PREMIUM
Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveils a shake-up of the bus sector at the National Express depot in Coventry RARELY do I agree with Boris Johnson, but his announcement of a £3billion boost to expand and enhance bus services across England made me concede he is not always entirely misguided. Putting aside the question of how often the PM has been seen taking the bus himself, he is making a welcome Tory U-turn, albeit 40 years too late. Many are still smarting from Margaret Thatcher’s withering credo that anyone found on a bus after the age of 25 was a “failure”. Why she picked on buses rather than the vermin-infested tube or unreliable trains is unclear, but the label stuck. And while doubt has since been cast on whether she actually uttered these words, the sentiment certainly embodied the Conservative party’s outlook. Nor did the PM ever correct the misunderstanding, if the statement was not hers.
Transphobic terf or sex traitor? This trans rights culture war must stop Spurious accusations of transphobia have chilling effect on women’s voices
Wed, Mar 17, 2021, 00:06 Iseult White
It is suggested the culture war around transgender identity is a British issue and “terfs” are expanding westward to colonise Irish feminism. This is divisive and sectarian nonsense.
Some days the new Ireland feels eerily like the old Ireland. Different identities, different rhetoric, but the same sanctimonious scapegoating of women who step out of line.
That was how I felt when I read Emer O’Toole’s piece last week about how Irish feminists must avoid transphobia. Like Emer, I too was curious about the Irish Women’s Lobby (IWL) and attended their inaugural International Women’s Day event. The event I attended online focused on the sexual exploitation of wo
Since the Middle Ages, Scots have been entertaining themselves during the long winter nights with a dialectical tradition called “flyting”. This is a form of conversation in which you knowingly subject your friend or colleague to verbal violence and insult. Weepy millennials should not try this at home. Flyting began in the 16th century as a contest between poets, or “makars”, to see who was capable of the most imaginative invective – a bit like rap. It became a widespread mode of social intercourse among working people in homes and hostelries. The abuse is, of course, an ironic form of affection, of bonding – a demonstration that your relationship is so strong that you can playfully abuse each other. But it’s something that is almost impossible to explain in the age of social media and the tyranny of the literal. And with the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill now passed into law, flyting is finally grounded.
THIS WEEK the SNP congratulated themselves on delivering the Hate Crime Bill or to give it its Sunday title The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill.