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Ronan McCrea starts his Telegraph article with a glimpse into the past.
Three and a half decades ago, Henri Leconte, then one of the world’s biggest tennis stars, swept up in the adulation of the crowd, mocked a gay-looking ball boy on the centre court of a Wimbledon warm-up tournament. Pointing at the boy, he swung his wrist limply, while laughing, and encouraging the crowd to join in the fun.
And everybody thought it was a hoot. Everybody except one.
The ballboy was me, aged 13, and I still vividly remember the horror and total isolation I felt at the time. The fact, however, that such a scene would be unimaginable today shows the extent to which society has changed its approach to gay people.
Yes. If I were not hearing about this incident from the person with most cause to remember to the day when it happened, I would have thought it took place in the 1960s or 70s, not 1990.
But the dramatic shift in society’s approach to homosexuality mustn’t be taken for granted. Indeed, I fear it could all too easily return: it takes a striking degree of complacency to think that after centuries and centuries of repression, a few decades of tolerance could mark an irrevocable change.
Ironically, the unprecedented freedom that we’ve won in the past few decades is now under threat from within our own ranks – not least the approach of gay rights groups like Stonewall.
I’m among many gay people who believe that hanging on to what we have would be a good long-term result.
Mr McCrea then describes the almost Stakhanovite pressure on companies and their employees to do ever more to prove their “allyship”:
Getting a good score on the [Workplace Equality] index requires a dizzying range of active steps from verifying that suppliers are “committed to LGBT inclusion” and community engagement work. In the US, the main gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, went even further, recommending a kind of gay tithe (as or they put “cash or in-kind donation to at least one LGBTQ+ specific organisation”) along with a “standard of demonstrating at least five efforts of public commitment to the LGBTQ+ community”.
I suspect any private sense of “commitment to the LGBTQ+ community” that the managers and employees of these companies might once have had was neutralised by the third public demonstration of commitment and sent well into reverse by the fifth.
He continues,
This approach not only risks alienating people who are happy to live and let live but don’t like being subjected to propaganda at work. It also undermines the key argument that helped gay rights to advance in recent decades, namely that accepting gay people required simply that approach: live and let live.
He is right. Though I agree with what he has said so far, I doubt that Mr McCrea would agree with what I am about to say: as a libertarian, I believe on principle that there should not be any anti-discrimination laws whatsoever. I think gay people would be more accepted, not less, if coercion was removed from the equation entirely – and even if they weren’t, I would still advocate for it on the grounds of the fundamental right to free association. However, back in the real world, at least the laws against discrimination in employment and so on do not reach that deeply into people’s personal lives. They are nearly always passed after the bulk of the public have already been won over by moral argument. Their main effect is to make people somewhat grumpier and more cynical about doing what they were going to do anyway. A terrible wrong turning was made when gay activists, having got about as far as was logically possible in terms of forbidding workplace discrimination, started trying to compel speech, as in the cases of Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd and others in the UK and Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in the US.
Note that in the British case at least, the plaintiff was not shocked to discover that the bakers would not bake a cake with his required slogan on it. Gareth Lee deliberately sought out bakers who would object. He wanted to set the legal precedent that they could be compelled to promote a message antithetical to their beliefs. If the decision had gone the other way, I have sometimes wondered what Mr Lee’s position would have been regarding slogans offensive to his deepest beliefs.
Although both the Ashers and the Masterpiece cases were eventually decided in favour of the right of the defendants to free speech (which includes the right not to be forced to speak), the years-long attempts to force people to write words which they thought were morally wrong made a mockery of “live and let live”. Legal cases such as these, and the increasingly onerous demands for displays of support for the LGBTQ+ cause made upon every workplace and institution, have made many people feel – as did the Stakhanovite workers – that every act of compliance merely lays them open to new demands. That breeds enmity, not solidarity. Stop demanding that people feel certain emotions. Let us get back to the humbler, more achievable principle of “live and let live”.
The Guardian dutifully reports the inevitable:
Proof-of-age ID leaked in Discord data breach
Video game chat platform Discord has suffered a data breach, informing users that their personal information – including identity documents of those required to prove their age – were compromised.
The company stated last week that an unauthorised party had compromised one of Discord’s third-party customer service providers, leading to the access of “a limited number of users” who had been in contact with the customer service or trust and safety teams.
The data compromised may have included usernames, email, billing information, the last four digits of credit card numbers, IP addresses and messages with customer support.
Discord said the alleged attacker “also gained access to a small number of government ID images (eg driving licence, passport) from users who had appealed an age determination.
