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December 2nd 2024
Is It Possible to Dig All the Way Through the Earth to the Other Side?
If the cartoons said it, it must be true.
Andrew Gase Published November 29, 2024 | Comments (48)
When I was a kid, I liked to dig holes in my backyard in Cincinnati. My grandfather joked that if I kept digging, I would end up in China.
In fact, if I had been able to dig straight through the planet, I would have come out in the Indian Ocean, about 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) west of Australia. That’s the antipode, or opposite point on Earth’s surface, from my town.
But I only had a garden spade to move the earth. When I hit rock, less than 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface, I couldn’t go deeper.
Now, I’m a geophysicist and know a lot more about Earth’s structure. It has three main layers:
- The outer skin, called the crust, is a very thin layer of light rock. Its thickness compared to Earth’s diameter is similar to how thick an apple’s skin is to its diameter. When I dug holes as a kid, I was scratching away at the very top of Earth’s crust.
- The mantle, which lies beneath the crust, is much thicker, like the flesh of the apple. It’s made of strong, heavy rock that flows up to a few inches per year as hotter rock rises away from Earth’s center and cooler rock sinks toward it.
- The core, at Earth’s center, is made of super-hot liquid and solid metal. Temperatures here are 4,500 to 9,300 degrees Fahrenheit (2,500 to 5,200 degrees Celsius).
Volcan26/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Earth’s outer layers exert pressure on the layers underneath, and these forces increase steadily with depth, just as they do in the ocean – think of how pressure in your ears gets stronger as you dive deeper underwater.
When digging a pit, one way to prevent the walls from collapsing inward under pressure is to make them less steep, so they slant outward like the sides of a cone. A good rule of thumb is to make the hole three times wider than its depth.
That’s relevant for digging through the Earth, because when a hole is dug or drilled, the walls along the sides of the hole are under tremendous pressure from the overlying rock, and also unstable because there’s empty space next to them. Stronger rocks can support bigger forces, but all rocks can fail if the pressure is great enough.
Unstable walls
The deepest open pit in the Earth is the Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, which was dug with excavators and explosives in the early 1900s to mine copper ore. The pit of the mine is 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) deep and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) wide.
Since the mine is more than three times wider than it is deep and the walls are sloped, the pit’s walls are not too steep or unstable. Still, in 2013, one of the slopes collapsed, causing two huge landslides that released 145 million tons of crushed rock to the bottom of the pit. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the landslides caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Suppose you were to try digging through the Earth, and that the planet was all solid. (We know that it’s not, but this is the simplest scenario.) The depth of a hole all the way through the planet would be equivalent to Earth’s diameter, which is just a name for a line that passes straight through the center of a circle. So your hole would need to be about three times as wide as the diameter of the Earth in order for it to be stable.
Clearly, this is an impossible task that would completely alter the planet’s shape.
Digging versus drilling
Drilling can go deeper more quickly than digging because less material needs to be moved, and the smaller surface area of a borehole can be engineered to withstand more force. Energy companies routinely drill as far as 3 miles (5 kilometers) beneath the surface to find oil and gas.
The deepest hole in the Earth is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in northwestern Russia, which extends 7.5 miles (12.2 kilometers) deep. Deep boreholes like this one can tell scientists a lot about Earth’s interior. However, the Kola project was eventually abandoned due to drilling challenges, such as temperatures too hot for the equipment to function, equipment failures and high costs.
Drilling is a tedious process. A rotary drill bit at the end of a hollow, mud-filled pipe grinds rock, penetrating just a couple inches per minute for very hard rocks. Assuming steady progress at this rate, it would take hundreds of years to drill through the Earth.
As the bit drills deeper, it takes more time to replace broken parts. And the miles of drill pipe can become so heavy that they cannot be twisted or pulled out of the hole.
Pressure is also an issue. Borehole walls are under tremendous pressure and prone to failing. The slow movement of Earth’s mantle would eventually cause a borehole to bend and collapse. Magma, gases and liquid metal deep in the Earth, under tremendous pressure, could explode upward through the borehole toward the surface.
Current drilling technologies just aren’t fast enough or durable enough to drill through Earth’s mantle and core. But we can still marvel at accomplishments like the Kola Superdeep Borehole and Bingham Canyon Mine, and dream of digging up rocks from even greater depths.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
Andrew Gase, Assistant Professor of Geoscience, Boise State University
Comment I am very grateful to Professor Gase for a brilliant article. It took me back to my school class of 1957, when my teacher Miss Green told us that if we had a kinitting needle long enough and pushed it through the earth, then it would come out in Australia. So, much to my father’s annoyance, I went home and started digging holes in the garden. I was 7 years old. I very much regret abandoning my career in the laboratory of E & F Richardson in 1974 because I envied the men I saw wearng suits, working in the firm’s offices. Some one has to get their hands dirty, take chances and dig interesting holes. R J Cook
The Decline of Etiquette and the Rise of ‘Boundaries’
For centuries, strict social norms dictated what people could politely talk about. Now we have to figure it out for ourselves.
- Michael Waters
In 1950, family dinner in America was a minefield of social rules. According to one etiquette film from that year, children were expected to arrive promptly with hair combed and faces scrubbed; daughters should have changed from school clothes to “something more festive.” Most important, conversation topics had to be chosen with care. Discussing financial issues, the narrator declared, was a hard no; so were long personal anecdotes, the mention of “unpleasant occurrences,” and any references to “disagreeable news.” “With your own family you can relax, be yourself,” the off-camera voice assured viewers. “Just be sure it’s your best self.”
For centuries, strict social norms dictated what people could politely talk about—and, consequently, how much they knew about one another, even those closest to them. Yet by the close of the 20th century, films like A Date With Your Family, the 1950 guide, had begun to resemble artifacts, detritus of a socially rigid era. Conversational taboos were falling away. Etiquette manuals had lost their cultural cachet. Sexuality was being more openly discussed, thanks in part to the sexual revolution of the ’60s and the efforts of HIV/AIDS activists in the ’80s and ’90s. And books such as Prozac Nation that dealt frankly with mental illness were trailblazing a new, raw form of memoir. In 2022, the idea that we should carefully control what personal information we share—and take in—might seem outdated, even dystopian.
Or maybe it doesn’t. Today, a disconcerting question seems to be on many people’s mind: Do we know too much about those around us? Advice columnists are fielding questions about how to protect against overshares, as well as what constitutes TMI (“too much information”) in the first place; psychology websites are advising readers on how to deal with “TMI-prone friends”; the personal-essay genre is caught in a never-ending discourse about its own self-indulgence; TikTokers are accusing their peers of divulging life details to the point of “trauma dumping.” As society-wide norms have loosened, individuals have taken on the burden of navigating their own boundaries—and it isn’t always easy. The result, it seems, is a new backlash against oversharing.
Recycling is failing as a way to reduce plastic. Here’s why
175 countries trying to negotiate binding treaty on plastic pollution in South Korea
Anand Ram · CBC News · Posted: Nov 28, 2024 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: November 28
Social Sharing
Recycling plastic isn’t working.
The figure most often cited is that only nine per cent of the world’s plastic has ever been recycled. That statistic is taken from a 2017 study looking at how much plastic the world has thrown out from 1950 to 2015.
It’s a lot: 6.3 billion tonnes, or the weight of nearly 54,000 CN Towers.
The 91 per cent of plastic that isn’t recycled is mostly landfilled, burned and/or unaccounted for in the environment — a demoralizing statistic for people who diligently put their containers and plastic bottles into recycling bins.
As 175 countries negotiate a binding treaty on plastic pollution in Busan, South Korea, why is recycling still seen as a way to stop this pollution crisis?
‘More, not less’
The world is actually makingmore plastic. Production has skyrocketed in recent decades, with “the annual production of plastics … soaring from 234 million tonnes (Mt) in 2000 to 460 Mt in 2019,” according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Plastic producers and the fossil fuel companies that provide the necessary petrochemicals see a demand for products and only support a solution that won’t hinder meeting that demand. In a statement, the Chemical Industry Association of Canada — which is present at the current negotiations — said it supports “an agreement that has plastics circularity at its core, so used plastics are reused and remade, rather than discarded.”
It went on to suggest that a sustainable future — from renewable technology to modern health care — means “the world will need to rely on plastic more, not less.”
November 24th 2024
http://www.ocotilloroad.com/geneal/close1.html
My late mother was a descendant of the Close family, her father William leaving Ireland after World War. I. One of his sons, my Uncle Charles Close, died fighting with the London Irish Rifles in 1944. I come from a wealthy family who believed that Britain was worth fighting for. Bitter and horrible experience of its injustices and hypocrisy has taught me otherwise. It is a hatefull and hate filled place. R J Cook
November 22nd 2024
Aylesbury Today
Goodbye to the pride of Aylesbury High St, the Granada Cinema which stood derelict and empty since the 1990s after years reduced to life as a Bingo Hall and conference hall for the likes of local Thames Valley Police.
November 14th 2024
What is the boy mom theory?
During this stage of development, Freud suggested that the child develops a sexual attraction to their opposite-sex parent and hostility toward the same-sex parent. According to Freud, a boy wishes to possess his mother and replace his father, who the child views as a rival for the mother’s affection.26 Jun 2024
What You Should Know About the Oedipus Complex – Verywell Mind
Why #BoyMom Culture is Darker Than You Might ThinkParentshttps://www.parents.com › News › Culture
29 Sept 2023 — If you’re a member of the #ToxicBoyMom club, though, you’re part of a dangerous problem. It’s not a joke, and we’re not laughing. This Mom Had …
The toxic culture of ‘Boy Moms’
The Pace Presshttps://thepacepress.org › opinion › the-toxic-culture-of…
The toxic culture of ‘Boy Moms’ · “Boy Mom” is a term derived from the internet, used to describe mothers who only have sons. · “I love my four kids equally, but …
November 13th 2024
Award-winning building to be demolished less than 30 years after being built
By Jack Guy, CNN
3 minute read
Published 10:45 AM EST, Tue November 12, 2024
The Centenary Building was built in 1996.Dennis Gilbert courtesy of Hodder and Partners CNN —
An award-winning university building that won a prestigious architecture prize is set to be demolished less than 30 years after it was built, sparking widespread criticism.
The Centenary Building was built for Salford University in northern England and won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize, which names Britain’s best new building, in 1996.
However, the university has confirmed to CNN that it will be knocked down after sitting empty for several years.
“While the Centenary Building has been part of our university estate for a number of decades, unfortunately its ageing infrastructure means it no longer meets modern standards and requirements,” said the university in a statement sent to CNN on Tuesday.
“It has now been vacant for a third of its built life,” says the statement, which adds that the demolition is part of the “comprehensive” redevelopment of the local area.
Architect Stephen Hodder said in a statement sent to CNN on Tuesday that the announcement had filled him with “great dismay.”
“This is not borne out of nostalgia, it being the inaugural RIBA Stirling Prize winner, or indeed the importance of the building to the development of our practice,” said Hodder.
Related article ‘Modest’ council housing project wins architecture’s Stirling Prize
“I simply cannot support the demolition of a building that is only thirty years old. Consideration really needs to be given to the carbon emissions from its demolition and replacement,” he added.
“‘Ageing infrastructure’ is not a justification for demolition and can be upgraded or replaced,” said Hodder. “For a university that promotes its sustainability credentials, the intention to demolish surely undermines the credibility of its policy. We urge it to re-consider.”
In October, the Twentieth Century Society, a campaign group that works to protect 20th century buildings in the UK, submitted a listing application to Historic England to protect the building. Historic England is a public body that works to care for the country’s public environment.
“Of concrete cross-wall construction, the building is planned around an internal ‘street’, with teaching and administration spaces arranged to either side, connected by galleries and bridges,” reads a statement announcing the bid published October 31.
“The Society’s proactive listing application has been prompted by fears that rapidly encroaching re-development of the surrounding area could ultimately threaten the building,” it said.
In a statement sent to CNN on Tuesday, the society said that it was “hugely disappointing” that plans to turn the building into a school or community center had failed and it was now slated for demolition.
“That would be (a) wholly irresponsible and unnecessary outcome, and we urge the university to reconsider,” reads the statement. “This is a sophisticated piece of modern architecture, with clear opportunities for adaptive re-use.”
“It acted as catalyst for previous regeneration in the area, and could do so again,” it added.
RIBA board chair Jack Pringle said that, although the organization could not comment on the Centenary Building specifically, “the inventive re-use of buildings is critical to our net zero future.”
“Secondly, there must be a case for all Stirling Prize winning buildings to be considered for listing,” said Pringle in a statement to CNN Tuesday.
“By definition they are the best buildings of the year, and to list at least one modern building a year, after due consideration and maybe a little time, would not seem unreasonable.”
Left to right, author R J Cook, award winning architect Owen Luder who was twice president of RIBA and author and lecturer Dr Celia Clark then of Portsmouth University. Cook and Clark, with Owen Luder’s massive support and input, researched and wrote the history of Luder’s 1966 award winning building, Portsmouth’s Tricorn. The infamous building was derelict and almost completely abandoned thirty years later. It was demolished in 2004. Image Portsmouth News 2010.
November 9th 2024
Dead puppies, live ultrasounds and vandalism: The inside story of Blue Peter
In its golden age, the must-watch children’s show made household names of its presenters and gave us catchphrases still used to this day
November 8, 2024 7:00 am
If you were the sort of child who couldn’t wait to stick their hand up to let everyone know that they knew what a cosine was, then you were probably a fan of Blue Peter.
Borrowing its name from the flag flown to indicate a ship is about to set sail, Blue Peter was launched by producer John Hunter Blair on 16 October 1958. Billed by Radio Times as “a weekly programme for younger viewers” featuring “toys, model railways, games, stories and cartoons”, the show was initially presented by actor Christopher Trace and 1957’s Miss Great Britain Leila Williams, initially doing little more than demonstrating what were very much presented as separate hobbies for boys and girls.
As the weeks went by, however, the likeable pair, and their enthusiastic if only just slightly less than formal presentational style, caught on with viewers, and the show – broadcast weekly on Thursdays – expanded its remit to take advantage of this, bringing in competitions, short documentaries and the very first stirrings of what would become a much-loved institution: the Blue Peter “make”.
By 1960, Blue Peter was so popular that it was moved to a longer slot on Mondays, but behind the scenes all was not well. A succession of unsuitable replacement producers saw Williams leave after creative clashes, and her replacement Anita West only lasted eight weeks before she opted to leave, in light of an impending divorce.
By the end of 1962, however, arguably the two most significant figures in Blue Peter’s history were on board: the formidable no-nonsense producer and editor Biddy Baxter, who fought tirelessly to get the show as much recognition and resources as any adult programme and invariably won, took over as producer, and Valerie Singleton – of whom, Baxter observed, if the studio had collapsed in the middle of a broadcast, she would have stepped out from under the rubble and continued word perfect with the scheduled item – joined as co-presenter.
