Only in my hometown of Brighton and Hove (a delightful seaside city turned wretched by its political class) could such a thing happen. Only here could a city council be so captured by gender ideology, so eager to be its loyal flagship, that it would physically eject a woman from the town hall chamber for simply opposing its cloyingly woke groupthink.
The opposition that resident Kay Lyons tried to voice in the precious time-slot the public are allowed was no more than a passionate plea to repair what she believed to be breaches in schools child safeguarding procedures. In Brighton and Hove, a growing number of parents share these concerns. In one instance, known to the council and freely admitted by the secondary school concerned, teachers were aware of a child’s use of a breast-binder in school but tacitly supported its use and withheld the information from the parents.
As the video webcast testifies, Kay Lyons hadn’t used foul or threatening language or accused an individual of wrongdoing. She hadn’t glued herself to the table in front of her or got up and sprayed paint across the Mayor’s crimson robes. Nor had she grabbed the ceremonial mace and waved it about (as our tantrum prone MP for Brighton Kemptown Lloyd Russell-Moyle had done in parliament in 2018). No – in fact, Lyons hadn’t even finished her question when, without any warning, her microphone was cut off and three security men surrounded her.
Whilst the manhandling and ejection of a member of the public is surprising (and possibly a criminal offence), the council’s determination to silence anyone questioning schools’ use of the gender affirmation approach (alongside the practice known as ‘social transition’ whereby a child’s name and pronoun are changed, often without knowledge or consent of the parents) is not. You can read more about these dubious practices here.
Kay Lyons was the fourth resident to go into the town hall to voice such concerns. Back in July, I was brusquely told that parental concerns about trans activists entering schools and posing as experts were, in fact, “baseless smears”. On the matter of the council recommending its schools promote gender ideology, the response was an emphatic “this council follows national law, policy and guidance”. This followed a council reply in August clarifying that parents appearing to hold gender critical beliefs “may or may not be transphobic” but it will “reserve the right” to challenge anything it regards as “causing harm” (this presumably includes any resident who dares to question the council’s trans activism).
Having previously sounded an alarm about the council’s use of a third party provider to embed Critical Race Theory into schools, I imagine council leaders are never pleased to see me show up. The May election hadn’t helped. The new majority Labour administration that swept the Greens from power resented the challenge from independent candidates. In Queens Park and in Kemptown, myself and pub landlord Alan Towler ran against Labour candidates who included a 19 year-old and her aunt who beat us hands down only to be expelled from their party six months later amidst allegations of electoral malpractice. Right across the city, fresh faced Labour hopefuls were excited at the prospect of bringing forth a new era of good governance following three miserable years of Green Party mismanagement.
Against a backdrop of 35 (now 33) Labour councillors eager to bolster Keir Starmer’s General Election chances by painting the town red, a new council leader emerged. Few had ever heard of Bella Sankey but many hoped that she would be a breath of fresh air and herald a return to competent city governance (and certainly a welcome end to the Green’s faddish embrace of every cause imaginable). Perhaps, as one local Labour supporting commentator put it, Labour would now “listen to local people and treat them with respect, not assume that if they disagree it is because they are bigoted, lack sophistication or need ‘re-education’”. The Greens had been a nightmare but dreams of Labour returning us to sanity were short-lived. From the very first full-council meeting, faith in Bella Sankey sprang a leak. Within two months, Sankey had punished one of her Labour councillors for retweets supporting the views of J.K. Rowling and Germaine Greer. Abruptly removed from her city regeneration role, Cllr Alison Thomson was ordered to apologise for her “anti-trans sentiment” and attend re-education. In a statement, Cllr Thomson said, “I am committed to undergoing training to better understand the lived experiences of transgender people and with the aim of becoming a good trans ally”. “Her apology reads like a hostage statement” wrote one commenter under the local press report. “You expect this kind of dystopian, authoritarian agenda from the disgraced Green Party but it seems that Labour are already sinking to the same low level,” wrote another. Perhaps to avoid further embarrassments, Sankey ordered that all Labour councillors attend the trans-awareness re-education provided by controversial activist group Gendered Intelligence, though how this follows national law, policy and guidance is debatable.
With the ejection of Kay Lyons at the second full council meeting, the ‘Labour will be our saviour’ bubble had well and truly burst. It’s hard not to wonder if the Brighton Labour membership, sent spiralling back to reality, then sent the hapless Eddie Izzard back to his? Izzard was, after all, a selection candidate seemingly oblivious to parents’ safeguarding concerns – it was all just “Tory culture wars” (which was presumably why residents so badly needed him in Parliament as Brighton’s “voice for trans people”).