[…]
Discord began using facial age assurance to check the age for users in the UK and Australia earlier this year. The company said facial images and ID images “are deleted directly after” ages are confirmed, but Discord’s website noted that if verification fails, users can contact the trust and safety team for a manual review.
Under the under 16s social media ban to come into effect on 10 December, the Australian government has outlined that it expects platforms such as Discord – which is one of the platforms that has been asked to assess if it is required to comply – should have multiple options for assessing a user’s age, and a way for them to quickly appeal an adverse decision.
Platforms can ask for ID documents as part of the age assurance scheme, but it cannot be the sole method of age assurance offered by the platforms under the policy.
In other words, the reason why users from the UK and Australia have been affected in particular is because the UK’s Online Safety Act and Australia’s upcoming ban on under-16s using social media oblige users in those countries to verify their age by giving identifying information to social media companies. The first means of age verification is facial recognition software, but if that doesn’t work, as it frequently doesn’t, the user must give the social media company identifying information such as their username, their email address, their billing information, the last four digits of their credit card number, etc. Which then gets stolen. This procedure is called “keeping people safe online”.
The following is the Wikipedia entry for the Ma’alot massacre:
The Ma’alot massacre was a Palestinian terrorist attack that occurred on 14–15 May 1974 and involved the hostage-taking of 115 Israelis, chiefly school children, which ended in the murder of 25 hostages and six other civilians. It began when three armed members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) infiltrated Israel from Lebanon. Soon afterwards they attacked a van, killing two Israeli Arab women while injuring a third, and entered an apartment building in the town of Ma’alot, where they killed a couple and their four-year-old son. From there, they headed for the Netiv Meir Elementary School in Ma’alot, where in the early hours of 15 May 1974 they took hostage more than 115 people including 105 children. Most of the hostages were 14- to 16-years-old students from a high school in Safad on a pre-military Gadna field trip spending the night in Ma’alot.
The hostage-takers soon issued demands for the release of 23 Palestinian militants and 3 others from Israeli prisons, or else they would kill the students. The Israeli side agreed, but the hostage-takers failed to get an expected coded message from Damascus. On 15 May, minutes before the 18:00 deadline set by the DFLP for killing the hostages, the Sayeret Matkal commandoes stormed the building. During the takeover, the hostage-takers killed children with grenades and automatic weapons. Ultimately, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.
In the US the time elapsed between ‘Defund the Police’ Actually Means Defunding the Police, Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police until Ha Ha, Of Course We Didn’t Really Mean It Like It Sounded was about a year.
The Green Party of England and Wales leaves lumbering American lefties standing. PoliticsHome reports,
The Green Party has voted to make party policy a motion that seeks to “abolish landlords”.
The motion titled ‘Abolish Landlords’ was supported by a large majority of members at the party’s conference in Bournemouth on Sunday.
The motion has now become party policy, though leader Zack Polanski is not obliged to adopt the specific wording.
On Friday, PoliticsHome reported that the policy motion was being put forward, which sets out five steps the Greens would take to outlaw landlords.
Starting with rent controls and abolishing Right to Buy, a future Green Party-led government would also tax landlords via business rates on Airbnbs and double taxation on empty properties.
Under the proposals, the party would also end Buy to Let mortgages and give councils the Right to Buy when landlords sell properties, when the property doesn’t meet insulation standards, or when a property has been vacant for more than six months.
Carla Denyer, Green MP for Bristol Central, sought to stress that despite the motions “eye-catching” title, “it does not actually ‘abolish’ landlords”.
Neat. If the Greens get into coalition with Labour, they can say while introducing this policy, “Too late to complain now. It was clearly stated to be our policy back in 2025.” And when the policy goes the same way as every other attempt at rent control (as even they have some inkling it will), they can say “Doesn’t count, ‘coz we had our fingers crossed.”
A few minutes ago Rachel Moiselle tweeted this,
Sundown is soon and religious British Jews will be turning on their phones to learn about what happened.
I am so sorry.
She was referring to this:
Two Jewish people have died in a car ramming and stabbing attack at a synagogue in Manchester.
The attack came on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar, and is being treated by police as a terror incident.
Police say they know the identity of the attacker, who was shot dead by armed officers at the scene.
I, too, wonder what happened, and I’m not just talking about the name of today’s attacker. Britain did not used to be like this.
I have seen many condemnations of this act of terror from prominent Muslims and other supporters of the Palestinian cause. I think most of them are sincere. But they must confront the fact that hatred of Jews has long been commonplace among British Muslims and is now rampant.
