Thank the Lord for some common sense. In this case, thank Lord Hodge, who yesterday* delivered the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that trans women are not biologically female.
Extraordinary as it is that such an obvious statement requires an 88-page judgment, compiled over many months by the highest court of appeal in the country, this decision is crucial.
The UK Supreme Court has ruled that a woman is someone whose sex is female. The judgment, handed down this morning by Lord Hodge, sought to establish coherence in an area of law that has become the focus of an emotional, and sometimes heated debate. For that we should all be grateful.
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What happened to the Birmingham I love?
My beloved Birmingham, the city I called home for 26 years and where my children grew up, is drowning in a sea of black bin bags. It’s a shocking sight to see this once proud city, that was arguably the centre of the industrial revolution, in such a state. Thousands of tonnes of rubbish is piling up, rats are everywhere – and the stench is dreadful. As the weather warms up, life in Britain’s second city might become unbearable.
If data is worth collecting, then surely it is worth collecting properly. As a scientist I’d argue that unreliable data is worse than no data at all. At least if there is nothing recorded, then there is nothing to mislead. On one of the most basic categories of all – sex – it seems that official records are all over the place.
If a government’s first duty is to protect its citizens, then Wes Streeting must step up to defend some of society’s most vulnerable. Instead, the Health Secretary is reportedly refusing to intervene over NHS plans to test puberty blockers on children.
Five years ago in March 2020, schools fell silent as Covid-19 swept across the world. At first, there was a tinge of excitement among some students and staff; it was as if, perhaps, we had been told that the whole country was going to be snowed in for six weeks.
Transgender ideology has imposed itself on society, but at what cost? A return to common sense cannot come soon enough.
Should we be allowed to change the sex marker on our passport? Between pragmatism and ideology the debate is fraught, but the real impact remains limited – even for trans people.
Debbie Hayton 