In my Spectator column this week I’ve written about my trip to the Oxford Union on Tuesday to see Kathleen Stock being interviewed by the Union President in front of a packed debating chamber. Indeed, there were more people inside the chamber than there were protestors outside, which was heartening to see. Here’s how it begins:
It had been billed as the most controversial debate of the year, with even Rishi Sunak intervening to say that Kathleen Stock, who had been invited to the Oxford Union, should not be no-platformed. But if you were sitting in the Union’s debating chamber on Tuesday evening – as I was – the huge kerfuffle seemed baffling. For an hour and a half, the former philosophy professor talked almost exclusively about toilets.
To be fair, she was given little choice. It was more of an interview than a debate, in which the president of the union fired questions at her. Roughly 90 per cent of them were about women’s lavatories. In particular, he wanted to know why she objected to trans women being allowed to use “the Ladies”. Professor Stock patiently explained that trans activists don’t just want men who have fully transitioned to be able to access women’s spaces, including refuge centres, but any man who self-identifies as a woman, even a great hairy brute. She had no desire to ‘erase’ trans women, she said, or to deny them their rights – something the scores of protestors outside were accusing her of. Rather, this was a ‘safeguarding’ issue. It was about protecting women from predatory men who ‘self-ID’ to invade their spaces.
It seems extraordinary that this has become such a polarising issue, given that, according to the latest census, only 0.1 per cent of the population identify as trans women. No doubt the percentage among 18- to 24-year-olds is higher, and some of the protestors outside identified as trans, but still. Why were temperatures running so high, both in the lead-up to this event and on the night? As the mild–mannered philosopher set out her stall, the demonstrators made as much noise as they could, hoping to drown out her words. ‘Trans rights are human rights,’ they screamed, although no one, least of all the speaker, was denying that. Why has this generation of student activists chosen access to women’s toilets as the hill to die on?
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Also in the Spectator, Brendan O’Neill asks: What’s gone wrong at Oxford?
Stop Press 2: Read Kathleen Stock’s own account of her visit to the Oxford Union at UnHerd.
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How about a Tik Tok dance? It helped in the past
I could bang a pan with a wooden spoon if that would help.
I actually hadn’t heard of that as an thing (clapping/banging a pan) before the first occurrence. I wondered WTF was going on. When I did realise what it was the sight of BoJo on the TV news standing on the steps of No 10 clapping made me want to puke.
There is so much I could say on the subject of NHS but I will try and keep on topic. As one NHS worker said to me, doctors prescribe drugs to solve the symptoms without determining the root cause (eg lifestyle,diet). Almost all drugs have side effects. And the winner is ….the pharmaceutical companies. The answer so far has been more money needed to pay for this so called ‘free service’ which will be paid for by you and me (the taxpayers). I won’t be clapping for this failed institution any time soon.
I so despise every facet of the state that I’m enjoying watching our sainted NHS crash and burn. There are no solutions to this mess that don’t eventually involve spending every last penny of the country’s wealth on RNHS. We’ll be destitute, but at least we’ll be able to get our privates chopped off on demand.
On 5th July 1948 after much planning and political wrangling the UK government implemented one of the most radical reforms in healthcare provision in the world at the time.
The NHS was announced to the general public through a leaflet sent to every household.
The quality of available healthcare did not change. Just the way we paid for it.
No. It rained hospitals, ambulances, porters, nurses, doctors, beds, operating theatres, surgical instruments on 5th July – stuff we had never had before and would never have but for ‘our’ Holy NHS. Come the day, heaps of The Poor™️ were no longer blocking the gutters in their death throes.
”You are all paying for it…”. Maybe then, but soon enough ‘all’ weren’t and increasingly fewer were paying for it, and we certainly have millions of immigrant hordes who haven’t paid a brass farthing, nor ever will… but who are first in the Everqueue.
The mortality stats tell the same story. No change in the overall trend in reduction of death rate after the inception of the NHS. A distinct small step down in infant mortality but as it had fallen from 20% in 1900 to about 3.5% in 1947 the majority of the possible improvement had already been accomplished. death rates among men over 45 and under 85 actually stopped improving at around that time and didn’t resume improving until the seventies.
Prior to NHS ‘free’ GP services were funded by local councils – so from local taxes, not central government taxes.
Thing was, the original NHS didn’t fund many elective things which are now offered – and not just because the technology didn’t exist.
Quite so. The arrangements put in place by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments were such as to ensure that more and more patients received treatment without financial anxiety. The overall plan – supported and extended by the original Beveridge report – was to use the state as a coordinating agency, stitching together the well established and multiple provisions supplied by private, local and charitable sectors.
Excellent! Well deserved. It’s what they keep voting for.
More people unable to pay their mortgage – that’s the reward for hiding under the bed during the Fakedemic.
Electricity on ration – great because they want to save the planet and no plastic too to save the fish.
Also adding to the list, the ever increasing gene therapy injured.
Yet surgeries – unasked – send frequent requests to healthy people for blood tests for diseases they don’t have….
This is a data collection exercise – our health data sent to China for analysis. NHS very keen to analyse our poo as well. Digital data is very desirable and biological data too.