From another angle, it has also long been commonplace to mock those who say that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the victims and the bereaved whenever there is a mass murder. I do not share this view. If you pray, please pray for the congregation of Heaton Park synagogue tonight. And whether you pray or not, think about them. Think about what we can do to protect British Jews in a country that they once thought would be a safe haven.
Unlike many, I do not think that censorship of hate speech – note the absence of scare quotes – will help. When I was growing up there was no censorship and nor were there any guards outside synagogues. Let the people who recently chanted “From Manchester to Gaza, globalise the Intifada” be heard. Let them hear themselves.
The Guardian reports:
‘Reverse Midas touch’: Starmer plan prompts collapse in support for digital IDs
Public support for digital IDs has collapsed after Keir Starmer announced plans for their introduction, in what has been described as a symptom of the prime minister’s “reverse Midas touch”.
Net support for digital ID cards fell from 35% in the early summer to -14% at the weekend after Starmer’s announcement, according to polling by More in Common.
The findings suggest that the proposal has suffered considerably from its association with an unpopular government. In June, 53% of voters surveyed said they were in favour of digital ID cards for all Britons, while 19% were opposed.
“Britain has a de facto blasphemy law, but it only protects one religion”, Michael Deacon writes in the Telegraph.
In February, outside the Turkish consulate in London, a man set light to the Koran. On seeing this, a Muslim man shouted, “I’m going to kill you”, and violently attacked him with a knife.
The first of those two men was convicted three months ago of a religiously aggravated public order offence, and is now living in hiding, having been warned by police that there are several credible threats to his life. But what about the second man, the one with the knife? The one who later told police that he’d merely been trying to “protect my religion”? What happened to him?
Well, here’s your answer. At Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, he was spared prison. All he got was a 20-week suspended sentence, 150 hours of unpaid work, 10 days of rehabilitation activity, and a bill for £150 in court costs.
I know I’m not alone in feeling that this punishment was possibly a touch on the lenient side. As the Free Speech Union put it: “Had a knife-wielding white male pleaded guilty to attacking a Muslim for breaching a Christian blasphemy code, you can bet your bottom dollar he would have gone to prison.”
“Sir Keir Starmer is expected to announce plans for a compulsory UK-wide digital ID scheme in a speech on Friday”, reports the BBC.
The prime minister believes it would help crack down on illegal working and modernise the state, according to senior figures in government.
The practicalities of the scheme will be subject to a consultation, which will also look at how to make it work for those without a smartphone or passport.
The previous Labour government’s attempt to introduce ID cards was ultimately blocked by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.
But earlier this month, Sir Keir said he thought the debate had “moved on” since then, adding: “We all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago”.
“We all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago.” So we do, and that means we all have available a variety of independent digital means to prove our identity that are not subject to the danger of putting all our eggs in one government-made basket. Twenty years ago – well, 22 years ago to be precise – I made a post called “A law-abiding person has nothing to hide?” in which I listed some situations in which a law-abiding person could indeed be harmed by having their identity known by local or national government, or by whoever hacks into the government database, or by whoever gets their mate in the police to do a search for them. Has the passage of two decades made any of those scenarios, or the other scenarios suggested in the comments to the post, cease to apply?
Sir Keir Starmer has announced the UK’s recognition of a Palestinian state. Several other countries have done likewise.
I think the consequences of this will be very bad.
There will be even more Muslim terrorism worldwide. It evidently works.
There will be more use of tactics like taking hostages and livestreaming murders and torture for political effect by non-Muslim groups and states, too. These tactics evidently work.
Those people who think that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians still won’t get to see what actual genocide looks like, but Israel will be more willing than before to kill Palestinian civilians in order to destroy Hamas. Israel has lost a major motive for restraint.
The less likely it is that Israel will defeat Hamas, the more it is in its interests to use other, cruder methods to deter and/or physically prevent future attacks from Gaza. These methods could include annexing some or all of the territory and expelling the inhabitants, or finally flooding the entire network of tunnels with seawater, only this time with no concern for ecological damage. The ecological damage would be the point. It is hard to secretly build military infrastructure in a barren desert, or to hide among civilians in a depopulated land.
Contrary to Sir Keir’s main motive for doing it, his government’s recognition of Palestine will cause even more British Muslims to change their vote away from Labour in favour of Islamic identitarian parties. As Osama bin Laden said, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”
This formation of an explicitly Muslim power bloc will in turn cause even more non-Muslim British people to move from merely opposing further Muslim immigration to Britain (that sentiment is already practically universal) to wanting to get rid of the Muslims already here.
