Humanist. Lover of language, politics, psychotherapy, birds, art, photography, and the odd poem or two. King's Lynn Town Guide. Author.
King's Lynn, UK
Joined June 2008
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athinkingman retweeted
This apology from disability charity Scope, for cancelling my choir’s London Marathon performance because of my gender-critical views, is required to stay on its website for seven days.
Today is Day 6.
Women don’t always get the apologies they deserve. So I’d be grateful if you could help make sure this one is seen by sharing it over the next 24 hours (link below). 🙏
Thanks again to @SpeechUnion for supporting my legal case and helping secure this apology.
athinkingman retweeted
🚨Seventeen baby boys were treated for life-threatening circumcision complications at one Birmingham NHS trust last year.
Medically unnecessary genital cutting of boys is a real child safeguarding blind spot that needs to be addressed. @natsecsoc quoted.
birminghammail.co.uk/news/mi…
athinkingman retweeted
The tragic Jason Arday was a fraud, willing to set expensive lawyers onto those threatening to expose him @NeilDotObrien. And senior academics at Cambridge aided and abetted his self-deception and the betrayal of academic standards. Yet now the University’s leaders are spinning this as a story of Arday’s victimhood and of merely procedural errors. No one takes personal responsibility, not at the top or anywhere else. I tremble to think what these amoral people would be capable of in circumstances like 1930s Germany.
athinkingman retweeted
In 2020, NASA fixed one of its Mars rovers by programming it to hit itself with a shovel.
athinkingman retweeted
I will be conducting an independent review at Cambridge University, to examine the support, interventions & protections available to Professor Arday during the period prior to his death
This will be robust & challenging
It will be completed expeditiously cam.ac.uk/news/university-of…
athinkingman retweeted
The case for slavery reparations depends on a highly selective telling of history.
Of an estimated minimum 41 million Africans enslaved and mostly transported across the Atlantic, Sahara and Indian Ocean, Europeans were responsible for 31 per cent. Arabs were responsible for 53.6 per cent. The British traded 3.258 million over roughly a century and a half.
And most of those sold to Europeans and Arabs had first been enslaved by Africans themselves.
These facts do not settle every question about reparations. But any serious case for them has to reckon with the whole history.
I’ve put together a study guide for the next time you’re in the argument at The Biggar Picture: nigelbiggar.co.uk/p/the-case…
athinkingman retweeted
The University of Cambridge can boast 126 Nobel Prizes. That’s more than any other university in the world except Harvard, and it does it on an endowment that is one twentieth the endowment of Harvard. In the Nobel ranking, Cambridge beats MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Oxford, and Yale (in that order). Cambridge, the university of Newton, Hawking, Russell, Wittgenstein, Moore, Keynes, Crick, Sanger, Kendrew, Perutz, Rutherford, Chadwick, Turing, Maxwell, Brenner, the list goes on and on, Cambridge is beyond question one of the very greatest universities in the world. The list of immense distinction continues to the present day. It is tragic, and deeply unfair, that the reputation of this truly great university should suffer at the hands one unfortunate anomaly, the Department of Education.
athinkingman retweeted
Saddened to hear about the death of Jason Arday. It highlights the fragile sense of self that often sits below narcissistic fantasy.
Such public scruitiny and exposure was clearly too much for him. But scruitiny, truth and holding the expertise you claim is important. It is a great shame that those who promoted and published him etc. didn't do their due diligence in the first place. He was handed a great height from which to fall.
A sad and complex situation.
athinkingman retweeted
I am so deeply sorry.....
Terrible nouvelle…
Bar Asraf, 30 ans, survivant du massacre du Festival Nova, a mis fin à ses jours hier soir sur la tombe de sa petite amie.
Depuis le pogrom du 7 octobre 2023, au cours duquel sa compagne, Liron Barda, a été assassinée par le Hamas, Bar luttait contre une douleur insoutenable et un deuil particulièrement difficile.
Tout au long de cette période, il était resté très proche des parents de Liron, leur rendant régulièrement visite.
Mercredi dernier encore, Bar célébrait le mariage de son frère. Mais hier, la douleur a fini par l’emporter… 💔
L’horreur du 7 octobre, c’est aussi cela. Ne l’oublions jamais.
Que sa mémoire soit une bénédiction. 🕯️
athinkingman retweeted
For years, the media called Israel paranoid.
But today, UNRWA just quietly fired 70 of its employees in Gaza because they were linked to terror organizations.
Israel was right all along. Why is the world still funding an agency that employs terrorists? It is time to defund UNRWA permanently.
athinkingman retweeted
The EU has invited Taliban officials to Brussels to discuss a migration deal — and today I am shaken and deeply disturbed by this.
This is the same Taliban that banned girls from secondary schools and forced them into marriage. The same Taliban that, earlier this month, arrested dozens of women in Herat for how they were dressed. The same Taliban that detains, beats and executes women who dare to speak out or break their rules.
Through its system of gender apartheid, the Taliban have erased women and girls from public life. Europe must not legitimise a regime responsible for one of the worst human rights crises in the world.
Any engagement with the Taliban must begin and end with the rights of Afghan women and girls.
athinkingman retweeted
LEAK: old footage shows Nicola Sturgeon told her party to “be very careful about suggestions that there are problems with the party’s finances”
She goes on to say there has been “good, quality, detailed financial information” about their finances.
@Daily_Record
athinkingman retweeted
A reminder that it has now been 241 days since the @EHRC sent @bphillipsonMP its draft guidance on single-sex spaces. But she has yet to table it in parliament.
athinkingman retweeted
If you don’t think Donald Trump has completely lost his marbles, then you need to watch this.
athinkingman retweeted
I almost punched the air. No nonsense truth to power. Especially effective when stated with such clarity & fury from a Labour Lord.
Labour Peer, Lord Rooker, magnificantly angry in House of Lords today over EHRC Code of Practice publication delay. "It's an absolutely disgraceful way to operate!" @ForWomenScot 1/
athinkingman retweeted
5 years ago today, hundreds of Islamists gathered outside Batley Grammar School after a teacher showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson. He was threatened & forced into hiding. 5 years on he is sadly STILL in hiding. This is appalling. We must fight for free speech.
athinkingman retweeted
Labour’s Islamophobia definition is unlawful and infringes free speech.
Atheists such as Richard Dawkins could be silenced by Labour’s new anti-Muslim hostility definition. Dawkins has regularly criticised Islam for its oppressive qualities.
The Free Speech Union has sent a pre-action letter to the Communities Secretary, threatening judicial review if the definition and guidance are not withdrawn immediately.
In our letter, we also warned about the chilling effect this definition will have on women’s ability to comment on and critique aspects of Islam, and the acts of those who follow it, that are deeply harmful to women in particular.
“For example, women, and indeed Muslim women (in particular) may feel inhibited from speaking about actions such as so-called ‘honour killings’ where such speech may be labelled and regulated as anti-Muslim hostility”.
The definition could also hinder campaigners working to expose practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), predatory grooming gangs, and abuses of women’s rights.
Another problem is that this definition could penalise people simply for recounting historical events. This could impact Sikhs, for example, when marking the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur, who defended the Hindu faith against Muslims.
In our letter, we warned that the definition and guidance could lead to “offensive comments” — or perfectly legitimate expressions of free speech — being logged as “anti-Muslim hostility”. This would create a new form of non-crime hate incident (NCHI), inhibiting public debate while wasting police time and taxpayers’ money.
This official definition is a Muslim blasphemy law by the back door, which will silence public debate and legitimate criticism of Islam, its practices, and its history.
Read more below 👇