One of Baxter’s first innovations was to replace the previously standard Blue Peter presentation area with a huge open set and a few items of furniture in front of a white backdrop, with guests and featured items simply ushered on and off as required. It made absolutely no attempt to disguise the fact that it was a live broadcast from a television studio, and Blue Peter as it is still known and loved today was born.
Baxter was never one to stand still, however, and kept on introducing new innovations that just seemed to make Blue Peter more vibrant and more popular. The first Blue Peter Appeal, famously raising funds for charity by asking viewers to send in easily collectable recyclable items like silver paper, used stamps and broken watch straps rather than money, took place in December 1962, followed in the new year by the introduction of the much-coveted Blue Peter Badge, awarded to competition winners and other exceptional achievers, and which granted them free entry to museums and National Trust properties.
The “makes” became ever more ingenious yet straightforward to achieve, as the presenters showed viewers how to make everything from budget-conscious improvised pet beds and Christmas decorations to a tobogganing outfit for a teddy bear, famously using everyday unwanted implements like used washing-up-liquid bottles and “sticky-backed plastic”, with the time-saving conveyor belt of examples of “here’s one I made earlier” quickly becoming national shorthand.
Mindful that a large percentage of the viewing audience might live in circumstances where they were unable to have a pet of their own, Baxter also introduced the idea of the show having resident animals, and the tradition of their names being chosen from viewers’ suggestions. Mongrel Petra – a secret last-minute replacement for another puppy who had been introduced on screen but died of distemper shortly before the following edition – joined in December 1962 as Blue Peter’s very first pet. Irritable and prone to on-set stroppiness, Petra nonetheless became beloved of the viewers and presenters alike. Petra was joined by Fred the tortoise – who later revealed himself to be a Freda – in 1963, Jason the cat in 1964 and her own puppy Patch in 1965.
Perhaps the most important addition arrived late in 1965. John Noakes, a fresh-faced chipper Northerner, joined as a presenter. Trace himself left during the summer of 1967, replaced by former Doctor Who assistant Peter Purves, and the first truly iconic Blue Peter team was complete. Not just the most famous faces on children’s television but some of the most famous faces on television full stop, Pete, John and Val presided over an eccentric and eclectic variety of features ranging from trying their hands at riding both Penny Farthings and the newly launched Space Hopper to nervously assisting defected Soviet strongman Walter Cornelius with some jaw-dropping feats of physical endurance.
In many ways, Blue Peter was the quintessential BBC show – good, clean fun that challenged without being challenging, and encouraged viewers to aspire towards their own sense of achievement and fulfilment.
In 1971, the presenters won headlines by burying a “time capsule” at Television Centre containing Blue Peter-related memorabilia and a set of newly minted decimal coins – and it won headlines again when it was excavated in 2000, and revealed live on air to be primarily full of rancid water. Designed by renowned horticulturalist Percy Thrower, the meticulously tended Blue Peter Garden – which played host to many a firework display – was unveiled in 1974.
Even the filmed reports could become national talking points, most infamously John Noakes’ staggering ascent of Nelson’s Column with a basic standard of equipment that nowadays would provoke a health-and-safety nightmare before anyone had even finished suggesting it. An incident in which a troop of Girl Guides stoically singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands” were momentarily menaced by an out-of-control campfire live in the studio, however, was slightly less planned for.
There was, however, just one name during this time that anyone and everyone would associate with Blue Peter. Shep, a Border collie with vastly more energy than sense, made his first appearance in September 1971, and within minutes had tried to bolt off to have a nose at the cameramen and nibble the presenters’ faces off. Whether attempting to “help” Roy Castle play the drums or challenging Doctor Who’s resident robot dog K9 to a scrap, Shep could be relied on to bring a note of unpredictable and scarcely controllable anarchy to proceedings, and formed an immediate bond with John Noakes, whose vain exhortations to “get down, Shep!” quickly became a national catchphrase. Noakes later broke down in tears when informing viewers of Shep’s recent death on the early evening BBC magazine show Fax.
In the 80s, Blue Peter went from strength to strength, just as many of its old contemporaries were being quietly retired on account of seeming a little past their time. A lot of this was down to the ever-judicious selection of presenters, who could always be relied on to set a fresh-faced good example without ever coming across as too square. John and Pete were replaced in 1978 by Christopher Wenner and Simon Groom, who won infamy for their somewhat nuanced delivery of a scripted item about Durham Cathedral’s antique door knockers. Children’s BBC veteran Tina Heath joined in 1979 – replacing Lesley Judd – only to leave a year later to have her daughter. In a fairly radical move at the time, her pregnancy followed in a series of features on the show, including a live ultrasound scan.
Tina’s replacement, Sarah Greene, set many an adolescent heart a-flutter with her dressed-down studenty image; as did that year’s fellow new recruit – despite being landed with a green-and-white suit designed by a viewer – Christopher’s replacement, Peter Duncan. Jigsaw’s Janet Ellis took over from a Saturday Superstore-bound Greene in 1983, bringing along the wry raised-eyebrow smirk that had characterised her work, but also capable of taking matters seriously, notoriously when she had to break the news that the Blue Peter Garden had been vandalised in 1983.
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It has become a punchline since, but the live footage of her surveying the pointless damage – and the harm done to the fish – scarcely supports the idea that Blue Peter was all forced grins and jolly pursuits. It wasn’t all bad news, though; redevelopment work at Television Centre meant that the original time capsule had to be excavated, and it was relocated – with a new one created by Groom, Ellis and Duncan – in the newly restored garden.
By 1988 they had their youngest and most with-it presentation team yet – Caron Keating, Mark Curry and Yvette Fielding – and they were still capable of making headlines, such as Mark accidentally knocking the head off a Lego statue live on air, and a summer expedition to the Soviet Union which took in a mud bath where Curry revealed more of himself than might have been expected from the venerable institution.
You could like it, you could pretend to hate it, but you just couldn’t escape it – Blue Peter was always there and always trying to find something either interesting or charitable for you to do. Plus, if we’re all being honest about it, everybody probably secretly wished that school could have been a bit more like Blue Peter too.
‘The Golden Age of Children’s TV’ is out now (£22, Black & White Publishing)
Comment I wonder why there are no pictures of Chris Trace. He left Blue Peter to work on BBC Look East, while I was living in Norwich. He was my favourite, especially when he featured model railways. I heard he left that to work in a friend’s factory. It was all so long ago. Wish I could go back there, to the only times when I was really happy and the BBC was not prigishly condescending, patronising, lecturing and self righteous. R J Cook
November 8th 2024
Sarah Cunningham, Painter of Hypnotic Canvases, Dies at …Artnet Newshttps://news.artnet.com › art-world › sarah-cunningham…
3 days ago — The British painter Sarah Cunningham has died at the age of 31. She is remembered for lively and ambiguous landscapes.
Comment Artists are sensitive by nature, inclined to question and play with socially prescribed reality. It is a dangerous business. This wonan died in front of a tube train in the early hours, with few passensgers or staff available to save her. R J Cook
November 6th 2024
Is it anxiety or is it low progesterone? Here’s how to tell the difference
By Lauren Geall
There are a multitude of factors that can lead to low progesterone levels, but few of us are aware of the main causes or the signs and symptoms to expect. Here, a hormonal specialist explains everything you need to know.
Our hormones influence our mood more than we realise. The premenstrual period isn’t the only time when our hormones can make us feel anxious, sad or angry – various imbalances and fluctuations affect how we think and feel throughout the month.
Progesterone is one of the prime culprits. Associated with its role in pregnancy and the menstrual cycle, it’s known for being a natural antidepressant and anti-anxiety hormone that can influence our sleep quality and our resilience to stress.
That’s all well and good when our progesterone levels are fluctuating as they should, but it means that any major imbalances can wreak havoc on our mental wellbeing. In fact, two of the main symptoms of low progesterone are spikes in anxiety and depression. So, how can you tell the difference between poor mental health and a potential hormonal issue?
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To find out more about low progesterone – including the symptoms to look out for and when to seek help from a professional – we spoke to Dr Fiona MacRae, a doctor, psychologist and hormonal health expert at the Marion Gluck Clinic. Here’s what she had to say.
What are the main symptoms of low progesterone?
Credit: Getty
Alongside mental health conditions like anxiety and depression and mood-related symptoms such as mood swings, low progesterone can have a knock-on effect all over the body. According to Dr MacRae, some of the signs and symptoms of low progesterone include:
1. Infertility or difficulty conceiving
Progesterone plays a crucial role in preparing the uterine lining for implantation during the second half of the menstrual cycle, so low levels can lead to fertility challenges.
It’s for this reason that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says women who experience bleeding in early pregnancy (before 12 weeks) and have had one or more miscarriages are offered progesterone after an ultrasound scan to confirm the pregnancy.
2. Severe PMS symptoms
While severe mood or symptom changes in the week leading up to your period can be the result of PMDD or PME, having bad PMS symptoms – such as bloating, irritability or breast tenderness – can be the result of low progesterone levels. Again, this is because the oestrogen in your system remains unopposed, leading to symptoms of high oestrogen.
3. An irregular menstrual cycle
In the female reproductive system, progesterone opposes oestrogen, which means low levels of progesterone can exacerbate the impact of oestrogen on the body.
Hormone dumping – can you really ‘cure’ PMS by flushing away excess oestrogen?
“Unopposed oestrogen activity, as occurs when progesterone is low, leads to excessive thickening of the endometrium resulting in heavy and irregular bleeds,” Dr MacRae says. “Because of this, short or unusually heavy menstrual cycles can indicate low progesterone.”
4. Hot flashes and night sweats
While these symptoms are more common in women nearing menopause, hot flashes and night sweats can also be a sign of low progesterone, as the hormone can affect body temperature.
5. Spotting or bleeding
If you’re experiencing spotting or bleeding during the middle of your menstrual cycle, low progesterone could be the cause. This happens because progesterone helps the body to maintain the uterine lining, so when progesterone levels are low, the uterine lining can start to break down and produce light, period-like bleeding or spotting.
What are the main causes of low progesterone?
Credit: Getty
Low progesterone doesn’t come out of nowhere – there are several factors that can lead to your progesterone levels being constantly low or dropping month to month.
1. Ovulation issues
Progesterone is primarily made in the ovaries by the corpus luteum – a temporary gland that develops after ovulation to produce progesterone for the first few weeks of pregnancy. If you don’t fall pregnant, this gland breaks down, progesterone levels fall, and your period starts.
However, if ovulation doesn’t occur, the corpus luteum doesn’t exist in the first place, so progesterone levels don’t increase – leaving you with the symptoms of low progesterone.
“Sometimes even when ovulation has occurred, the corpus luteal function is impaired, resulting in lower levels of progesterone,” Dr MacRae adds.
2. Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)
PCOS can lead to delays in ovulation, which therefore stops the corpus luteum from being formed and producing progesterone.
3. Thyroid disorders
Our thyroids release hormones that play an important role in hormonal regulation, which means a disruption to their function can wreak havoc on our hormone levels.
“I’m a women’s health expert and these are the 7 things you need to start doing for better ovulation health”
“An underactive or overactive thyroid can disrupt hormonal balance, impacting progesterone production as a result,” explains Dr MacRae.
4. Stress
Progesterone is a calming hormone, so you might not be surprised to learn that having high stress levels for an extended period – also known as chronic stress – can cause problems.
“Chronic stress can lead to hormonal imbalances, including reduced progesterone levels, due to increased cortisol production,” Dr MacRae explains. Basically, as cortisol levels rise, progesterone production is impacted – leaving you vulnerable to the symptoms of low progesterone as a result.
5. Menopause or perimenopause
As ovulation becomes irregular and eventually stops after menopause, so too does the production of progesterone – leading to low levels.
6. Poor diet or lifestyle
“A lack of essential nutrients and a sedentary lifestyle can affect hormone production, including progesterone,” Dr MacRae explains.
Key nutrients known to influence the production of progesterone include zinc, vitamin B6, magnesium, vitamin C and l-arginine. Foods high in one or more of these include lentils, nuts, spinach and broccoli.
What to do if you’re worried about low progesterone
Credit: Getty
Low progesterone levels can have a big impact on your health and overall quality of life, so it’s important to speak to a doctor if you’re worried your levels might be low.
A simple blood, saliva or urine test is all that’s needed to test for progesterone concentrations in the body – you can speak to your doctor about the best approach for you.
Your treatment options will depend on the root cause of your condition, but some common treatments include diet and lifestyle changes (including stress management), progesterone creams or capsules and taking key supplements.
But, Dr MacRae stresses, “It is essential to work with a medical specialist to properly diagnose and treat low progesterone, as individual needs and responses to treatment can vary.”
Images: Getty
November 2nd 2024
I worked undercover at the Met for decades – leading a double life destroys people
Kevin O’Leary was the most senior undercover officer at Scotland Yard, running operations inside the most serious criminal networks
Deputy Features and Lifestyle Editor
October 28, 2024
The first undercover case that Kevin O’Leary ever worked on is a hard one to forget: a wife was looking to hire a contract killer to get rid of her husband. O’Leary’s team were responsible for going undercover, posing as the potential killer-for-hire, to find out if she was really serious and had murderous intent, was just indulging a fantasy, or perhaps it was a cry for help. Either way, they were going into a murky underworld looking for evidence to build a case.
“Just a normal day at the office,” jokes the 61-year-old, who retired from the Metropolitan Police a decade ago after 30 years of active service, half of which was as the head of undercover operations at Scotland Yard from 2002-2010. In a role that spanned everything from infiltrating organised criminal gangs to protecting the London Olympics – which he writes about in a new book, out in October – his phone didn’t stop ringing for years.
Back to the potentially deadly wife: how does one go about finding a contract killer? Is there a Yellow Pages advertising such services? How much do you pay? “There are networks of people who ask people – if you wanted one tomorrow, you’d contact the dodgiest person you know, they wouldn’t know but they’d ask along and chain until you get there,” he explains. (In the end, the wife backed out and the case was handed to another department).
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O’Leary trained as a police officer at Hendon in the 80s, having moved from Birmingham. He climbed the career ladder, leading investigations and running undercover ops where he sent officers into covert situations. He was also a negotiator in cases of kidnapping for ransom. “The hostage-takers would demand that the person was not to call the police, so my job was to go to work alongside them in secret, feeding them lines until we located the hostage.”
Later his name was thrown into the ring for the most senior undercover role (although he doesn’t think he was meant to be the final candidate). “There was someone else they had in mind, but they kept failing the exam. I knew they didn’t really want me – and I’ve never stayed at a party where I wasn’t welcome – but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I went for it,” he says.
Going into covert ops doesn’t require any specific qualifications, says O’Leary, but the selection process, including psychometric tests, is rigorous. The training has a 30-40 per cent fail rate. “It is quite hard to get into undercover,” he says – and it is seen as an exciting role, but these days officer churn is higher than it once was because of longer service and reduced pension benefits.