I do not wish for any of this. I just think it is what is likely to happen.
“Police in free speech row after telling cancer patient to apologise for social media post”, the Telegraph reports.
Police have become embroiled in a free speech row after officers told a cancer patient to apologise for a social media post.
Deborah Anderson, an American citizen living in Slough, was confronted by an officer from Thames Valley Police after someone complained about an offensive Facebook post.
The police did not divulge which post had been the subject of the complaint.
The mother of two, who is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer, was told that if she did not apologise for the comments she could be interviewed at the police station.
Ms Anderson, a vocal supporter of Donald Trump and a member of the Free Speech Union (FSU), refused and said the officer’s time would be better spent investigating serious crimes such as burglary.
Thames Valley Police later dropped the case after the FSU instructed lawyers.
However, the incident has reignited the debate over how far the police should intervene in social media spats.
The issue came into focus earlier this month when Graham Linehan, the Irish comedy writer, was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow Airport over comments he had posted on X about a transgender activist.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has since said the police were in an impossible position when it came to such matters and called on the Government to provide greater clarity within legislation.
[…]
Ms Anderson was visited at home by a single officer in June and informed that Thames Valley Police had received a complaint about her.
In a video shared by the FSU, the officer said: “Something we believe you have written on Facebook has upset someone.”
Ms Anderson then asked: “You’re here because someone got upset? Is it against the law? Am I being arrested?”
The officer confirmed that she was not being arrested and explained: “My plan was that if it was you who wrote the comment, you could just make an apology to the person.”
Ms Anderson replied: “I am not apologising to anybody, I can tell you that.”
The officer told her: “The alternative would be that I would have to call you in for interview.”
Ms Anderson then asked the officer: “Are there no houses that have been burgled recently, no rapes, no murders? … Then why aren’t you out there investigating those?”
Lord Young of Acton, general secretary of the FSU, said: “Watching this video, it’s as if the police have become schoolteachers, intervening in petty squabbles. Since when has it been their job to ask people to apologise?
“Except instead of threatening you with detention if you don’t, they’re threatening you with arrest. It’s both comical and deeply sinister – carry on 1984.
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said: “In June, we received a report from a person who felt threatened by comments directed at them online.
“Following engagement with both parties, no arrests were made and no further action was taken.”
If Plod the Prefect comes round to “engage” with you, do what Ms Anderson did and stand your ground. The chances are good that they will back off. Even if they don’t, you will have kept your self-respect.* This is the alternative.
*Another way to preserve your self-respect in these times is not to join the police. No officer should have to endure this type of deliberately humiliating hazing ritual.
Corbyn and Sultana at War Over ‘Your Party’ Membership Launch, Guido Fawkes reports.
Jeremy Corbyn has just released an “urgent message” claiming today’s membership launch for ‘Your Party’ routed to an unauthorised domain and “legal advice” is now being taken. Which is odd, because Comrade Sultana told everyone to sign up using that very domain this morning…
“URGENT MESSAGE TO ALL YOURPARTY.UK SUPPORTERS
This morning, an unauthorised email was sent to all yourparty.uk supporters with details of a supposed membership portal hosted in a new domain name. Legal advice is being taken. That email should be ignored by all supporters. If any direct debits have been set up, they should be immediately cancelled.”
It appears that Sultana and Corbyn have now split.
“Whatever happened to the Popular Front?”
“She’s over there.”
Update: Someone I know alerted me to this:
It’s genuine. Here’s the link to Companies House:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/16619803/filing-history
Note that the “Cessation of Jeremy Bernard Corbyn as a person with significant control” did not happen today but on 15th September, three days ago.
The Guardian has up a panel discussion with the title “Labour is in a mess. Is there anything Starmer can do to turn things around? Our panel responds”. One of the panellists is Ann Pettifor. She writes,
The Bank lacks tools and legitimacy to tackle inflation. Labour should transfer that role to a new Inflation Control Office, which could use taxes, price controls and even rationing to lower inflation. Then Reeves should change the Bank’s mandate, radically: to support the economic policy of the government, not the City.
As a means to “save” Keir Starmer’s government, I am not convinced by the rationing bit. True, price controls are nearly always popular – until tried. But the people’s cry of “We want an Inflation Control Office to stop us buying things!” is heard only in Ann Pettifor’s dreams. I would advise less rich food late at night.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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