Eric Clive

This superb article is very clear on the EU law background. I would have said that the cause of action in FWS2 (which went to the Supreme Court) was different from that in FWS1 (which did not) and that FWS2 was post-transition. So I now blame Brexit as well as the judges for that shocking decision.

Labour face questions on UK spy plane 'over Gaza as Israel killed journalists' THE UK Government is facing pressure to be “fully transparent” and disclose if it holds information gathered by spy plane flights over Gaza at…

Supplying Israel with targeting information, even if supposedly for the location of hostages, was always taking the risk of complicity in horrific war crimes.
www.thenational.scot/news/2538514...

If George Galloway speaks as powerfully on Palestine as he did on Iraq and if he continues to support a referendum on Scottish independence then the campaign will be enriched. I wouldn’t want him to take a seat from the SNP though.

Labour is in another hole of its own making - completely out of touch with the public on the atrocities in Palestine - and it just keeps digging.

"Respect for the rights to family and private life requires the recognition of personal status established in a foreign State, provided that the person concerned has had a sufficient connection … and that there is no manifest violation of the international public policy of the requested State …"

Something else which should be more widely known is the Resolution of 21 September 2021 on Human Rights and International Law of the highly prestigious Institute for International Law. Art 10 says this. (See next post)

This looks like the case reported under the (fictitious) name of Mirin at curia.europa.eu/juris/docume....
A great case.
I cite it in my (free access) article on "Blocking the Gender Recognition Reform Bill" in the current issue of the Edinburgh Law Review www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3....

The important point now is that Labour is the only party which can do anything about the ridiculous situation which has arisen, where substantial policing resources are being devoted to arresting peaceful citizens protesting about genocide. Labour owns this. It has made another big mistake.

Technically the Order was made by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, and laid before Parliament for approval. She is a Labour Minister. I accept that MPs from other parties (but not the SNP or Greens) voted Aye but 72.3% of the Aye votes were Labour. It seems fair to regard it as a Labour measure.

If Labour wants to stop decent, caring citizens, who are the very opposite of terrorists, from expressing support for Palestine Action it needs to provide them with evidence that it is really a terrorist group rather than a protest group. So far it has not done so.

So, Labour policies have resulted in more (inappropriate) arrests of peaceful protestors than even the toxic Tories managed.
And if/when Palestine Action successfully overturns the "terrorist group" ruling, extremely embarrassing & damaging for the government.

This response from the EHRC’s chief executive has the ring of truth to it. It would be astonishing if they did not make significant changes after such a massive consultation. I expect them to go in the direction of encouraging, rather than discouraging, gender neutral spaces.

Thanks Rob. I was not aware of that piece of gc nonsense. I thought it was the elusive concept of biological sex which was being compared to the Cartesian soul - and I could see why. On your last part, I agree. Why indeed?

Well, I wasn’t saying (or assuming) any of these things. I probably agree with you on them.

Nice analogy, but I’m more ready to believe in chromosomes than in souls. Neither admittedly seems very relevant to toilets and changing rooms,

In most everyday situations, segregation by chromosomal sex OR lived-in sex is very hard to justify. I’m for good uniform services/facilities for all. Nobody sues, or complains, because disabled toilets are usually gender neutral.

I’m not talking about the law here, but if some people finding certain other people disturbing is a sufficient justification for segregation then practically any type of discrimination could be justified. No blacks. No Jews. No Irish. I thought we’d moved on from all that.

Me too - but just “Toilets” would be OK. No discrimination, no problems caused by discrimination..

Headline in The Times - "Ban trans women from single-sex spaces, equality watchdog to say".
We'll see. If there are no big changes after the consultation, the Minister should at least delay approval to allow time for a massive repurposing of separate facilities into gender neutral ones.

That's how I see it too. He's been right on a lot of issues (notably Palestine) but still comes across as a student agitator grown old.

And a Tory one. Kemi Badenoch has been consistently trans-intolerant. She played a leading role in blocking the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill.

On the placing of trans prisoners "Each case should be judged on an individual basis" is so short and sensible that I could just see Nigel Farage adopting it. He could make Keir Starmer struggle in any debate on the issue if he took this line.

I wouldn't even call it a war. It's slaughter and destruction.

In the Forstater case it was said that the protected gender critical belief was that "as a matter of biology a trans person is still their natal sex". This is consistent with recognising that as a matter of law a person's legal gender can be changed. The FWS case has changed nothing here.

Yes. I agree. Judicial activism. The court's job was not to give the Equality Act a "sensible" interpretation (as it saw it) but to give it a correct legal interpretation. It has handed a lot of power to an Equalities and Human Rights Commission which is widely seen as biased.

Did the Supreme Court have any idea of the full consequences of the FWS decision? I doubt it. I suspect they thought they were just giving the 2010 Act a sensible interpretation, doing what the legislature was unlikely to do. Big mistake. Legislation could have been more nuanced.

The Supreme Court decision in the FWS case was surprising and, in my view also, a technically poor one but it does leave s. 9(1) of the GRA in place for all purposes "subject to provision made by this Act or any other enactment or any subordinate legislation". So I would not say "most".

#FreePalestine 🇵🇸
NOW.

I wish the LibDems well in England, in spite of their occasional lapses, like this one. I gave up on them in Scotland when they proved to be neither liberal nor democratic on the question of Scotland's right to choose its own future.

There are situations, though, where access to a private wash basin can be greatly appreciated.