's not unnecessarily argumentative to suggest we avoid ascribing negative motivations to people in all this. I don't think you have to be right wing or transphobic to see this as discrimination, or to have some other bad motivation in order to think it's not.

Yes. I think that must be a correct understanding of the law, following the FWS case. The WI only avoids discriminating against men if it's within Schedule 19, which it's not if it admits some males, which trans women are according to FWS.

What a daft trade mark claim this was.

I think that was a spiral for some, but for others No Deal was always the aim from the start. Maybe this always happens with purity spirals: an absolutist faction dragging a fuzzier one towards the purist outcome.

Yes. Maybe there's a temptation with audio (which I'm pretty new to) to stuff lots of things in. But of the ones I've heard so far, I've enjoyed the simpler ones more.

A basic Classic Dr Who bloke, on two longish train journeys yesterday I listened to Big Finish's Zagreus. Erm ... There were good things in it, but it's too much, too long, too many, too-too clever, too confusing, impossible to take in, too all round mad. More is less.

Yes, you can't enforce single market rules without ECJ jurisdiction (or the broadly equivalent jurisdiction of a similar court). I don't think the UK's human rights record is relevant, except that it's visible to anyone in Brussels that many UK politicians hold any "foreign" court in contempt.

It is to do with the judgment, isn't it? Wouldn't it (applying FWS) be sex discrimination against a man like me to exclude me from the WI, if trans women are admitted?

What's human rights got to do with the question of ECJ jurisdiction were we to rejoin? Human rights seems to me a minor aspect of the ECJ jurisdiction question.

They're not going to have to. They might come to think it's a good idea. But a bad outcome for them (worse than the status quo) would be a UK hokey-cokey over the next 20 years. There's no point in discussing this till Brexitism is gone from UK politics, which is very far from the case now.

Chris Mason: Why, in my judgement, Reeves was misleading on one specific point The Chancellor chose not to share some information on tax receipts in an unusual press conference, given before the Budget.

The idea Reeves "misled" us is ridiculous. The opposition saying so (instead of attacking the budget) doesn't mean journalists have to meet their nonsense halfway. This is the dodgy both-sides "balance" the BBC got wrong over Brexit. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It’s an indictment of our media that more time is being spent on whether Reeves lied about the need to raise taxes than on the actual substance of the policies announced on Wednesday.

Yes! They’re unusual beans, waxy and sort of hard. Cooking doesn’t seem to make them soft like most other beans. I think they work well in cold dishes, like a bean salad. Maybe not the best in a stew for example.

Nor is it an argument about procedural impropriety outside Parliament, as an argument about consultation would be. I think it’s bang on what a9 is there to prohibit.

… unless in reality your argument is about the Parliamentary procedural impropriety of putting them together. I’m disagreeing with you because I don’t see how this can be characterised as an argument about the substantive lawfulness of the text of the SI.

Here, the SI would not on this argument be unlawful for intrinsic reasons, as you helpfully put it. If 3 organisations can all separately lawfully be proscribed, then there can be no substantive or intrinsic unlawfulness in proscribing them in one instrument …