Networking with musicians and all others dedicated to bringing about Equality for all - NOW ON SPOUTIBLE as @ Staircase2 #SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish
United Kingdom
Joined March 2017
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The Complete Series of Al Jazeera’s #LabourFiles exposé:
1 - The Purge: youtube.com/watch?v=elp18Ovn…
2 - The Crisis: youtube.com/watch?v=5DTMF0MS…
3 - The Hierarchy: youtube.com/watch?v=P-cHBQf5…
4 - The Spying Game: youtube.com/watch?v=db-Gpmfa…
EQTNET retweeted
"It’s lunacy."
Journalist Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) tells Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) that AI data centres in the US have already caused an unexpected spike in global emissions – and that the proliferation of these climate-wrecking projects could not have come at a worse time.
Watch the full episode of Downstream on our YouTube channel.
EQTNET retweeted
"This is a complete shutdown of all aspects of life, of education, employment, even patients can't go and get medical treatment.. making the situation unliveable for Palestinians"
Ubai Aboudi on Israel locking down Hebron in the occupied West Bank for the past 4 days.
EQTNET retweeted
A song inspired by the characters that hung around the London clubs
Hugh Cornwell..
"There was a woman in red who was always there getting drunk and passing out, which used to make us laugh. There are also references to a friend of ours called Garry Coward-Williams, who was always smiling, and a friend of his we called Duncan Doughnuts, who was 20 going on 40. I could never believe how old he looked. His whole manner and appearance was of a middle-aged man.The Earls Court Road was near and there were a lot of pushers coming into the Nashville. You could get anything there because it was such a big cavernous pub with lots of corners."
The Stranglers - Hanging Around
(Live in the Studio '77) ▶️
EQTNET retweeted
How despicable and disgusting of @UniofOxford to host the eugenicist at the core of the Prof Jason Arday lynching? In 2026 they are asking if hiring Black and Brown people weakened university. I got out of my sickbed for the @makeitplainorg pod. Watch: youtu.be/6zzOLjVMgzE
EQTNET retweeted
BBC presenter after Anton Goodman refers to settler terrorism in the occupied West Bank
"I'm sure many on the settler side would dispute the use of the word terrorism"
EQTNET retweeted
BBC PAID HIM 6X MORE.
THE TRIBUNAL SAID THAT WAS ILLEGAL.
Samira Ahmed @SamiraAhmedUK presented Newswatch on @BBC for years. Same format. Same length. Same job. Read viewer feedback on camera, wrap it up, go home.
Jeremy Vine @theJeremyVine did exactly the same thing on Points of View.
She got £440 per episode. He got £3,000.
Ahmed spent years trying to fix it quietly through internal BBC processes. The BBC said there was no problem.
She filed for tribunal. In January 2020, the tribunal ruled unanimously in her favour. The BBC could not explain the difference. They tried. They argued Vine needed "a glint in the eye" and to be "cheeky."
The tribunal said that was not a skill. It was a story the BBC told itself.
The total underpayment was close to £700,000. Sarah Montague, another BBC woman, settled separately for around £400,000.
The National Union of Journalists flagged around 70 more cases waiting resolution internally. After Ahmed won, 700 BBC women received pay rises.
The BBC's statement after losing? They regretted it had gone to tribunal.
Not that they paid a woman six times less than a man for the same work for years. Just that it became public.
Sources: @guardian, @BBC, @IFJGlobal, Others
EQTNET retweeted
Me: "[Real wages] are down five months running.
Former Trump adviser Steve Cortes: "Because of the war."
Me: "You've said 'because of the war' maybe seven times..."
Cortes: "Because it spiked prices..."
Me: "But you're treating the war like it's a natural disaster, like it's COVID, like it fell from the sky..."
Cortes: "No I'm not..."
Me: "...the war was started by your guy, deliberately, a war of choice."
My full @AJHeadtoHead interview with Trump ally and former adviser Steve Cortes at Georgetown: youtube.com/watch?v=gLJVURhD…
EQTNET retweeted
NOW: Hundreds outside 10 Downing Street for an emergency protest for Palestine against Israel’s violence in the West Bank. We need full arms embargo on Israel now 🇵🇸
EQTNET retweeted
Israel is escalating its attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. The Israeli state is demolishing Palestinian homes and has restricted Palestinians movement in and out of the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinian olive farmers.
newarab.com/opinion/israels-…
EQTNET retweeted
Jess Phillips happy to use female pronouns for Israel but not for trans women I see.
EQTNET retweeted
Recebo com alegria e gratidão suas felicitações, presidente @CyrilRamaphosa.
O povo brasileiro reafirmou sua confiança na democracia. Nossos encontros frequentes nos últimos anos fortaleceram ainda mais a parceria estratégica entre nossos países.
Seguiremos trabalhando juntos no G20 e no BRICS para ampliar a voz do Sul Global, combater a fome e a pobreza e promover a reforma da governança global, em defesa de uma ordem internacional mais justa, democrática e inclusiva.
On behalf of the government and the people of South Africa I congratulate my dear brother and friend, President @LulaOficial and the people of Brazil.
This victory will echo beyond the shores of Brazil. It is a victory for the global south and progressive forces throughout the world.
We affirm our commitment to continue strengthening bilateral relations between our two countries and working closely together in all multilateral fora to forge a just and better world order underpinned by solidarity and adherence to international law.
EQTNET retweeted
Congratulations president Lula! Congratulations Serbian student list! May we follow suit soon and may all tyrants and tyrant wannabes fall.
We know - getting rid of Netanyahu is just a first step and not a panacea. But no other steps can be taken before this first one is.
EQTNET retweeted
Norway is one of the most democratic and prosperous countries on Earth.
Free health care
Free college
Strong democracy
Free press
Trump says “Norway sucks” and is a “shithouse country” because it won’t give him the Nobel Prize.
Insane. We have a mentally unbalanced president.
EQTNET retweeted
BBC BROKE EQUALITY LAW AND GOT CAUGHT
Carrie Gracie spent 30 years at the @BBC. She spoke fluent Mandarin. She ran the Beijing bureau. She was one of four international editors, two men and two women.
Then in 2017 the BBC was forced to publish salary data. Gracie looked at what her male equivalent, the North America editor, was earning. He was on nearly double her salary. She had explicitly said equal pay was a condition of taking the China role. The BBC agreed. Then quietly paid her far less anyway.
She asked for equal pay. The BBC offered her a raise that still left her below the men. She turned it down. She resigned from the China post in January 2018 and published an open letter telling the licence fee public exactly what their broadcaster was doing.
The BBC then put her through nearly a year of an internal grievance process that went nowhere. It took three meetings with the Director-General and the threat of an employment tribunal before she got a public apology and the backdated pay owed to her. The total came to £361,000.
She donated every penny to the Fawcett Society (@fawcettsociety), the gender equality charity. She said the fight was about principle, not the payout.
A publicly funded institution, legally obligated to follow equality law, paid women less than men in identical roles, got caught, dragged it out for a year, and only coughed up under threat of a tribunal. That is not a pay oversight. That is a policy.
Gracie did not ask for a favour. She asked for what she was owed. The BBC made her fight for it like it was a privilege.
Sources: @BBCNews, @guardian, @thetimes, @Independent.
EQTNET retweeted
Foi um prazer receber seu telefonema ontem, presidente Kast @PresidenteKast. Nos próximos anos, vamos trabalhar fortemente em uma agenda comum bilateral e regional, que beneficie tanto o Brasil como o povo irmão do Chile.
Acabo de conversar con el Presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva y lo he felicitado por el resultado de la elección. Chile y Brasil tienen mucho futuro en común y seguiremos trabajando por una agenda que potencie las relaciones entre nuestros países en integración económica y combate al crimen organizado en la región. 🇨🇱🇧🇷
EQTNET retweeted
New study finds no clear physical advantage for transgender women over cisgender women in sports.
A major review challenges the claim that transgender women hold a clear physical edge in women’s sports.
After pooling results from 52 studies and thousands of participants, researchers in Brazil reported that transgender women had greater lean mass than cisgender women, but not greater physical capacity.
Across the data they examined, they found no meaningful differences in upper-body strength, lower-body strength, or aerobic fitness between the two groups after hormone therapy.
That does not settle the political fight. It does, however, narrow the scientific one.
The paper, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, reviewed research on body composition and physical fitness in transgender people receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy. In their analysis, they covered 6,099 individuals overall. This included 2,566 transgender women, 2,646 transgender men, 442 cisgender women and 445 cisgender men. Forty-two studies were included in the meta-analysis.
Transgender women, the central result was striking in its contrast. Lean mass remained higher than in cisgender women, yet the performance measures most often cited in sports arguments did not show an advantage.
“This refutes the logic behind blanket bans on transgender women in sports,” said Bruno Gualano, a physician and researcher at the University of São Paulo in Brazil who co-authored the study. “Most of these policies are based on the assumption that transgender women retain inherent physical advantages and would therefore dominate women’s competitions. The data does not support this idea.”
The review found that transgender women had higher absolute lean mass than cisgender women, but similar relative lean mass.
It found no significant differences in upper-body strength, lower-body strength, or maximum oxygen consumption, a standard measure of cardiorespiratory fitness.
The authors also looked at how hormone therapy changed the body over time. In transgender women, one year of therapy was associated with increased fat mass, reduced lean mass, and lower upper-body strength. Over one to three years, the pattern pointed in the same direction, though not every measure could be tracked across every time span.
The paper argues that this matters because sports rules often treat muscle mass as a stand-in for performance. The new review suggests that assumption may be too simple.
thebrighterside.news/post/ne…
A cisgender male and a trans woman athlete who is on feminising hormone treatment or who has surgically transitioned like @Anaya_Bangar has cannot be equated.
Trans women athletes are physiologically different from male athletes, hence why I believe the basis of any blanket ban policy is flawed.
The research shows the physical fitness of transgender and cisgender women is comparable.
The most comprehensive synthesis to date, a 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis (Sieczkowska et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine) of 52 studies and 6,485 participants, shows:
1- That there is no significant difference in lean body composition or upper and lower body strength between cis women and trans women after 1-3 years of hormone treatment.
2- There are also no differences in cardiorespiratory fitness between cis women and trans women.
3- Therefore, there is no evidence that trans women are stronger or have greater muscle mass or endurance, as has been suggested in the public debate.
4- Furthermore, in comparisons between trans women undergoing hormone treatment and cis men, trans women do have lower results in terms of lean mass, upper and lower body strength, and cardiometabolic performance than cis men.
5- Trans men do have greater strength and muscle mass than cis women, but they do not reach the values achieved by cis men.
6- Although the review has some limitations, such as the lack of studies on elite athletes and the lack of studies on specific sports events, it gives us two clear messages:
1- There is no evidence to support the claims that trans women have greater strength and endurance than cis women, and that exposure to testosterone prior to hormone treatment in trans women does not lead to better physical conditions for sport.
2- Therefore, contrary to the opinion that trans women should not compete in the female category, this systematic review shows us that there is no scientific justification for this discrimination in a single female sport.
bmjgroup.com/physical-fitnes…