Once in the role, O’Leary quickly realised the magnitude of what he was responsible for. “I was reading cases that had been in the headlines – unsolved murders, criminal groups so well-established that the seniors think they’re untouchable. My jaw dropped,” he says.
The process for deciding whether to go undercover, he says, involves asking: Have other tactics been tried and failed? Is there backing? Are we capable of sustaining this? Do we have the team? (Sometimes they borrowed officers from other countries around the world to make it work.)
One of his longest-running ops was known as Operation Peyzac in 2008-09. There had been a spate of teenage killings in Edmonton, north London, and the police had reached a dead end. “The public weren’t giving us anything, nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. They were frightened. There was a wall of silence.” Even the confidential hotline was quiet.
O’Leary’s unit had to work out how to get into a tight-knit community without raising suspicion. “To parachute in would be the wrong question – you have to attract these people to you.”
The police decided to set up a music shop, BoomBox, fitted out with a recording studio that locals could use for £10 a session – and unknowingly, record their conversations. “As we’re setting it up, we add a whiff of criminality, we tell people ‘we’ll buy and sell stuff just don’t tell us where it is from’,” he says. “We tell kids they can use the studio for free if they don’t misbehave or bring the police to our door. Meanwhile all the [staff] are undercover officers.”
To be convincing, the staff were trained in the sort of music the shop was selling (O’Leary says they trained officers to do anything from fly a plane to pole dancing if it was needed for a cover story.) The staff began to ask around to buy guns – getting them off the street and into the hands of law enforcement.
“We bought 35-40 guns that year. At the start these were serious weapons but we knew we’d exhausted the supply when we started being sold air pistols,” says O’Leary.
In the end it was shut down with a big arrest phase – “you go in with the riot gear – a lot of people were sent to prison”. (Later, the Operation Peyzac defendants went to the Court of Appeal and argued they had been entrapped, but the judge ultimately found the police did not overstep.)
By this point in his career, O’Leary wasn’t on the ground during these operations, but in the background making sure it ran smoothly, ‘running a plot’ as it is known: moving the pieces on the chess board, normally dozens of concurrent operations – several hundred in a year – keeping officers safe, or as safe as is possible while infiltrating organised crime.
Did it ever go wrong? Did officers get found out? “Sometimes they do get confronted and beaten up – that happened a few times. But we’ve got a well-worn protocol to sort it out.” Not exactly “secret squirrel”, but it involves using a cover officer – someone who isn’t visibly on the ground but is a handler that bridges the undercover person and the police – and a metaphorical emergency button to notify them that they’ve been compromised.
“My phone was on 24/7 even if I was on annual leave,” he says. (When he left the role, he called Vodafone to check his mobile was still connected as he was so shocked by the drop-off in contact.)
One of the more common threats was the danger the officer posed to themselves in living a double life. O’Leary says there is a “corrosive” effect. “Imagine you’re deep infiltrating criminals and then have to go home, mow the lawn, and take the kids to park, as your true self. Switching out is really difficult,” he says. “That impacts them greatly the longer it goes on.”
Prior to O’Leary’s leadership, officers could remain full-time undercover indefinitely, but he changed that and required them to have an exit plan. “One of the biggest things a leader has to do in undercover is fight your own staff, because they’re so passionate and committed they don’t realise they’re burning out. [Because] they’ll be the first one to tell me I’ve broken them, that your family has split up, and you’re drinking too much because we left you in too long.”
Undercover policing has come under scrutiny in recent years, specifically with regards to ‘honeytrap’ relationships. Mark Kennedy, a Met undercover officer, posed as environmental campaigner ‘Mark Stone’ and formed close relationships with a number of women. O’Leary knew him personally. “Those undercover relationships were totally inappropriate,” he says, adding that Kennedy’s case was the perfect example of how corrosive long-term placements can be.
O’Leary is keen to draw a distinction between the work he did and that sort of undercover work. “Our objective was always to send cases to court for prosecution, so [everything we were doing] was always going to be looked at by a judge,” he says, whereas other units were “intelligence-gathering for internal consumption to build a picture” – for example, to understand what an activist group might be planning to do.
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“I’m not condemning [these] operations, they had their purpose, but what the police should caution against is mission creep – it gets wider and wider. It takes a really disciplined senior officer to call it and say stop, and I don’t think that was always done,” he says.
There are laws about what undercover officers are allowed to do and not do: they are governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and the Home Office Code of Practice on Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS). In 2015, former Home Secretary Theresa May set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry to investigate allegations, which is still ongoing.
But perhaps undercover work is always going to be controversial: a new BBC podcast featured undercover officer Neil Woods, who admitted: “I would seek out the most vulnerable people in those communities… [they] are the easiest to manipulate. If that sounds ruthless, well, of course it’s ruthless. A key thing about undercover policing is that it necessitates ruthlessness.”
The Met also continues to battle corruption and malpractice – seen most recently in the cases of Wayne Couzens, David Carrick, and the Charing Cross WhatsApp groups. “There was behaviour of some cops that was just deplorable,” says O’Leary. He saw firsthand corrupt officers uncovered during the course of his operations. “You can’t pick and choose what you discover when undercover. We’d be trying to investigate criminals and would be just getting a foothold and realise there were some officers on the periphery that are corrupt.”
He still thinks of himself as police – referring to ‘we’. “I still love the organisation I spent 30 years of my life in, but I felt the rot start to set in about 2010. “It started changing, austerity came in and suddenly kicked out people who had a load of experience.” He says that to be a good undercover officer, at their core, one must have curiosity, be proactive, stay calm under pressure and manage yourself. “Everyone feels they are a Netflix detective these days.”
After decades in the force, even in his final role, O’Leary could hardly be accused of kicking back. He was appointed Commander for Crime and Intelligence for the London 2012 Olympics.
The security plans drawn up were extensive: missile launchers on tower blocks, a battleship stationed in the Thames (“it was a scarecrow – if you’re coming at us, we’ll fire back”) and also a wealth of less visible policing – combating fraud during stadium construction or environmental crimes from waste dumping, as well as increased rates of domestic violence, which happens alongside sporting events, regardless of medals or not. “We prepared for everything,” he says.
And was it all right on the opening night? “We had a protest group of cyclists – who’d been given approval to protest south of the Thames – but they came towards the Olympic stadium, they were just 100 metres away from the Queen’s convoy. Fortunately an astute copper saw a chance to direct them up on to the Bow flyover when she came past. It was a stressful night, but we got away with it” [182 cyclists were arrested].
Looking at the force now, 10 years after he hung up his badge, does he think there are lessons to be learnt? “Policies and processes might change, and there are different priorities, but human beings are the same, criminals are the same, and young enthusiastic cops are the same – they want to go in and change the world just like I did.”
Where the Evidence Takes Us is out at the end of this month with Bloomsbury
October 24th 2024
The Future of Cinema is Old Movies by Abe Beame.
In late January, I visited Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to watch an infamous, practically unstreamable film. The Lincoln is the hub of old-guard, uptown prestige and culture and the headquarters of the New York Film Festival. On Saturday night at 8:45, prime time for pregaming before a night out, it’s maybe the last place you’d expect to see 20-something socialites. Yet the line outside the Walter Reade Theater on West 65th was full of them, braving the late-winter cold and a light rain for a sold-out screening of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 49-year-old Italian snuff film, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, a modernized adaptation of Marquis de Sade’s 18th-century novel. The film is a critique of fascism that at one point features graphic depictions of young, beautiful captives eating bowls of their own shit. There is very little in the way of arc or character development, and—spoiler alert for anyone who had other plans that Saturday night—the film ends abruptly following the sadistic, gleeful slaughter of the prisoners.
It’s far from blockbuster fare. But this crowd was not one I would’ve recognized from 10 years earlier, when I hit sparsely attended weeknight showings of Antonioni or Imamura or Godard with mostly older moviegoers who drank coffee or dozed off. The Lincoln Center crowd was full of nerds like me, for sure—bespectacled, wearing beanies or keffiyehs and holding dog-eared paperbacks on their laps—but most of the Salò audience looked like they had taken the train down a few stops from Columbia. They sat in large, diverse groups and sipped on cans of wine or beer, huddling and talking excitedly with mouths full of popcorn before the lights went down, after which they were rapt through the entire film. It was surprising and completely absurd.
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It was the culmination of a change I’d noticed developing over the past decade. The types and number of repertory films being shown are changing, as are the types of people attending them. Since the pandemic, I’d heard the oft-repeated narrative that fewer movies are being released in theaters, movie theaters are dying out at an unprecedented clip, and these are harbingers of streaming ultimately killing the moviegoing experience. But it didn’t feel that way that night at the Lincoln Center. It felt like I was a part of something—a culture or a phenomenon. Both a random event and a surprisingly coherent evolutionary step in a burgeoning movement. I wondered whether this was just my anecdotal experience in New York or a larger shift that could portend a future for moviegoing across the country.
There’sThere’s a word for these screenings of old movies: repertory. At a base level, it’s defined as a place where things can be “found or discovered.” The term is often associated with the stage; at a repertory theater, a resident company regularly puts on a staple rotation of old plays. But in the cinema, it essentially means revival—which often takes the shape of showing old movies in movie theaters, a practice that is almost as old as cinema itself. It comes in many forms. Those Wednesday screenings of Godard. A showing of Heat with Michael Mann, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro on hand for a Q&A. A Stop Making Sense dance party at an IMAX theater. An outdoor Summer Screen presentation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in Tompkins Square Park. All of that—and more—is repertory.
The challenge that has always faced repertory cinema is access—the perception that if people have an easier, more convenient way to see a film, they will take it. Going to the movies is a hassle and an expense, no matter where you live. If your goal is to take in a piece of content, why subject yourself to that schlep when you could simply watch it at your own pace, in peace, at home? From virtually its inception, repertory has faced existential threats from a series of at-home viewing options: television, cable, VCRs and DVD players, today’s digital streaming apps. But each time, repertory cinema has proved its resilience, its demand, and its financial viability in spite of these inventions. Its survival speaks to the essence of cinema and what many want out of it—not to simply consume a piece of content, but to get something deeper, richer, and more communal.
The fortunes of repertory houses in film hubs like New York and L.A. have risen and fallen with the times, but repertory programming has always maintained a presence in older theaters, like Film Forum in the West Village, and more recent additions to the landscape, like Quentin Tarantino’s refurbished New Beverly in L.A. The late 2010s and early 2020s saw a shift with the opening of small, immediately popular theaters that have outsize cultural footprints, like the Metrograph on the Lower East Side, the Roxy in Tribeca, and the Vidiots Foundation theater in L.A., which all feature repertory screenings. At the same time, Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse,which has franchises in 27 cities—from Denver to Corpus Christi to Raleigh—became a national art-house chain with repertory theater threaded in its DNA. And smaller existing independent theaters and middle-American multiplexes began mixing more repertory programming in with their first-run offerings.
Matt Bolish has had a front-row seat to what he describes as “an uptick” in interest in repertory cinema. He’s been working with Film at Lincoln Center, where I saw Salò, for 13 years and now serves as its vice president of operations, and he’s the managing director of the New York Film Festival. Bolish says that demand has increased dramatically in the past half decade, exploding in 2021 and 2022 as theaters reopened after COVID-19 shutdowns. Overall revenue for Film at Lincoln Center was up 14 percent in 2023, powered largely by repertory showings and the revenue from the multiple festivals the Center puts on every year, which was up 49 percent by itself. Bolish also points to shifting demographics, as the audience at that year’s NYFF trended younger. In the months following the fest, FilmLinc put on regular sold-out screenings that you might not expect to draw a crowd, like Béla Tarr’s 24-year-old Werckmeister Harmonies and retrospectives of the work of Mike Leigh and Edward Yang. “We started seeing a lot of people really engaging with our rep programs that were built around specific directors,” he says. “But it was young audiences, passionate audiences; everything was sold out the day the tickets went on sale.”
Even outside a major film hub like New York, there’s been an increase in demand in the past few years. Coolidge Corner is a four-screen art-house theater in Brookline, Massachusetts. Mark Anastasio is its director of programming—the person who selects and schedules the films the theater will screen. He’s found that the demand for repertory at Coolidge Corner has scaled up after the COVID shutdowns. “The increase in interest in repertory has been huge,” he says. “We’ve responded by screening more than ever.” From 2019 to 2023, repertory programming jumped from 10 to 30 percent of the theater’s total revenue.
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The trend also isn’t confined to art houses. Fathom Events is a distribution company that serves many roles in chain multiplexes, but one is as an intermittent repertory programmer. Its anniversary repertory screenings of theLord of the Rings franchise or horror classics like Alien can be found rounding out the domestic box office top 10 in any given week. Fathom has put on a Studio Ghibli Fest in mall cineplexes and big-box theaters across the country for years. According to the company’s data, its top seven films in the festival ended up earning 142 percent more at the box office in 2023 than they did in 2022. “There’s a movement here in understanding your audience and what they want,” Fathom CEO Ray Nutt says. “You can take repertory content and repackage it … and it gets these kinds of results.”
COVID was once seen as a catalyst speeding the demise of the movie theater as a business model. But it now appears that the pandemic may have served as another kind of catalyst, one that has motivated a niche audience of passionate moviegoers to seek out more in-person theater experiences. Anastasio saw two complementary factors pushing younger people toward older movies right after theaters began reopening. “It was probably due to fears of illness, but our audience was solely younger people in that 18 to 30 demographic,” he says. “That was who was coming out, and all we had were repertory offerings because there were no new movies. And as soon as tickets went on sale, we spent two days with our website completely crashed due to the amount of traffic from people who had been cooped up for months trying to get on and buy tickets to these shows. That was eye-opening.”
The movement toward repertory, however, isn’t only because of sudden changes in taste or just a case of people wanting to get out of their homes after being trapped in them. On a grander scale, it’s a Darwinian adaptation to a grim landscape largely created by the cynicism and miscalculations of the major Hollywood studio system. Nearly every decision the studios have made since the turn of the century has inadvertently supported and strengthened the position of repertory cinema as a counterbalance in the industry.
The issue is perhaps more complicated than the idea of a cabal of greedy studio execs plotting the downfall of in-person exhibition from a Sun Valley Lodge villa. According to Bloomberg News entertainment reporter Lucas Shaw, studios had already been pushing theaters to be more flexible on exhibition windows—a fancy way of saying how long a movie will run at the Cineplex—long before COVID hit. “There was a general feeling on the part of studios that with the rise of streaming, they needed to adjust their business models and meet consumers where they are because moviegoing was in decline,” he says. In other words, the studios’ decision to shift resources to streaming came from their organic reading of how developments in tech were affecting viewing habits. Though that isn’t to say Hamrah and others who share his skepticism are wrong. “COVID certainly gave the studios an opportunity to experiment and force theaters’ hands because it weakened them quite a bit, so they were more open to compromise, and [studios] do take a larger cut of a movie sale at home,” Shaw says.