The reality of what is happening in Brighton and Hove schools is only just coming to light. Bizarrely, the council insists that it does not have a specific policy about social transitioning in schools. As if preparing itself to throw headteachers under a bus if it all goes wrong, the council likes to imply that the matter is for school leaderships to decide. Yet, the council-produced schools guidance, the ‘Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit‘, has been tirelessly promoted in city schools by co-authors Allsorts Youth Project. And Allsorts has been tirelessly promoted by the council.
The toolkit’s fiercest advocate is Labour councillor Emma Daniel (currently the council’s safeguarding lead). Promoting the 2018 version, Cllr Daniel wrote: “If trans children don’t get support and understanding they may hurt themselves and refuse school.” Another Labour councillor reinforced this view in an email reply to me: “Too many young trans people take their own life, as the people who they love and others around them, do not tolerate/acknowledge their identity.” The spectre of imminent danger and the urgent need for schools to be pro-active placed significant pressure on headteachers especially given the toolkit claimed to be guiding schools on the law too. For activist teachers the toolkit simply reinforced NEU advice on this issue which states that members have “a professional and ethical obligation to support young trans and gender-questioning students in education”. The NEU guidance also implies a legal obligation because the Equality Act prohibits discrimination of anyone with the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”. But as NEU whistle-blower Patrick Stevens correctly points out, the guidance steers members to categorise, a priori, any child who self-identifies as trans as a ‘trans child’. Following this mind-set, if a teacher fails to support the ‘gender questioning’ child – who therefore must be ‘trans’ – he or she is guilty of discrimination.
The invidious position schools were placed in by the council explains why Brighton and Hove seems to have borne witness to some of the most horrifying breaches of child safeguarding anywhere in the country. At this year’s LGB Alliance conference, a spokeswoman for a new group, PSHEbighton.org, gave an extraordinary speech.
The group (which many of us have joined) exists as a lightning rod for parent experiences and knows of parent complaints spanning schools right across the city. Two of the examples summarised at the conference concerned girls who had started to question their gender identity at school. Same-sex attracted, autistic, trauma in their families – in both these cases the girls had fallen under the influence of online trans-activists.
In one of the examples, online activists had encouraged the child to self-harm in order to obtain a social work referral. A social worker came to the family home and on her initial visit, without having read any of the clinical history of the child, declared to all present that this child was now a boy. The parents obtained school records and learnt that for the previous year the school had been actively socially transitioning the child behind their backs. This came as a shock because the headteacher had promised this wouldn’t happen. It became apparent that activist teachers had gone ahead regardless. Some helped facilitate the use of breast-binders and organise sessions with Allsorts. They were aware the child had obtained testosterone, and deliberately withheld this from parents. PSHE Brighton has received similar stories from families dating back to 2016; in all circumstances families raised concerns with headteachers and school governors, to no avail.
On the breast-binder issue alone, a clear moment – you’d think – for a safeguarding red-flag, the school should have escalated the matter (under existing statutory guidance, it is made abundantly clear that everyone – including families – has a role to play). But in the increasingly warped world of Brighton and Hove City Council, activist officials, councillors, teachers and social workers operate a deliberate agenda intent on driving gender identity theory forward. In schools, where activists simply overrule the wishes of ineffectual heads, their cause is paramount and parents who object are cast as abusers – part of a bigoted blob of untutored minds. A recent tweet responding to the new Government guidance says it all. Labour’s safeguarding lead Cllr Emma Daniel tweeted: “The sad reality is that mainly kids need protecting from relatives – that’s basic and obvious safeguarding. And this guidance should be about the safety of children not the feelings of parents.” To clarify a reply asking if she meant ‘mainly’ or ‘many’, she tweeted: “Either really – safeguarding mostly involves protecting children from relatives.”
Responding to a public question in November, Deputy Council Leader Jacob Taylor disputed the claim that headteachers were crying out for DfE guidance: “I can honestly say that in meeting most of the headteachers in this city over the last couple of months not one has raised this with me.” Perhaps. But like Cllrs Sankey and Daniel, it seems Labour leaders in Brighton will continue to cobble together an alternate reality in which the only safeguarding concerns they need to ponder relate to children at risk from their parents. In the ‘nothing to see here’ city, the accounts of parents can be ignored or, in the case of Kay Lyons, ‘refuted’, demonised and responded to with naked aggression.
In the Times, Janice Turner put it well when describing the underlying principle of the new Government guidance, which is “parents must be told if their child socially transitions since this is not a neutral act but a pathway to medical interventions”. Turner makes reference here to the Cass Report – a document our council will assiduously not have read. A local women’s group raised money to give every city councillor a copy of Time to Think by ex-BBC Newsnight reporter Hannah Barnes. Though it’s possible a few of Brighton’s Labour councillors might read it secretly by candlelight (or risk more ‘re-education’ sessions) the majority are likely to remain amongst the group who laughed as Kay Lyons was ejected and who, a minute later, heartily applauded Sankey when she denounced Lyons as an aggressive protester advancing an “agenda”.
And so it seems this Labour administration – just over six months into its term – has drunk the gender ideology Kool Aid to the extent that it will die on this hill despite its own national leadership welcoming the draft DfE Schools Guidance for Gender Questioning Children.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was met with a wave of boos when students at Duke University walked out before his commencement speech”
Just left out a little detail: The ‘boos’ were directed at the protesters.
You do not have to look far to see what lies in store when you have imported too much Islam. They get their feet under the table, they reproduce at a higher rate than indigenous people and they adhere strictly to their ideology. Of course they’re going to form caliphates and aim to fulfill their objectives, as a glimpse into history will show anyone. And Nazi Faeser here is an out and out hypocrite. You can’t be so enthusiastically pro-immigration, mainly of people who have such incompatible and contrasting values as we do, then complain about them doing exactly what they’ve always done since forever. Stupid woman!
”Thousands of Islamists took to the streets of Hamburg again on Saturday for what organizers called a “defense of Islamic values” in the face of political intimidation and media censorship.
The protest was organized by Muslim Interaktiv, a group under investigation by Hamburg’s domestic intelligence agency for “extremism.” It claimed on its social media accounts that over 6,000 Muslims had turned out to participate, although police estimates put the figure closer to 2,300.
The demonstration was in response to recent attempts by German politicians to restrict the group’s activities after a recent march in the port city sparked outrage amid calls for Germany to become a caliphate under Sharia Law, and participants chanted anti-Semitic slogans.
Muslim Interaktiv claimed it wanted to “set an example” to protect “Islamic identity,” and posted that the requirement for Muslims to “commit to Western values” was the “lie of the year.”
After the controversial protest held last month, Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser denounced the demonstration despite overseeing the country’s open borders immigration policy in recent years that has seen millions of Muslims, many of whom have originated from countries that practice fundamental Islam, arrive in Germany.
“Seeing an Islamist demonstration of this kind on our streets is difficult to bear. It’s a good thing that the Hamburg police counteracted crime with a large presence,” she told Tagesspiegel.
“Anyone who would rather live in a caliphate, and therefore in the Stone Age, is against everything that Germany stands for. We defend our constitution — with the means of our constitution,” she said.”
https://rmx.news/article/thousands-of-islamists-protest-against-censorship-in-hamburg-after-calls-for-a-caliphate-in-germany-are-banned/
The reason the politicians want to ban these demonstrations is to hide the consequences of their ignorant and malicious open border policies. The more we see them the more ordinary people will react to what’s happening on their doorstep rather than being distracted by far-away conflicts.
Climate Zealots Burn Your Money – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, including your local Reform Party candidate, your local vicar, media and friends online.
“UN seemingly halves estimate of Gazan women, children killed” – The UN has revised the estimated number of women and children killed in Gaza from 9,500 women and over 14,500 children down to 4,959 women and 7,797 children, reports the Jerusalem Post.
That’s alright then. /sarc.
At some point they’ll actually deny there were any people in Gaza at all – despite nearly 100,000 bombs being dropped – and expect us to believe them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH87z84jiII
Gawd almighty, this man and people like him….”Suicidal empathy” is what Gad Saad calls it. Apparently you can’t have too many jihadis and sexual predators who demonstrably hate the West. But these Leftard people are sick in the head. Does it never occur to them what society might look like for their kids and grandkids? Do they never ever wonder why all the Arab countries, which are majority Muslim as well as in the actual geographical region, are not taking these people in, so they have to travel thousands of kms to Europe instead? These two points are no-brainers, surely? Is it possible to demonstrate both sadistic and masochistic traits simultaneously? Seems so;
”What an utterly catastrophic suggestion. The current UK asylum system has difficulty keeping out sex offenders, even when it’s well known to them.
The last thing we need is Hamas supporters who Arab nations do not even want, living amongst us.”
https://twitter.com/ArchRose90/status/1790117234158776585
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/eurovision-and-a-salute-to-the-jews/
There was some merit in this year’s Eurovision.
And look at the countries who supported Israel and these were public votes.
IOF commenced bombing of Rafah at the weekend:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israel-unleashes-heaviest-bombing-months
Wonder how many people won’t die in this latest onslaught.
The Palestinian civil defence said the bombardment was reminiscent of “the war’s first days”, but far more devastating.
They said this was due to medical services and emergency efforts being depleted after months of Israeli targeting.
“We have lost 80 percent of our capabilities,” the civil defence said in a statement.
“It has become very difficult for our crews to rescue the wounded and recover the martyrs.”
Ambulance workers said they were fired at by Israeli drones in Rafah and northern Gaza in recent days, preventing them from carrying out their work.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military continued to block the entry of aid through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings for a seventh day, according to Palestinian officials.
Who knows what’s going on in Gaza and while we are distracted arguing about it – unnecessarily taking sides in my view – much is going on in our country that needs attention. The Gazans are caught up in a conflict between extremists who don’t want peace and I see no solution while the globalist interference remains strong. Meanwhile we are facing takeover of our cities and institutions by Islamist extremists …
Are we facing a takeover or is a flash point being manufactured which is not intended to benefit anyone involved, including Muslims?
Yes. We are being played by bad actors who want to enslave us one way or other. Ordinary people, whatever their beliefs, need to speak out against them.
I think it’s possible to believe we are being played by bad actors but also to believe that Europe would be better off if it remained predominantly white and Christian/post-Christian.
Well, I have stated many times on DS that there will be blood on the streets. I believe that is now being deliberately engineered.
Spot on.
Germany’s ambassador to Israel and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan condemn the attacks and looting of Gaza-bound aid trucks by right-wing Israeli activists.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-05-14/ty-article-live/u-s-germany-slam-right-wing-israelis-attack-on-gaza-bound-aid-convoy/0000018f-74c8-dd07-adbf-fffa73560000?liveBlogItemId=1038231259#1038231259
Back in February:
“‘The most important lever of pressure is food and water. If we provide them with that, we are missing a lever of pressure’ – Orit Zweig and Zofit Liebman, the sister and brother-in-law of Eliakim Liebman who was kidnapped in Gaza, participated in the blockade of aid trucks to Gaza at Ashdod port”
https://twitter.com/KnessetT/status/1753058324369613042
I think Hamas might be a “terrorist organisation” (though I am not keen on labels of this sort) but I don’t need or want “Lord” Cameron or the BBC to tell me this. Can we just aim to find out as much as possible about what’s going on in the world and make our own minds up?
I’m not sure how anybody, other than those who have outed themselves as traitors to the West and supporters of terrorism, can dispute the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and there are of course more than just Hamas operating out of that region. What other atrocities would you need to see happen before people are able to make their minds up? Or are we now at the point in Clown World where hostage taking/rape = resistance, murder of innocents = liberation? Because that sounds a lot like terrorist sympathizing to me.
You may well be right but neither you nor I need to be told this by a “journalist” or by “Lord” Cameron. If other people think that what Hamas are reported to have done is justified, I want to hear their arguments, as I want to hear arguments from those who fully support Israel’s actions, and all shades in between.
Here’s how pressure is applied to get people to align their views:
“I’m not sure how anybody, other than those who have outed themselves as traitors to the West and supporters of terrorism” – if you don’t agree you must be a terrorist supporter and traitor
“What other atrocities would you need to see happen before people are able to make their minds up?” – if you ask for further information, you have a skewed moral compass
“Or are we now at the point in Clown World where hostage taking/rape = resistance, murder of innocents = liberation?” – use the government mandated term or be seen as a supporter of rape, murder and all manner of atrocities
“Because that sounds a lot like terrorist sympathizing to me.” – get in line or you’re One of Them
Note how Cameron insisted on using “Daesh” to refer to the Islamic State group – an indicator of his alignment?
Ironically my views on this specific issue and the wider ones surrounding it are probably closer to Mogwai’s than to yours, but I certainly don’t think a government minister should be calling for a supposedly impartial state broadcaster to start labelling people. I might agree with this label, but tomorrow they may apply similar to labels to “anti-vaxxers”, “climate deniers”, “conspiracy theorists” etc.
I think we’re in agreement on the important points: get as much information as possible and make your own mind up and no government influence on journalism.
“How Doctor Who went from paternalistic liberal to woke warrior”
Haven’t watched the crap for years now, it was much better back in the day when all the sets used to wobbly around!
“Drax burning magic money trees”
The insanity of burning trees from half way round the world and calling it environmentally friendly is monumentally breathtaking! Millions of tons a year, but your not allowed to burn logs on your little wood burner because it pollutes the atmosphere! Ffs
“Fears for Rwanda policy after Belfast high court ruling”
Yet another example of the creeping Globalist “Kritocracy = Rule By Judges”
“Melinda Gates quits the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” Well done to her! Maybe her eyes have been opened to the terrible harm that foundation has done to humanity.
“The spirit of Lee Kuan Yew lives on…” Excellent video. Singaporeans are lucky to have such a sensible Prime Minister.