But there is an argument that the problem of declining ticket sales isn’t the medium of theaters, only the films being shown there. Jon Dieringer, founder of the art-house and repertory resource Screen Slate, argues that the 2008 recession, which dovetailed with the rise of Marvel, produced homogeneity in American cinema and led to a decline in the quality of the films being released in theaters, which would eventually hurt demand. “When you combine those factors with this idea that everyone’s trying to create cinematic universes rather than focusing on creating unique, original films [and] with the pandemic, the bottom has dropped out on mainstream moviegoing,” Dieringer says. “Everyone’s floundering.”
To date, 14 of the top 15 movies at the box office this year have been part of a preexisting movie or media franchise (the other is an adaptation of a hugely popular novel that likely got a boost from behind-the-scenes drama). A speculation market has emerged around each major release this year as a breathless herd of prognosticators oscillates between polar ends of a false dichotomy, proclaiming cinema “over” or “so fucking back” every time a Furiosa flops or a Disney film explodes. But the failure or success of a few blockbusters doesn’t speak to the near-extinct “middle class” of film, the riskier swings, “difficult” “adult” genres, and drama projects with lower budgets and more limited demographic appeal. The emphasis on these big blockbusters has created a vacuum for a certain stripe of movie—one that repertory is filling.
In the absence of a glut of weekly commercial studio options, theaters, particularly small independent theaters in hubs of movie culture on the coasts as well as in other pockets of the country—from Massachusetts to Missouri to Ohio—have been forced to seek out alternatives. Since 2012, Adam Roberts has been the owner of the 96-year-old Screenland Armour in Kansas City, Missouri. Roberts made a programming decision this year that would have previously been unthinkable. “With most studios, we can book new and classic films, but Disney has the weirdest rules,” he says. “For the year, you can either show first-run stuff or you can show repertory, but you can’t do both. So in 2024, for the first time, we decided to go with Disney repertory.” Which means that Screenland can show The Lion King (1994) anytime this year, but not Mufasa: The Lion King in its initial run.
Screenland’s decision speaks to a change in philosophy that many independent theaters have begun subscribing to (Coolidge has opted for the same policy when it comes to Disney movies, and at the Nitehawk mini-chain in Brooklyn, one theater shows repertory Disney movies while the other shows its first-run films). There was a time when choosing not to run a blockbuster like Deadpool & Wolverine would have been unthinkable for a theater relying on the weeks of sold-out screenings that a studio-backed schmear of IP could bring in. Now, many theaters have supplanted these first-run margin gougers with fun and creative repertory programming, which can be very profitable for them to exhibit if it’s popular. Not just black-and-white classics but more recent franchises like The Lord of the Rings and Twilight. “We’re taking bigger risks on weirder films and seeing what people might respond to, and people have really responded,” Roberts says.
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October 18th 2024
Potential Rapist Lurking In Disguise – R J Cook.
Whenever I expressed an opinion on anything, in my ex mother in law’s presence, her knee jerk response was a snappy: “You don’t know what you are talking about”. She was a woman of a certain type, like my sister. Both had passed the 11 plus but not progressed to the professions, choosing bread winning male partners and the mother role. When feminism caught up with them they became very assertive about themselves as part of the female blob, telling men what was what and why they knew best.
Neither of these women were accomplished in sport. The big business and media backed feminist role of hi jacking traditional male sports in the name of equality, had yet to come, so passed this type of woman by. But they were like the media created female blob, certain that they could have beaten men at their own game – with the right encouragement. They saw themselves as naturally superior.
For many years I took sport very seriously, representing my county as a schoolboy and running for an elite London Athletic Club. I also taught P.E ( Physical Exercise ) for 3 years at a tough secondary modern school. I never comment on matters that I know nothing about. Unlike feminists, I never comment on what I know nothing about. If I know nothing about a subject, then I either ask questions of those who do, or read up on the matter. If I know nothing, then I say nothing. Feminists don’t do that because they have a very simple self interested bigotry and status agenda.
There is a vile hate campaign against male to female transsexuals by a growing army of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFS) led by the likes of billionaire fantasy and crime writer J K Rowling. This hatred had much to do with the brutal and sadistic killing of young transsexual Brianna Ghey. No such intolerance would be acceptable if this level of hatred and violence was focused on what the ruling elite call ethnic minorities and Islamists. Islamists are allowed a specific dress code to signal their beliefs in a God for which there is absolutely no evidence of any such existence or relationship to reality. There is, in fact, far more brain sex, hormonal and chromosomal evidence for the existence of male brains in female bodies and vice versa for the simple reason that mythical God did not make us, Nature made us and nature gets a lot of things wrong. Science is allowed to correct all sorts of things, but like Islam, gender is very political. The TERF war on male to female transsexuals ( mtf ) is about power, greed and wealth.
Reality is the key here. What is it ? Feminists have no doubt about reality. It is all about their perceptions. They claim the right to set the rules to protect women from men who are on average physically stronger than women. So they know that male biological men have the advantage in sport. So they are a threat to the prize money and status. Of course feminists are afraid of male to female transsexuals for all sorts of other reasons and want women ‘kept safe’ which is why they were all assisted in fleeing the Ukraine War zone while men were locked in to be butchered for another rich man’s war – give or take a few snipers in a field where females excel.
Feminists have serious problems with transsexuals even though their movement has done so much to create and sustain them. Very simply, white boys are vilified at school with negative stereotypes while all manner of excuses are made about girls and black boys as victims of racism and sexism. This has been going on for so long that white men carry this negative stereotyping legacy with them, being more likely to fail women’s high expectations or never even establish heterosexual relationships.
White boys growing up in this environment, in single parent families led by strong women are highly likely to follow a female role model, become delinquent or mentally ill drug addicts. One should not need the likes of esteemed paediatrician Dame Hilary Cass with her expensive long winded report to inform the prejudiced masses that feeding prepubescent boys puberty blocking drugs is a bad idea, but indicative of serious socio psychological problems. It is most important to avoid the kind of moronic police officers, TERFS and other vile sneering bigots conclusions that transsexuals are really gay transvestites. That appears to be Rowling’s despicable conclusions..
What is really needed is a study and report into why any male wants sex change treatment in this age of hostile rabble rousing TERF feminism. However, to be effective such a study would have to consider the reality I have just described. To do so would cast doubts and aspersions on dictatorial fascist feminism and the rot this has caused to the social fabric. There is also the reality that far too many mtf transsexuals appear and behave more like the traditional females . This creates a situtaion where cis men are more attracted to them than they are to cis women. TERFS have a big problem with traditional females, dubbing them as ‘toxic femininity.’ As an mtf, I was surprised to have this effect on cis men.
I became very interested in transgender over a period of 18 years working in State Education and being on the receiving end of my partner’s admitted domestic abuse. I wrote a book on the subject, ‘Man Maid Woman’ , published in 2003. My father became very ill after an accident connected with his work as a lorry driver when I was only 10 years old. He died when I was 11. The hardships and struggles of his life from boyhood on the tough streets of Islington, North London during the Great Depression and then as a soldier with the Middlesex Regiment at Dunkirk when he was 21, taught me all I needed to know about the reality of what feminists and comfortable manginas call ‘toxic masculinity.’ Unfortunately those pampered cosseted imbeciles infest all public services and mainstream media with their patronising pernicious opinions and prejudices. They are especially dangerous in the world of education, where I worked for 18 years.
My class of post graduate teacher trainees at Goldsmiths’ College, London University were taught that our mission was to fight sexism and racism in London Schools. Having lost my male role model father in 1962, I was far too impressionable to female domination and idealisation. My mother was my world from an early age. I had seen what hell my terminally ill father had gone through. I recalled him getting up at 3 in the morning, cycling to the brickyard in all weathers to pick up his brick lorry. I had ridden in his cab when he was delivering locally in Buckinghamshire – see ‘Buck Bricks’ by Robert Cook (1993). Lorries (Trucks) back then were beasts with crash gear boxes and no power steering. So I will never take lectures from middle class feminists and academics on feminism. Women have assumed the right to change as they like, with men having to follow their design for the new men. They have taken over media and politics where it counts. But they can’t handle men whose version of change is what used to be called sex change, but is nowadays equated with being a freak and potential rapist lurking in disguise.
R J Cook Image copyright Appledene Photographics 2017.
‘The Woman Within.’ by R J Cook
It is no mystery to me how Thames Valley Police (TVP) received a copy of the above picture. The incredible truth is that they, one of three police forces, sent a team of officers to raid my home on February5th 2018, allegedly because I had sent this image to them, along with one of a naughty image of my ex wife which was in fact of a complete stranger, and porn videos that turned out never to have existed. All of this and typed letters, bearing the fictitious name of Oliver Lazar, was allegedly sent by me informing them that I was working as a ‘gay escort in a home based agency’ for my eldest son and his criminal associates. There was no shred of evidence to associate this material and action with me, or of any investigation. The material had been postmarked Northampton December 12th 2017, when I could prove from tacho records, being hundreds of miles away in and around Peterborough in East Anglia. I was arrested and put in a cold dirty stinking cell for seven hours, with a concrete slab and thin blanket for a bed,
On the strength of all this, they informed my GP that I was an insane alcoholic, telling him to contact the Gender Identity Clinic (GIC). The GP obliged. So a psychiatric team arrived at my house on March 19th 2019, fifteen minutes after my overnight HGV shift which I did six days a week. Lead officer Bellamy showed no interest in who actually sent the material and I was prosecuted the following September for becoming angry about this police misconduct. Since only myself, the photographer and the woman who had access to my e mails for her business, had any knowledge of the image, there was no doubt as to who had sent it.
For the record, I was being obliged to live visibly as a woman in the run up to Gender Reassignment Surgery. So on the occasion of this image, I had been out with a male friend and was actually wearing a dress loaned by the woman who was the obvious source of the malicious communication. It was copied to six recipients to harm me for breaking up with her. The GIC believed every word the police told them, via my GP at 3W Health who also believed it. I was diagnosed on that basis and other malice, as a paranoid schizophrenic, delusional, bi polar long term alcoholic. Not surprisingly this got me sacked from my HGV employment, putting my son and I at risk of homelessness and possible suicide.
This image of me, laying on my friends bed was described on Bellamy’s arrest record, as Robert Cook ( I was legally Roberta by that time, but Thames Valley Police were having none of that nonsense ) wearing stockings and suspenders.
That was most indicative of the police’s weird mindset and qualities for which they are sought and esteemed. Consequently, progress to due Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS) was made conditional on me accepting the alleged extreme psychotic mental illness with powerful debilitating anti psychotics prescribed by consultant psychiatrist Dr C R Ramsay of Aylesbury’s NHS Whiteleaf Centre.
I refused and was consequently discharged by the GIC. After a five year fight, Whiteleaf gave me the second opinion that Ramsay stated in writing his report, that I had refused. Ramsay’s devastating report and methodology was totally discredited, though all rather to late. More serious life changing damage had been done. Though re admitted to the GIC, I was informed by a female psychiatrist on August 6th 2024, who will be nameless at this stage, that due to so much lost time, the surgeon would be unlikely to accept a referral because such an operation was not likely to be safe or effective. The lost six years to date meant that the risk factor was significantly increased. Imagine the impact of hearing that after so many years on anti androgens and oestrogen !
For the record, I have never had sexual relations with a man and with very few women and have never been casual in my approach to sex. However, transgender seemed an obvious and important subject for my writing ambitions. The severe fallout from this situation, which goes back many years with two police forces for reasons I cannot divulge for legal reasons, is ongoing. Hopefully justice will eventually be done and I can add this to a book project originally accepted by Darley Anderson, after serious extensive research, in 2008, as a follow up to my ‘Man Maid Woman’ (published 2003) but not completed due to years of police harassment and malicious records which cropped up on background checks. That book was provisionally entitled ‘The Woman Within.’
R J Cook
ECB bans transgender women from top two tiers of women’s domestic cricket
Updated policy also applies to women’s Hundred ‘It is impossible to balance all the considerations’ Transgender wome…
− PA Media • 5 hours ago
October 14th 2024
This list of countries by electric energy consumption is mostly flipping based on the Energy Information Administration.[2] Several non-sovereign entities are also included for information purposes, with their parent state noted. The per capita data for many countries may be slightly inaccurate as population data may not be for the same year as the consumption data. Population data were obtained mainly from the IMF[3] in 2021 with some exceptions, in which case they were obtained from the Wikipedia pages for the corresponding countries/territories. Average power per capita was calculated according to the formula:[a] Electric energy per capita [ in watt-hour ] = Total population electricity consumption [in kW·h/yr] × 1,000 /population. Electric power per capita [ in watt ] = Total population electricity consumption [in kW·h/yr] × 0.114077116 /population. 1 kW·h/yr = 1,000 Wh/(365.25 × 24) h = 0.11408 Watt
| Location | Consumption (GWh/yr) | Year | Source | Population | As of | Consumption per capita | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kWh/yr | Watts | |||||||
| — | World | 25,343,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 7,909,295,104 | 2021[5] | 3,204 | 366 |
| 1 |  China | 7,806,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,425,893,504 | 2021[5] | 5,474 | 624 |
| 2 |  United States | 3,979,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 336,997,632 | 2021[5] | 11,267 | 1,285 |
| 3 |  India | 1,443,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,407,563,904 | 2021[5] | 1,025 | 117 |
| 4 |  Russia | 996,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 145,102,752 | 2021[5] | 6,864 | 783 |
| 5 |  Japan | 913,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 124,612,528 | 2021[5] | 7,327 | 836 |
| 6 |  Brazil | 577,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 214,326,224 | 2021[5] | 2,692 | 307 |
| 7 |  Korea, South | 568,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 51,830,136 | 2021[5] | 10,959 | 1,250 |
| 8 |  Canada | 555,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 38,155,012 | 2021[5] | 14,546 | 1,659 |
| 9 |  Germany | 512,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 83,408,560 | 2021[5] | 6,138 | 700 |
| 10 |  France | 447,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 64,531,448 | 2021[5] | 6,927 | 790 |
| 11 |  Saudi Arabia | 329,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 35,950,396 | 2021[5] | 9,151 | 1,044 |
| 12 |  Iran | 302,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 87,923,432 | 2021[5] | 3,435 | 392 |
| 13 |  Mexico | 301,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 126,705,136 | 2021[5] | 2,376 | 271 |
| 14 |  Italy | 300,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 59,240,336 | 2021[5] | 5,064 | 578 |
| 15 |  United Kingdom | 287,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 67,281,040 | 2021[5] | 4,266 | 487 |
| 16 |  Turkey | 284,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 84,775,408 | 2021[5] | 3,350 | 382 |
| 17 |  Indonesia | 282,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 273,753,184 | 2021[5] | 1,030 | 117 |
| 18 |  Taiwan | 278,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 23,859,904 | 2021[5] | 11,651 | 1,329 |
| 19 |  Australia | 237,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 25,921,094 | 2021[5] | 9,143 | 1,043 |
| 20 |  Spain | 234,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 47,486,932 | 2021[5] | 4,928 | 562 |
| 21 |  Vietnam | 229,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 97,468,024 | 2021[5] | 2,349 | 268 |
| 22 |  Thailand | 203,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 71,601,104 | 2021[5] | 2,835 | 323 |
| 23 |  South Africa | 191,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 59,392,256 | 2021[5] | 3,216 | 367 |
| 24 |  Egypt | 168,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 109,262,184 | 2021[5] | 1,538 | 175 |
| 25 |  Poland | 158,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 38,307,724 | 2021[5] | 4,124 | 470 |
| 26 |  Malaysia | 151,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 33,573,872 | 2021[5] | 4,498 | 513 |
| 27 |  Ukraine | 134,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 43,531,424 | 2021[5] | 3,078 | 351 |
| 28 |  Pakistan | 132,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 231,402,112 | 2021[5] | 570 | 65 |
| 29 |  Norway | 131,931 | 2022 est. | EIA | 5,455,582 | 2022 | 24,182 | 2,759 |
| 30 |  Sweden | 131,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 10,467,095 | 2021[5] | 12,515 | 1,428 |
| 31 |  United Arab Emirates | 129,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 9,365,149 | 2021[5] | 13,774 | 1,571 |
| 32 |  Argentina | 127,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 45,276,788 | 2021[5] | 2,805 | 320 |
| 33 |  Netherlands | 113,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 17,501,696 | 2021[5] | 6,457 | 737 |
| 34 |  Philippines | 98,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 113,880,336 | 2021[5] | 861 | 98 |
| 35 |  Kazakhstan | 97,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 19,196,468 | 2021[5] | 5,053 | 576 |
| 36 |  Finland | 84,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,535,982 | 2021[5] | 15,173 | 1,731 |
| 37 |  Belgium | 83,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 11,611,416 | 2021[5] | 7,148 | 815 |
| 38 |  Chile | 81,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 19,493,184 | 2021[5] | 4,155 | 474 |
| 39 |  Bangladesh | 78,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 169,356,240 | 2021[5] | 461 | 53 |
| 40 |  Colombia | 76,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 51,516,560 | 2021[5] | 1,475 | 168 |
| 41 |  Venezuela | 71,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 28,199,862 | 2021[5] | 2,518 | 287 |
| 42 |  Austria | 69,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 8,922,086 | 2021[5] | 7,734 | 882 |
| 43 |  Algeria | 69,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 44,177,964 | 2021[5] | 1,562 | 178 |
| 44 |  Kuwait | 65,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 4,250,111 | 2021[5] | 15,294 | 1,745 |
| 45 |  Israel | 63,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 8,900,057 | 2021[5] | 7,079 | 808 |
| 46 |  Czech Republic | 62,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 10,510,748 | 2021[5] | 5,899 | 673 |
| 47 |  Switzerland | 58,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 8,691,409 | 2021[5] | 6,673 | 761 |
| 48 |  Uzbekistan | 58,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 34,081,452 | 2021[5] | 1,702 | 194 |
| 49 |  Singapore | 53,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,941,063 | 2021[5] | 8,921 | 1,018 |
| 50 |  Iraq | 53,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 43,533,592 | 2021[5] | 1,217 | 139 |
| 51 |  Greece | 52,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 10,445,368 | 2021[5] | 4,978 | 568 |
| 52 |  Peru | 52,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 33,715,464 | 2021[5] | 1,542 | 176 |
| 53 |  Romania | 51,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 19,328,558 | 2021[5] | 2,639 | 301 |
| 54 |  Portugal | 48,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 10,290,109 | 2021[5] | 4,665 | 532 |
| 55 |  Hong Kong | 46,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 7,494,580 | 2021[5] | 6,138 | 700 |
| 56 |  Qatar | 45,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,688,239 | 2021[5] | 16,740 | 1,910 |
| 57 |  Hungary | 44,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 9,709,784 | 2021[5] | 4,532 | 517 |
| 58 |  New Zealand | 41,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,129,730 | 2021[5] | 7,993 | 912 |
| 59 |  Belarus | 41,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 9,578,172 | 2021[5] | 4,281 | 488 |
| 60 |  Denmark | 38,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,854,246 | 2021[5] | 6,491 | 740 |
| 61 |  Morocco | 35,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 37,076,588 | 2021[5] | 944 | 108 |
| 62 |  Ireland | 33,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 4,986,525 | 2021[5] | 6,618 | 755 |
| 63 |  Oman | 33,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 4,520,474 | 2021[5] | 7,300 | 833 |
| 64 |  Serbia | 31,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 7,296,771 | 2021[5] | 4,248 | 485 |
| 65 |  Bahrain | 31,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,463,266 | 2021[5] | 21,185 | 2,417 |
| 66 |  Bulgaria | 30,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 6,885,864 | 2021[5] | 4,357 | 497 |
| 67 |  Nigeria | 27,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 213,401,328 | 2021[5] | 127 | 14 |
| 68 |  Ecuador | 27,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 17,797,736 | 2021[5] | 1,517 | 173 |
| 69 |  Libya | 27,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 6,735,280 | 2021[5] | 4,009 | 457 |
| 70 |  Slovakia | 26,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,447,621 | 2021[5] | 4,773 | 544 |
| 71 |  Azerbaijan | 25,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 10,312,992 | 2021[5] | 2,424 | 277 |
| 72 |  Jordan | 20,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 11,148,288 | 2021[5] | 1,794 | 205 |
| 73 |  Iceland | 19,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 370,338 | 2021[5] | 51,304 | 5,853 |
| 74 |  Lebanon | 19,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,592,626 | 2021[5] | 3,397 | 388 |
| 75 |  Ghana | 18,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 32,833,036 | 2021[5] | 548 | 63 |
| 76 |  Puerto Rico | 17,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 3,256,030 | 2021[5] | 5,221 | 596 |
| 77 |  Myanmar | 17,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 53,798,088 | 2021[5] | 314 | 36 |
| 78 |  Croatia | 16,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 4,060,139 | 2021[5] | 3,941 | 450 |
| 79 |  Tunisia | 16,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 12,262,949 | 2021[5] | 1,305 | 149 |
| 80 |  Cuba | 16,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 11,256,373 | 2021[5] | 1,421 | 162 |
| 81 |  Tajikistan | 16,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 9,750,078 | 2021[5] | 1,641 | 187 |
| 82 |  Dominican Republic | 15,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 11,117,873 | 2021[5] | 1,349 | 154 |
| 83 |  Turkmenistan | 15,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 6,341,850 | 2021[5] | 2,365 | 270 |
| 84 |  Sri Lanka | 15,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 21,773,438 | 2021[5] | 689 | 79 |
| 85 |  Angola | 15,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 34,503,776 | 2021[5] | 435 | 50 |
| 86 |  Slovenia | 14,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,119,408 | 2021[5] | 6,606 | 754 |
| 87 |  Zambia | 14,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 19,473,132 | 2021[5] | 719 | 82 |
| 88 |  Uruguay | 14,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 3,426,265 | 2021[5] | 4,086 | 466 |
| 89 |  Syria | 13,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 21,324,366 | 2021[5] | 610 | 70 |
| 90 |  Mozambique | 13,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 32,077,074 | 2021[5] | 405 | 46 |
| 91 |  Sudan | 13,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 45,657,204 | 2021[5] | 285 | 33 |
| 92 |  Georgia | 13,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 3,757,984 | 2021[5] | 3,459 | 395 |
| 93 |  Guatemala | 13,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 17,608,484 | 2021[5] | 738 | 84 |
| 94 |  Korea, North | 12,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 25,971,910 | 2021[5] | 462 | 53 |
| 95 |  Kyrgyzstan | 12,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 6,527,742 | 2021[5] | 1,838 | 210 |
| 96 |  Lithuania | 12,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,786,652 | 2021[5] | 4,306 | 491 |
| 97 |  Bosnia and Herzegovina | 11,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 3,270,948 | 2021[5] | 3,363 | 384 |
| 98 |  Costa Rica | 11,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,153,959 | 2021[5] | 2,134 | 243 |
| 99 |  Cambodia | 11,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 16,589,031 | 2021[5] | 663 | 76 |
| 100 |  Bolivia | 9,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 12,079,474 | 2021[5] | 803 | 92 |
| 101 |  Moldova | 9,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 3,061,509 | 2021[5] | 3,168 | 361 |
| 102 |  Panama | 9,500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 4,351,264 | 2021[5] | 2,183 | 249 |
| 103 |  Ethiopia | 9,500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 120,283,024 | 2021[5] | 79 | 9 |
| 104 |  Kenya | 9,100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 53,005,616 | 2021[5] | 172 | 20 |
| 105 |  Congo, Democratic Republic of the | 8,900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 95,894,120 | 2021[5] | 93 | 11 |
| 106 |  Estonia | 8,800 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,328,704 | 2021[5] | 6,623 | 756 |
| 107 |  Trinidad and Tobago | 8,300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,525,671 | 2021[5] | 5,440 | 621 |
| 108 |  Zimbabwe | 8,300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 15,993,525 | 2021[5] | 519 | 59 |
| 109 |  Honduras | 8,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 10,278,346 | 2021[5] | 798 | 91 |
| 110 |  Ivory Coast | 8,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 27,478,250 | 2021[5] | 291 | 33 |
| 111 |  Mongolia | 7,800 | 2021[4] | EIA | 3,347,782 | 2021[5] | 2,330 | 266 |
| 112 |  Paraguay | 7,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 6,703,802 | 2021[5] | 1,149 | 131 |
| 113 |  Albania | 7,400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,854,710 | 2021[5] | 2,592 | 296 |
| 114 |  Tanzania | 7,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 63,588,332 | 2021[5] | 113 | 13 |
| 115 |  Nepal | 7,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 30,034,988 | 2021[5] | 240 | 27 |
| 116 |  Latvia | 6,900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,873,926 | 2021[5] | 3,682 | 420 |
| 117 |  North Macedonia | 6,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,103,329 | 2021[5] | 3,185 | 363 |
| 118 |  Luxembourg | 6,500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 639,330 | 2021[5] | 10,167 | 1,060 |
| 119 |  El Salvador | 6,400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 6,314,165 | 2021[5] | 1,014 | 116 |
| 120 |  Palestine | 6,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,133,393 | 2021[5] | 1,208 | 138 |
| 121 |  Cameroon | 6,100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 27,198,632 | 2021[5] | 224 | 26 |
| 122 |  Armenia | 6,100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,790,971 | 2021[5] | 2,186 | 249 |
| 123 |  Laos | 6,100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 7,425,055 | 2021[5] | 822 | 94 |
| 124 |  Macau | 5,600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 686,616 | 2021[5] | 8,156 | 930 |
| 125 |  Kosovo | 5,600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,662,022 | 2021[5] | 3,369 | 384 |
| 126 |  Afghanistan | 5,500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 40,099,460 | 2021[5] | 137 | 16 |
| 127 |  Senegal | 5,300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 16,876,726 | 2021[5] | 314 | 36 |
| 128 |  Nicaragua | 4,900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 6,850,546 | 2021[5] | 715 | 82 |
| 129 |  Cyprus | 4,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,244,193 | 2021[5] | 3,778 | 431 |
| 130 |  Papua New Guinea | 4,600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 9,949,438 | 2021[5] | 462 | 53 |
| 131 |  Brunei | 4,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 445,382 | 2021[5] | 9,430 | 1,076 |
| 132 |  Botswana | 3,400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,588,424 | 2021[5] | 1,314 | 150 |
| 133 |  Namibia | 3,400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,530,150 | 2021[5] | 1,345 | 153 |
| 134 |  Bhutan | 3,300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 777,500 | 2021[5] | 4,244 | 484 |
| 135 |  New Caledonia | 3,300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 287,809 | 2021[5] | 11,466 | 1,308 |
| 136 |  Jamaica | 3,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,827,701 | 2021[5] | 1,132 | 129 |
| 137 |  Uganda | 3,100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 45,853,780 | 2021[5] | 68 | 8 |
| 138 |  Yemen | 2,900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 32,981,644 | 2021[5] | 88 | 10 |
| 139 |  Montenegro | 2,900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 627,856 | 2021[5] | 4,619 | 527 |
| 140 |  Mauritius | 2,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,298,922 | 2021[5] | 2,079 | 237 |
| 141 |  Mali | 2,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 21,904,990 | 2021[5] | 123 | 14 |
| 142 |  Burkina Faso | 2,600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 22,100,690 | 2021[5] | 118 | 13 |
| 143 |  Malta | 2,500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 526,751 | 2021[5] | 4,746 | 541 |
| 144 |  Guinea | 2,500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 13,531,909 | 2021[5] | 185 | 21 |
| 145 |  Gabon | 2,400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,341,185 | 2021[5] | 1,025 | 117 |
| 146 |  Suriname | 2,400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 612,989 | 2021[5] | 3,915 | 447 |
| 147 |  Congo, Republic of the | 2,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,835,814 | 2021[5] | 377 | 43 |
| 148 |  Bahamas | 2,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 407,920 | 2021[5] | 4,903 | 559 |
| 149 |  Madagascar | 2,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 28,915,652 | 2021[5] | 69 | 8 |
| 150 |  Mauritania | 1,900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 4,614,981 | 2021[5] | 412 | 47 |
| 151 |  Guam | 1,700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 170,546 | 2021[5] | 9,968 | 1,137 |
| 152 |  Swaziland | 1,500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,192,273 | 2021[5] | 1,258 | 144 |
| 153 |  Niger | 1,300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 25,252,722 | 2021[5] | 51 | 6 |
| 154 |  Equatorial Guinea | 1,300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,634,473 | 2021[5] | 795 | 91 |
| 155 |  Togo | 1,200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 8,644,829 | 2021[5] | 139 | 16 |
| 156 |  Malawi | 1,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 19,889,742 | 2021[5] | 50 | 6 |
| 157 |  Barbados | 1,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 281,204 | 2021[5] | 3,556 | 406 |
| 158 |  Guyana | 1,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 804,571 | 2021[5] | 1,243 | 142 |
| 159 |  Fiji | 1,000 | 2021[4] | EIA | 924,615 | 2021[5] | 1,082 | 123 |
| 160 |  Curacao | 900 | 2008 est. | EIA | 157,540 | 2019 | 5,713 | 652 |
| 161 |  Lesotho | 900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,281,464 | 2021[5] | 394 | 45 |
| 162 |  Belize | 900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 400,037 | 2021[5] | 2,250 | 257 |
| 163 |  Liberia | 900 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,193,422 | 2021[5] | 173 | 20 |
| 164 |  Netherlands Antilles | 800 | 2021[4] | EIA | 211,871 | 2013 | 3,776 | 431 |
| 165 |  Aruba | 800 | 2021[4] | EIA | 106,543 | 2021[5] | 7,509 | 857 |
| 166 |  Cayman Islands | 700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 68,157 | 2021[5] | 10,270 | 1,172 |
| 167 |  Rwanda | 700 | 2021[4] | EIA | 13,461,891 | 2021[5] | 52 | 6 |
| 168 |  French Polynesia | 600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 304,038 | 2021[5] | 1,973 | 225 |
| 169 |  Jersey | 600 | 2004 est. | EIA | 98,069 | 2016 | 6,425 | 733 |
| 170 |  U.S. Virgin Islands | 600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 100,100 | 2021[5] | 5,994 | 684 |
| 171 |  Seychelles | 600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 106,486 | 2021[5] | 5,635 | 643 |
| 172 |  Greenland | 600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 56,266 | 2021[5] | 10,664 | 1,217 |
| 173 |  Maldives | 600 | 2021[4] | EIA | 521,469 | 2021[5] | 1,151 | 131 |
| 174 |  Marshall Islands | 562.40 | 2014 est. | EIA | 58,790 | 2019 | 9,566 | 1,091 |
| 175 |  Benin | 500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 12,996,901 | 2021[5] | 101 | 12 |
| 176 |  South Sudan | 500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 10,748,278 | 2021[5] | 47 | 5 |
| 177 |  Bermuda | 500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 64,213 | 2021[5] | 7,787 | 888 |
| 178 |  Andorra | 500 | 2012 est. | EIA | 77,140 | 2019 | 6,482 | 739 |
| 179 |  Djibouti | 500 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,105,562 | 2021[5] | 452 | 52 |
| 180 | U.S. Pacific Islands | 500 | 2021[4] | EIA | ||||
| 181 |  Burundi | 400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 12,551,215 | 2021[5] | 32 | 4 |
| 182 |  Haiti | 400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 11,447,575 | 2021[5] | 35 | 4 |
| 183 |  Somalia | 400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 17,065,588 | 2021[5] | 23 | 3 |
| 184 |  Eritrea | 400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 3,620,324 | 2021[5] | 110 | 13 |
| 185 |  Faroe Islands | 400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 52,915 | 2021[5] | 7,559 | 862 |
| 186 |  Timor-Leste | 400 | 2021[4] | EIA | 1,320,944 | 2021[5] | 303 | 35 |
| 187 |  Liechtenstein | 394 | 2015 est. | CIA | 38,020 | 2019 | 10,352 | 1,181 |
| 188 |  Saint Lucia | 300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 179,663 | 2021[5] | 1,670 | 191 |
| 189 |  Antigua and Barbuda | 300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 93,229 | 2021[5] | 3,218 | 367 |
| 190 |  Cabo Verde | 300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 587,936 | 2021[5] | 510 | 58 |
| 191 |  Chad | 300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 17,179,744 | 2021[5] | 17 | 2 |
| 192 |  Turks and Caicos Islands | 300 | 2021[4] | EIA | 45,141 | 2021[5] | 6,646 | 758 |
| 193 |  Gambia | 200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 2,639,922 | 2021[5] | 76 | 9 |
| 194 |  Northern Mariana Islands | 200 | 2012 est. | EIA | 57,220 | 2019 | 3,495 | 399 |
| 195 |  Saint Kitts and Nevis | 200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 47,631 | 2021[5] | 4,199 | 479 |
| 196 |  Gibraltar | 200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 32,698 | 2021[5] | 6,117 | 698 |
| 197 |  Grenada | 200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 124,624 | 2021[5] | 1,605 | 183 |
| 198 |  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 104,340 | 2021[5] | 1,917 | 219 |
| 199 |  American Samoa | 200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 45,056 | 2021[5] | 4,439 | 506 |
| 200 |  Dominica | 200 | 2021[4] | EIA | 72,435 | 2021[5] | 2,761 | 315 |
| 201 |  Micronesia, Federated States of | 125 | 2002 est. | EIA | 113,810 | 2019 | 1,101 | 126 |
| 202 |  Samoa | 124 | 2018 est. | EIA | 197,100 | 2019 | 627 | 72 |
| 203 |  Central African Republic | 100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 5,457,165 | 2021[5] | 18 | 2 |
| 204 |  Sierra Leone | 100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 8,420,642 | 2021[5] | 12 | 1 |
| 205 |  British Virgin Islands | 100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 31,145 | 2021[5] | 3,211 | 366 |
| 206 |  Comoros | 100 | 2021[4] | EIA | 821,632 | 2021[5] | 122 | 14 |
| 207 |  Solomon Islands | 98.26 | 2018 est. | EIA | 669,820 | 2019 | 147 | 17 |
| 208 |  Sao Tome and Principe | 80.91 | 2018 est. | EIA | 215,060 | 2019 | 376 | 43 |
| 209 |  Vanuatu | 65.19 | 2018 est. | EIA | 299,880 | 2019 | 217 | 25 |
| 210 |  Tonga | 51.15 | 2018 est. | EIA | 104,490 | 2019 | 490 | 56 |
| 211 | Saint Pierre and Miquelon | 44.64 | 2018 est. | EIA | 850,890 | 2016 | 7,479 | 853 |
| 212 |  Guinea-Bissau | 39.06 | 2018 est. | EIA | 1,920,920 | 2019 | 20 | 2 |
| 213 |  Cook Islands | 38.81 | 2018 est. | EIA | 9,556 | 2016 | 3,308 | 377 |
| 214 |  Nauru | 32.55 | 2018 est. | EIA | 12,580 | 2019 | 2,587 | 295 |
| 215 |  Kiribati | 27.75 | 2018 est. | EIA | 117,610 | 2019 | 236 | 27 |
| 216 |  Falkland Islands | 18.32 | 2018 est. | EIA | 2,931 | 2016 | 4,759 | 543 |
| 217 |  Montserrat | 14.88 | 2018 est. | EIA | 5,267 | 2016 | 4,061 | 463 |
| 218 |  Niue | 7.44 | 2018 est. | EIA | 1,190 | 2016 | 1,193 | 136 |
| 219 | Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha | 2.79 | 2018 est. | EIA | 7,795 | 2016 | 3,126 | 357 |
| The table above grouped by continent[6] |
| Continent Total electricity consumption (exaJoule) North America 113.7 Oceania 6.5 Europe 82.38 South America 28.46 Asia–Pacific 344.11 Africa 19.99 Antarctica 0 (N/A) World 595.14 |
See also
- Electricity by country
- List of countries by renewable electricity production
- World energy supply and consumption
- Electric energy consumption
- List of countries by energy consumption per capita
- List of countries by energy intensity
- List of countries by energy consumption and production
Notes
- It is interesting to compare the average electric power consumed per capita with the person’s basal metabolic rate (about 65 watts), the average power obtained by a human body at rest from the food metabolism.
References
“Electricity Market Report 2023” (PDF). IEA.org. International Energy Agency. February 2023. p. 15. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 March 2023. Licensed CC BY 4.0. “INTERNATIONAL: ELECTRICITY – CONSUMPTION”. EIA. 2019. Retrieved 19 November 2014. “Report for Selected Countries and Subjects”. IMF. Retrieved 13 October 2023. “International – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)”. www.eia.gov. Retrieved 13 October 2023. “Population”. Our World in Data. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
- “Primary energy consumption by region 2021”. Statista. Retrieved 2023-07-11.
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
External links
- Electric power-related lists
- Energy-related lists by country
- Lists of countries by per capita values
- Energy consumption
- Economy-related lists of superlatives
- Lists of countries by consumption
Toxic Femininity: Definition, Examples, How to Address ItHealthlinehttps://www.healthline.com › health › mental-health › t…
Toxic femininity is a form of internalised misogyny which involves restricting yourself to stereotypically “feminine” behaviors in order to appeal to men.
Hyperfemininity is the exaggerated expression of stereotypically feminine traits, like wearing frilly pink clothes or enjoying shopping.7 Dec 2023
Hyperfemininity: Is it Feminist or not? | Movies & TV | westerngazette.ca
Image Appledene Photographics/RJC 2018.
What is an example of toxic femininity?
Judging other women or experiencing judgment from other women for not being “feminine” enough. Dismissing or belittling women who don’t conform to societal expectations for their gender is a common sign of toxic femininity, according to Vermani.
Talking About “Toxic Masculinity”Men’s Resource Centerhttps://menscenter.org › Blog
14 Jan 2021 — Recently, the term “toxic masculinity” as a description of unhealthy, injurious forms of masculinity has garnered much attention.
Extremism and toxic masculinity: the man question re-posedOxford Academichttps://academic.oup.com › article-pdf › iiz177
by E Pearson · 2019 · Cited by 102 — man question as a guide: what work does gender do in structuring anti-Islam(ist) masculinities? Part one: from ‘man’ question to toxic ‘masculinity‘: a …
20 pages
‘Be a man’ – toxic masculinity, social media and violenceInnovation Unithttps://www.innovationunit.org › Thoughts
2 Apr 2020 — A report by Innovation Unit into youth violence in Greater Manchester reveals pressures on young males to conform to toxic images of masculinity .
APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and …American Psychological Association (APA)https://www.apa.org › monitor › 2019/01 › ce-corner
1 Jan 2019 — Psychologists emphasize it’s important to encourage pro-social aspects of masculinity.
Can All-Male Support Groups Save Men From Themselves?InsideHookhttps://www.insidehook.com › Wellness
29 Mar 2021 — Men’s support groups hugging and embracing. They all share the goal of saving men, both from themselves and the expectations society puts on them.
How to Address Toxic Masculinity With BoysNext Gen Menhttps://www.nextgenmen.ca › blog › how-to-address-toxi…
17 Feb 2022 — We need to challenge the ‘boys will be boys’ narrative wherever it arises, respond to boys’ behaviours and beliefs with a sensitivity to their trauma and a …
October 11th 2024
The Zombie Trance
Was the ‘Covid’ period a mass conversion event?
I thought I was done with writing about the events of the last 4 years. The ‘plandemic’ or ‘convid’ had taken up sufficient of my thinking time. I’m now certain there was no pandemic, no novel virus, whatever happened can be explained by iatrogenics and psychogenic effects. A mass hysteria.
At the same time, I have become more and more disturbed by what I have been calling the ‘zombie trance’. There’s something missing from vast swathes of the population, something that used to be just behind the eyes, call it understanding, discernment, awareness, empathy, it’s like someone turned a switch off. We’re surrounded by soulless beings. And I got to thinking, could these two phenomena be linked? Have I missed what the entire point of the ‘convid’ period was? Have we all been played?
Was Covid a mass conversion event? Have we been through a transition experience, the exact nature of which has been hidden from us? Have the vast majority of people in the west been indoctrinated into a cult?
Those of us who instinctively recoiled from the lockdown and vaccine nonsense from the beginning have burnt way too many hours considering the question of what ‘they’ are trying to do. From population control to a reduction in civil liberties, and everything in between, an awful lot of ink has been spilled in the alternative media.
We suspected the psychological conditioning was to persuade people to comply with restrictions, to submit to ‘vaccinations’, but perhaps there was a much bigger game in town: permanent compliance.
No one who’s in a cult ever realises they’re in a cult.
Think about the utterly nonsensical, ridiculous and downright dangerous ideas people are accepting without a moment of contemplation. Here’s just a few to consider:
The blatant switch-out of Biden for Harris. In what sort of upside-down world is this democracy? She couldn’t get arrested in the primaries, can barely string a sentence together and is clearly drunk most of the time. Who can blame her?
Rishi Sunak taking the most obvious dive since Sonny Liston. He literally lost the election on purpose. Yet here we are – Starmer has a 200 plus seat majority having received votes from only slightly more than 20% of the electorate. Using that mandate to impose the most radical political agenda in history. And nobody bats an eyelid either side of the Atlantic. It’s clearly batshit.
The totally inverted, perverted, illogical, biological insanity of the trans movement. Where did the trans people come from? We know there weren’t any trans children back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s because there were armies of child psychologists asking tens of thousands of kids every conceivable question in survey after survey. It never came up once. And yet here we are removing children from their parents and violating them in the name of an ideology that we know (through the work of Jennifer Bilek) has been perpetrated by a small number of insane billionaires. Just a few short years ago we all knew what a woman was. Now a man can declare himself as such as if by magic. There isn’t a civilisation in history that has come up with a more batshit idea and yet now we have great congregations of supposedly serious people arguing the ridiculous. The Aztecs have nothing on us. It’s batshit. All completely batshit.
Thirty-five years ago, millions of people took to the streets to protest the Iraq war, where are they now? Alistair Campbell, one of the architects of a slaughter which resulted in the deaths of millions of children, is now the host of a jovial political podcast. All the while we shovel money through every orifice of the grubby, coke snorting, money launderer in Ukraine. Most of which washes back to our shores in the form of illegal drugs. Now we know why Kosovo was so important. Where’s the protests? Where did the peace people go? Does anyone care about peace anymore?
I could go on. Entire populations subjugating themselves to unelected transnational organisations. The middle class facilitating the greatest wealth transfer in history from themselves to the billionaire class. Half the planet seduced into an addiction to screen-based technology, the glass vampire, its hollow incisors sucking the life from humanity 24/7, 365 days of the year. A pharmaceutical industry grown obese, force-feeding more and more drugs to counteract the side effects of the ineffectual crap they sold us in the first place. Yet question any of these self-evident facts and you’ll see the zombie trance descend, and the zombie dance ensue. ‘Bigot’, ‘fascist’, ‘transphobe’, ‘conspiracy theorist’, ‘far right’ they parrot ad infinitum. Why the repetition? Why the repetition?
I postulate that in order to enslave a population you need to break two connections. The first to what Iain McGilchrist refers to as your right hemisphere, Darren Allen as your unself and many religions as the connection to your spirit or soul. It is the you beyond words, it is your intuition, your instincts. The you found in music, art, dance, poetry and love. The you that defies categorisation, the you that lies beyond intelligence, reason or science. The you that came from the great silence and will return there. The second is to God (or nature if you prefer). Once you break these two connections you have a programmable mass.
So how did they do it? The same techniques used by travelling ‘healers’ in marquees across the mid-west, by evangelical hucksters on television since the 1960’s, by Darren Brown and other stage hypnotists, by mediums and spiritualists up and down the country, by salespeople ever since the snake sold the apple to Eve and by every cult leader there has ever been. The difference now is the hypnotist can reach everyone via the internet.
So how does Indoctrination work? The classic model is described by RJ Lifton in his paper ‘Thought Reform’. He identifies eight elements that bring about a total change in personality during the indoctrination period. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar:
- control of the situation (environment) – a rigid structuring of the environment in which communication is regulated, and access to information is strictly controlled. Sound a lot like lockdown to anyone else?
- mystical manipulation – the usage of a planned or arranged “spontaneous”, “immediate” situation to give it a meaning that is beneficial to manipulators. The emergence of a ‘deadly novel virus’ for instance?
- the requirement of “purity” – a sharp dividing of the world into “clean” and “impure”, “good” and “bad”, to position the totalitarian sect as “good” and “clean”, and everything that is outside it as “bad” and “dirty”. The lockdown zealots vs the sceptics, the vaccinated vs unvaccinated?
- cult of confession – the requirement of never-ending confession and intimate acknowledgments. You have to Instagram that trip to the vaccination centre, pronouns in your bio, etc.
- “Holy Science” – the announcement of their own dogma as absolute, complete and eternal Truth, and any other information that contradicts this “absolute truth” as false. This one is almost too good, remember deranged Jacinda Ardern claiming to be ’your single source of truth’ and Fauci describing himself as ‘the science’?
- language loaded with cult meaning – the creation of a special clichéd dictionary of intra-group communication in order to eliminate the very foundation for independent and critical thinking – ‘build back better’ ‘new normal’ ‘double jabbed’; the entire woke dictionary – equity, inclusion, diversity, trans, etc
- doctrine is more important than the personality – there was no personality in lockdown just a Borg-like hive mind repeating the doctrines over and over – ‘stay home, save lives’ etc
- separation of existence – members of the group have the right to life and existence, the rest don’t have it, i.e. “the end justifies any means”. Including denying medical treatment to the unvaccinated, the stigmatisation of deplorables, the disposable lives in Ukraine, Gaza and the Sahel region of Africa.
The mechanisms of psychological manipulation used during the Covid period are the same as those used by religious cults. These are the clues you’re in a cult conversion situation:
Monologicality – only the approved source of information is acceptable, there’s a ban on critical thinking, any expression of doubt about the doctrine of the cult is viciously suppressed.
Isolation – participants are cut off from the outside world, the controllers constantly reminding participants to keep to the rules. Obey the dogma. The template for the lockdown period.
Counter Argumentation – adherents are given pre-prepared counter arguments to possible objections. The press performed this role throughout the ‘plandemic’ period.
Verbal Manipulation – the frequent repetition of meaningless phrases that form a religious-like ritual. Neuro linguistic programming that dramatically reduces perception and criticality. As I asked earlier. Why the repetition? Why the repetition?
Uncertainty – constant tension, inability to plan, complex rules that are difficult to follow. Constant threats of harsher punishments. The ever-changing rules of lockdown reinforced by repeated shocks, as we are bombarded with one manufactured crisis after another.
Mythology – the instrumentalisation of the good vs evil mythology that exists in people’s minds. Making every decision binary leads to susceptibility. The removal of analogue nuance makes digital programming much easier.
Mimicry – you don’t realise you’re joining a cult; at the beginning it looks like something else. A public health lockdown perhaps.
Emotionality – a traumatised person is easier to indoctrinate. Where cults used to have to search for the emotionally vulnerable, the Covid cult just traumatised the entire planet. As the professional hypnotist Dick Sutphen says in his article The Battle for your Mind: “Cults work on the emotions of an individual or group until they reach intense levels of anger, fear, excitement, or nervous tension. The progressive result of this mental condition is to impair judgment and increase suggestibility. The more this condition can be maintained or intensified, the more it compounds. Once catharsis is reached, mental takeover is complete”. Catharsis was the injection. Once the needle pierced the skin, the visceral release of emotion completed the conversion process.
Collectivism – the laws of collective psychology or mass formation psychosis, which I have some issues with, but will do as shorthand here. Group effects are faster and have longer lasting impacts with a loss of individuality.
It is my suggestion that the Covid period was a mass conversion event that broke the connection between the population and their individuated selves. The parallels between the indoctrination techniques used to initiate participants into a cult and the events of the last four years are too numerous and too exact to be coincidence. This conversion is continually reinforced using repeated trauma to the extent that the mind has no space to process events. Constant shocks maintain the disassociation enabling susceptibility and compliance. We lurch from one crisis to another – wars, child murders, child murderers, shootings, horror beyond belief, creating population mass functioning in a zombie-like dissociative trance. In this trance these poor unfortunates can be imprinted with bizarre behaviour patterns and convinced of almost anything. The evidence is all around us:
The middle-class corporate drone digging his own grave, chanting company slogans as he shovels.
The blue haired tattooed nose-ring rich kid, sacrificing her own fertility to the goddess of entitlement.
The baying Trump supporter pledging fealty to the king of lockdowns and warp speed vaccines.
The high priests of the mainstream media broadcasting lie after lie.
The modern culture addict jonesing for Taylor or Oasis tickets.
The laptop jockey sucking down corporate coffee-flavoured milk while permanently connected to the hive mind.
The phone scroller, eyes permanently locked into the abyss.
The gleaming Instagrammed money whores in Dubai or Marbella desperate to turn another trick.
The so-called resistance on twitter, high on the algorithm delivered by a system they secretly adore.
Diversity warriors imposing their rigid intolerance on anyone who doesn’t want to listen.
So called leftists weaponizing compassion to enable the killing of as many brown and Slavic people as possible.
Middle aged utopian progressives clutching their atheistic pop philosophies tighter than any born-again Christian.
The same liberal progressives participating in satanic ritual and industrial-level child sacrifice.
Celebrity culture consumers lobotomising themselves by living vicariously through the tawdry lives of intellectual pygmies with plastic faces.
Stakeholder fascists celebrating the incestuous union of the state and the corporate.
Embryo-freezing career women making a Faustian bargain with the corporate devil and getting nothing in return.
Violent hordes of cultureless, misogynist racists chanting football slogans acros
| winter oak © 2024. |
October 8th 2024
How Do You Spot A Paranoid Schizophrenic And What Do You Do With Them ?
Paranoid Schizophrenia: What It Is, Symptoms & TreatmentCleveland Clinichttps://my.clevelandclinic.org › health › diseases › 2334…
26 Jun 2022 — Paranoid schizophrenia is an outdated term for the condition schizophrenia, but paranoia is still a common part of the symptoms that people experience.
Paranoid schizophrenia involves: Paranoia, which means you feel distrust, suspicious, and fearful of someone without any good reason, Delusions, which means you believe something that people without the condition know is unreal as real.
What is it like to have paranoid schizophrenia?
That means a person with schizophrenia has trouble knowing what’s real and what isn’t. That can be a scary and very disorienting feeling. When a person experiences paranoia that feeds into delusions and hallucinations, it’s common for them to feel afraid and unable to trust others.
Schizophrenia is a very serious mental illness that causes psychosis, a difficulty interpreting reality. Individuals living with paranoid schizophrenia can benefit from treatment and family support.
Is it safe to live with a schizophrenic person?
Most people with schizophrenia are harmless to others. They’re more likely to hurt themselves than anybody else. Sometimes that includes trying to take their own life. You should take any suicidal talk seriously, and pay attention to poems, notes, or any other things your loved one creates that are about death
Objective. Biased attribution styles of assigning hostile intention to innocent others and placing the blame were found in schizophrenia.
How does a person with schizophrenia act?
Overview. Schizophrenia is a serious mental health condition that affects how people think, feel and behave. It may result in a mix of hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking and behavior. Hallucinations involve seeing things or hearing voices that aren’t observed by others.
October 6th 2024
TUCKETT BROTHERS
Model T Ford Specialists
Have you read the article on Neil in the August 2024 issue of The Automobile?
Looking to buy a Model T? Call Neil on 01296670500 for further info & to arrange a test drive.
1922 Ton Truck
Available shortly! £POA
1911 Tourer
In immaculate condition. Complete with Ruxtell, rockies, starter motor, full tonneau cover and many extras. Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. £32,500
1920 Centredoor
Rocky Mountain brakes, starter motor, 12v dynator, nice UK registration! Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. NEW PRICE! £14,000
1925 Pick Up Project
Running and driving. Wire wheels. Starter motor. Dynator. 4 dip sump. Wooden pick up body. £6,000
1921 Tourer – Black
Well restored. Older restoration. High compression head. Starter motor. 12V £16,000
1926 Dr Coupe
Regularly used. Older restoration. Starter motor, alternator, distributor. Ruxtell axle. £12,500
1924 Tourer
Well loved & fully rebuilt. Complete with many extras. Ruxtell, Rockies etc. £16,000
1926 Tourer
LHD. Awaiting recommissioning having spent COVID slumbering in France! Just arrived to the UK. UK registered. Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. £11,000
1923 Tourer
Irish Tourer. RHD. Been in the UK for many years and regularly rallied. Recent re-paint, wheels overhauled and extensive restoration including new pistons and valves. Rocky Mountain brakes. Roof showing it’s age. Viewing elsewhere by appointment. £15,000
1926 Tourer
RHD. Due to be recommissioned. A nice car with period English registration (‘AN’). £15,000
1922 Pick Up
In good order throughout. Long term ownership. £17,500
1921 Centredoor
8″ Rocky Mountain brakes, Ruxtell axle. Lots of accessories. NEW PRICE £14,995
1925 Carrimore
Rare, unique survivor. Currently under recommissioning. £POA
Overland
1912 Model 69 Roadster. Very original condition. Preservation requires completing. Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. £9,000
1920 Pick Up
Absolutely stunning with every extra including Ruxtell, Rocky’s, Speedo, McLaren wire wheels, Starter motor, alternator, distributor, tonneau cover, side screens etc. £19,500
1921 Roadster
In immaculate condition. New tyres, powder coated rims, lots of extras. In current ownership for the last 15yrs. Viewing elsewhere. £15,950 [NEW PRICE]
1920 Frontenac
Dirt track racer. Frontenac head, Rockies, wire wheels, starter motor, alternator. Original body. Very desirable car! £25,000
1926 Tourer
A lovely restoration out of a private collection. Available for viewing elsewhere. £16,000
1914 Roadster
Regularly used. In good order. Good older restoration Rocky Mountain brakes and starter motor. True fire ignition. Green colour (better photos when the sun shines!). £16,950
1920 Ton Truck
A well known English truck in good order throughout. A recent re-paint and been rallied with the Model T Club since 1960s. £15,000
1922 English Model T Cabriolet
Coach built by Gordon’s of Birmingham. A genuine documented 12000 miles since new. Restored 1995 and owned by Neil Tuckett since. Many period extras. A unique opportunity to own an open touring and fully enclosed car perfect for UK touring and getting a bride to church! Original UK number plate. £27,500
Model T Ford Bus
10 year restoration/build by enthusiastic owner, who would now like to find it a good home. Please click link for further info. £23,500
1924 Model T Depot Hack
Body revarnished, valves ground and drives well. Regularly used. Viewing elsewhere. £12,000
1924 Tourer
Restored for The Ford Challenge in 2004, and been in France ever since. Needs some work to complete restoration (hood and top) – parts included. Branded ‘The Ford Motor Company’ on sides and rear. UK registered. £10,500
1920 Centredoor
Beautiful restoration. Starter, alternator, Ruckstell axle, Rocky mountain brakes, new tyres etc. Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. £15,000
1915 Roadster
Older restoration. Regularly used. 2 owners in last 30 years. £14,000
Ferguson Tractor
*BACK AVAILABLE* Petrol parrafin. Recently retired from a small holding. Running & driving. £1,400
1923 Fordson Model F tractor
Irish. Restored from the front, but back half to be restored! Nearly running (valves and spark plugs, manifold rebuilt). Restoration needs completing. Rear wings included. £4,000
Fordson Trencher
PRICE REDUCED. £2,500
1914 Roadster Body
Left hand drive. New £5,750
RHD Project
Complete with Roadster body work. £POA (based on what you want included!).
1923 Rolling Chassis
Project. As recovered from USA. £2,500
Project
1920s complete with tourer bodywork. £POA (dependent on what you include).
Project
£2,500
1924 Centredoor project
Additional parts to photo included in cost. £2,500
1924 Tourer project
For restoration. Excellent tin work and good wheels! Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. £5,500
1927 c cab Ton Truck
Project for total restoration. Comes with Ruxtell axle. £2,500
1925 Ton truck
Project for total restoration. Comes with bullet holes in door! Ruxtell axle. £2,000
1924 Tourer project
Good quality pannel work. £2,500
Van Body
Model T body for pie van. Ready to fit to a rolling chassis. £Ask for similar Other bodies available to order. email neil@tuckettbrothers.co.uk
C1920 Truck
Reported to have been in the same family since new. A very original vehicle, and unique opportunity to buy. Restored in 1977 and laid up for over 30yrs. Undergoing recomissioning by ourselves. £SOLD
MANCHESTER TON TRUCK CAB
NEW Manchester Ton Truck Cab Wood Kit £Available on request
1927 Tourer
Recent import from USA. Really tidy and catches the eye. Wire wheels. 6V. Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. £SOLD
1926 Pick Up
Stunning restoration in America. £SOLD
Assorted Vintage Tractor parts
A loader for a Fergie, complete with fork, bucket and original concrete rear weight. Also includes frame. Currently missing rams and nuts and bolts. £300
1926 Tudor
Older restoration. In good order. Lovely upholstery. Eye catching car. Awaiting recommissioning after a 3yr COVID slumber. £SOLD
1916 Speedster
Eccentric car with all sorts of extras! Running & regularly used. High compression head, 3:1 axle, lowered by 5″. Lots of fun to be had. Possible Pendine car! Click ‘go to link’ for more photos. £SOLD
Tilt bed trailer
Recently used but suggest new floor and good service. Solid and heavy duty. Stainless panels not included. £SOLD
1922 Roadster
Runs and drives well. £SOLD
1925 Tourer
RHD English Tourer. Recent long term ownership. Older restoration. SOLD
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October 5th 2024
26 February 2024
David Martin (1946 – 1984) burglar.
Original version: December 2009
David Martin was born in Paddington, London, and was educated at the Finsbury Park comprehensive school. He was trained as a motor mechanic. However he also started stealing things. By 1968 he was in a borstal serving time for 30 cases of theft. There he studied electronics, to better understand alarm systems. He managed to spring a lock, and escaped. In 1972 he was on remand for more burglaries. In the prison van he picked the lock of his cubicle, and then did the same for the other prisoners. In 1973 he was in Brixton Prison. He and 20 others hijacked a dustcart and used it to ram the prison gates. Martin was one of the few to actually get outside, but was apprehended hailing a taxi. In 1974 and 1975 he made near attempts to escape from Parkhurst Prison and then Gartree.
Martin was also gender fluid switching genders socially and also to case premises or to commit crimes.
In 1982 he had decided to get into the then expanding businesses of video (VHS) piracy and also pornography. To get the required equipment he burgled film recording and processing firms in London and took what he needed. On other times he broke in with a master tape of a recent Hollywood film, and used the equipment to make multiple copies. Later that year he used his knowledge of alarm systems to break into the gunsmiths Thomas Bland & Sons in Covent Garden and took 24 handguns, ammunition and holsters. A few weeks later he and others stole £25,000 in the City of London where he shot a security guard in the leg. One of the security guards said that he thought one of the gang was a woman dressed in motorcycle clothing. A week after that he shot a police constable in the leg when challenged in a film processing firm in Marylebone.
The police spoke to their informants and were given the name David Martin. A gun dealer came forth about an attempt by a David Martin who wanted to sell guns, and who had left an address in Crawford Place, Marylebone. For several days armed undercover officers watched Martin’s flat wondering why there was no sign of him. Only then did they realise that the tall blonde woman who came and went was, in fact, Martin. An informant explained to them that Martin was a transvestite. They were waiting for Martin on the seventh floor when she stepped out of the lift. This became a fracas, Martin’s gun was knocked away but she pulled out a second gun, and a detective constable fired. Martin was hit in the back of the neck. Martin was taken to hospital where the bullet was removed, and then held in remand at Brixton Prison. On Christmas Eve 1982 Martin was taken to Marlborough Street Magistrates Court (now the Courthouse Hotel) and charged with attempted murder, armed robbery, theft of guns and other offences. He was then taken to the court cells to await the prison van for the return journey. However his lock-picking skills served him well. He made his way to a skylight, and then over the nearby roofs to the London Palladium theatre. A service door was open, and Martin walked out through the foyer and into the Christmas crowds.
Martin’s (major) girlfriend was the 25-year-old Sue Stephens. They raided her flat in West Hampstead, but to no avail. They put her under surveillance and listened to her phone.
Stephen Waldorf, a 26-year-old film editor, vaguely resembled the male David Martin. His sister’s boyfriend, Lester Purdy, was acquainted with Stephens. Waldorf and the boyfriend picked up Stephens in a yellow Mini. With the police following, the Mini got stuck in traffic in Kensington. Armed police surrounded the car and opened fire. Waldorf fell out of the car door face down and was shot again. Only when they turned him over, did the police realize that it was the wrong man. The other man in the car fled in terror, but later went to the police.
Waldorf had suffered five bullet wounds—which damaged his abdomen and liver—as well as a fractured skull and injuries to one hand caused by pistol whipping. Stephens was grazed by a bullet. Both were taken to St Stephen’s Hospital. Within an hour, a senior officer at Scotland Yard issued a public apology and promised an immediate investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB). Waldorf went into full cardiac arrest, but doctors managed to restart his heart. He was in hospital for six weeks. When he regained consciousness, a senior Met officer visited him to apologise.
Stephens had been grazed by a bullet, was paid £10,000 for her story by the Daily Mail, but was also charged with receiving stolen property. Out on bail she worked with the Flying Squad. Martin phoned and they arranged to meet “at the last place we met”, which was a restaurant in Heath Street, Hampstead. Many police were waiting, but Martin fled down an emergency spiral staircase at Hampstead Underground Station, then the length of a stationary train, jumped from the drivers’ cab and onto the rails. Station staff immediately switched off the electricity. Some police followed while others waited at the two adjacent stations. They caught him at Belsize Park station – he had no gun with him.
His trial was at the Old Bailey, September 1983. He refused to plead to any of the charges, and the judge ruled that a plea of not guilty be entered. The trial ended 11 October and Martin was sentenced to 25 years. He vowed that he would escape or die!
Waldorf eventually made a full recovery. He sued the police, who did not contest the case, and was awarded £150,000 in an out-of-court settlement early in 1984. Stephens also sued the Met and was awarded £10,000, but she, Purdy and one other were sentenced to six and nine months respectively for receiving stolen goods after police found property including £15,000 of security equipment, body armour and holsters and medical equipment.
Three officers were suspended; two were charged with attempted murder. They were tried at the Old Bailey in October 1983, pled that they had a genuine, albeit mistaken, fear for their lives, and were acquitted of all charges. They were returned to duty, though their firearms authorisations were withdrawn.
Martin was sent to Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, where he met celebrity prisoners such as the gay serial killer Dennis Nilson. Sue Stephens stopped answering his letters, and refused to visit him.
He succeeded in killing himself 13 March 1984.
The police regulations regarding guns were tightened.
The story was filmed as a television movie in 1994 with Rupert Graves as Martin.
*Not the Scottish, nor the English, nor the Nebraska politician, nor the poet, nor the Governor of New South Wales, nor the musician, nor the gymnast, nor any of the footballers, nor the Texas axe-murderer, nor the Ottawa humourist, nor the casting director, nor the Dr Who scriptwriter, nor the CBC news correspondent, nor the sociologist/priest, nor the jazz pianist, nor the chef, etc. Nor the author of Rewriting Gender?: You, Your Family, Transgenderism and the Gospel, 2018.
- Nick Davies & Stephen Cook. “Yard apologises for shooting”. The Guardian, 17 January 1983.
- Pat Clarke. “The gunman who like to dress aa a woman”. Daily Post, October 12, 1983: 3.
- Roger Beam. “Two faces of the transvestite gunman” and “Waldorf: ‘Shot five times and pistol whipped’. Model’s brush with death”. Daily Mirror, October 13, 1983: 1,7.
- Ian Henry. “Six Month’s Jail for ‘Infatuated’ Sue Stephens’. Daily Telegraph, 22 November 1983.
- “David Martin, the transvestite burglar who became Britain’s most wanted…”. UPI, 14 March 1984. Online.
- “David Martin: No prison will hold me!” Real-Life Crimes … and how they were solved, 38, 1 Jan 1993. archive.
- Paul Greengrass (scr & dir). Open Fire. With Jim Carter as DCS Young, Rupert Graves as David Martin and Eddie Izzard as Rich. UK London Weekend Television 105 mins 1994. IMDB YouTube.
- Duncan Campbell. The Underworld. Penguin Books, 1996: 160-2.
- James Morton. Gangland Soho. Piatkus, 2008: 6.
- Dick Kirby. “London police opening fire: 1983 to now”. The History Press. Online.
- Dick Kirby. The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Stephen Waldorf and the Hunt for David Martin. The History Press, 2016.
————-
There is no indication that Martin ever went to any of the trans support groups available in London in the late 1970s-early 1980s: The London TV/TS Group, the Beaumont Society or SHAFT.
Real-Life Crimes includes the paragraph: “One detective who dealt with him said: He turned to homosexuality in prison. He liked the idea of being in drag, but he was such a chameleon, so good at disguise, that he found a brilliant device to help him in crime, too.” Kirby mentions “an acquaintance who was a homosexual lorry driver. Apparently, he and Martin had shared an interest in yoga, wholefoods and the occult while the driver was waiting for a sex-change operation.” Real-Life Crimes says that they were dating. Other writers claim that Martin had an affair in prison with Dennis Nilson.
I see only a heterosexual cross-dresser. In the early 1980s many still confused trans and being gay.
This is the arial view (from Google maps) of the block containing the Magistrates Court and the London Palladium. To get from one to the other across the roofs seems quite feasable.
Time: 17:14
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Anonymous1/8/24 16:59This is nonsense . I was involved in these matters and most of the above is plain wrong. ReplyReplies
Zagria1/8/24 20:38For example …
Comments that constitute non-relevant advertisements will be declined, as will those attempting to be rude. Comments from ‘unknown’ and anonymous will also be declined. Repeat: Comments from “unknown” will be declined, as will anonymous comments. If you don’t have a Google id, I suggest that you type in a name or a pseudonym.
A brief history of the Piccadilly Line: from 20th century opening to 2025 upgrade
Did you know that Arsenal is the only station on the Underground named after a football club?
The new Piccadilly line trains undergo testing in Germany
Ross Lydall
Liz Connor|Tamara Davison1 day ago
Coloured dark blue on the map and running from Heathrow and Uxbridge to Cockfosters, the Piccadilly line is the fourth busiest line on the Underground network, receiving 210 million passengers per year.
And its popularity is no surprise, really, given that it serves many of London‘s top tourist attractions, including Harrods, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Covent Garden, as well as London Heathrow Airport, the busiest airport in Europe.
If you live in London, you probably use this line to catch a flight from the airport, watch a football game at Arsenal, or take a weekend trip to Paris at King’s Cross St Pancras.
The Piccadilly Line is also due an upgrade next year, when it will welcome a new fleet of air-conditioned carriages with a slick new design and modern amenities.
Comment One should wonder why the U.K no longer builds its own trains. Like so much of the U.K’s socio economic destruction, the answer lies in the horrible Thatcher Greed Revolution and globalisation.
R J Cook
September 29th 2024
In Netflix documentary “Will & Harper” (streaming now), the comedian treks across the country with his best friend Harper Steele, who came out as a trans woman in 2021 at age 61.1 hour ago
Will Ferrell opens up about trans documentary ‘Will & Harper’
USA Todayhttps://www.usatoday.com › story › movies › 2024/09/27
Comment The film fails to find the worst violent anti trans bigotry in small town U.S.A because it is the feminists and fake metropolitan liberals who have the anti trans issue. These fakes are fully licenced to commit hate crime. Their hate is more subtle and permeating. But Texan men, fighting for traditional masculinity without fawning to feminism were a problem for Harper. They can thank the likes of liberal hate preacher TERF billionaire, J K Rowling for that.
R J Cook
The Independent
Will & Harper: Will Ferrell breaks down in tears over transphobic abuse of Harper Steele in Texas
Will and Harper: How Will Ferrell became his trans friend’s road trip ally
R J Cook
September 28th 2024
Body found in river Thames confirmed as Southwark womanIslington Gazettehttps://www.islingtongazette.co.uk › news › 24616527.b…
On Tuesday, September 25, 55-year-old Natasha Reddington–Romanov was reported missing to the police. It has since been confirmed that the body …
September 27th 2024
Sue Gray, in the words of those who worked with her
By Adam Forrest
Scotland Correspondent
Keir Starmer’s chief of staff is said to relish political controversy – having acted as the ‘keeper of secrets’ in government
Less than three months in the job at No 10 and Sue Gray has already broken an unwritten rule for top advisers to prime ministers: don’t become the story.
Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, a household name since her role as Whitehall’s “Partygate” investigator, has become embroiled in a series of controversies in recent weeks.
There is the row over Ms Gray £170,000 pay packet – higher than Sir Keir’s salary – sparking anger among Labour special advisers resentful about their own, far-lower pay rates.
Downing Street had to deny reports that his chief of staff has a fractious relationship with Labour’s strategy chief Morgan McSweeney and Civil Service chief Simon Case.
And there have been accusations that she “subverted” Cabinet by interfering in a controversial plan to rebuild a derelict stadium in Northern Ireland, which has been denied by No 10.
However, the negative briefings against Ms Gray have been heavily criticised by senior Whitehall figures and Government ministers, who point to her long track record as a proven political operator.
Baroness Harriet Harman said she is an “incredibly able person” and argued that misogyny was behind the attacks. “I think there is something about an older woman in authority that some young men find hard to put up with,” the Labour grandee said.
Deputy Leader Angela Rayner also issued a firm rebuttal of the attacks this week, warning others not to undermine the “formidable” chief of staff.
Ms Gray skipped the Labour conference in Liverpool, but she is not shying away from the limelight. She joined the Prime Minister on his trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly summit.
Sir Keir has suggested he would take action to halt briefings when he returns from the US. “It’s my job to deal with briefings,” Mr Starmer told the BBC. “I take responsibility for that.”
People who have worked closely with Ms Gray when she was a behind-the-scenes “fixer” in the Civil Service told i they are not surprised she is now centre stage at Westminster.
They describe her as someone who “relishes” political controversy, enjoying her reputation as the keeper of secrets during her time the Cabinet Office.
While she is viewed as a highly-capable professional, willing to work around the clock, some say Ms Gray has controlling tendencies and isn’t good at delegating to others.
Sources also claimed she is tough and direct, someone who can be “dismissive” of junior staff, with an instinctive dislike of those she believes to be slick, ambitious high-flyers.
The daughter of Irish immigrants to London, Ms Gray ditched her plan to go to university after her father’s death in 1975, joining the Civil Service straight from a state-funded Catholic school.
She worked her way up at the Cabinet Office to become the head of the propriety and ethics team – smoothing over potential controversies involving ministers, or ending their careers if she judged they had broken rules.
“She is not a policy genius. Her primary skill is a fixer,” a former Cabinet Office official who worked with Sue Gray for several years told i.
“She is good at explaining things to ministers, handling delicate things with ministers, knowing when things might blow up – turning up like the grim reaper to handle a crisis.”
Ms Gray was said to have been polite, softly spoken and was admired for her willingness to “work round the clock” in Whitehall.
“She was well liked. But she was feared too,” the ex-Cabinet Office official said. “She could be direct. She didn’t delegate to many people, so there was an element of being a control freak.”
Ms Gray also seemed to have a problem with “high flyers”, the source added. “She would take against people who were seen as slick, policy-smart, ambitious. Whether it was the fact she didn’t go to university, I don’t know. She would find reason to be in conflict with them.”
One former Cabinet Office adviser said Ms Gray took a “dismissive” approach to dealing with some government staff – particularly when it came to pay rise requests.
“She gave the impression you were a nuisance, and she had better things to be doing. She was dismissive. She wasn’t a particularly pleasant person to deal with.”
The source said the top civil servant savoured her role in briefing ministers on potential conflicts of interests and other ethical issues. “I think she enjoyed the reputation she had as the gatekeeper of secrets – she was comfortable with the colourful side of politics.”
Some inside the Cabinet Office were shocked when was given the job of investigating Partygate in December 2021, given suspicions that her sympathies lay with the Labour Party.
Two former officials told i there were rumours that she had been approached by former Labour leader Ed Miliband to be his chief of staff in 2015. Mr Miliband’s spokesman denied he had ever asked Ms Gray to take up the role.
Her son Liam was known to have links to Labour, acting as chair of the Labour Party Irish Society before going on to win a safe seat in south-east London in 2024.
“I was absolutely astounded that she was brought in to look at ‘Partygate’,” said a former Cabinet Office adviser. “I didn’t get the feeling she was a clean skin. I couldn’t believe No 10 were foolish enough to be happy for her to make the judgement.”
Others who worked with Ms Gray say she did not appear to be motivated by any ill-will in concluding that the behaviour of No 10 staff fell “well-short” of expected standards during the Partygate scandal.
“I don’t think she was driven by anti-Boris Johnson bias,” said a former Cabinet Office official.
Not all are convinced her investigation was flawless, though. Several No 10 aides previously said they gave Ms Gray evidence of an “Abba Party” held in Mr Johnson’s flat, claiming music was played to celebrate the departure of Dominic Cummings on November 13 2020. The alleged event received no mention in her final report.
Ms Gray’s willingness to engage in high political drama has echoes in her three-year stint in Northern Ireland Executive, according to sources who worked with her at Stormont.
In 2018 she became the head of the executive’s finance department, working closely with Sinn Fein finance minister Conor Murphy.
Given her Catholic upbringing, and a spell running a pub in the Irish nationalist stronghold of Newry during the 80s, she struggled to shake off hostility from the Democrat Unionist Party (DUP).
Sammy Wilson, the veteran DUP MP, told i: “I always felt she wasn’t sympathetic to the union perspective. It was hard not to think her background, and the fact she spent so much time running the pub in Co Armagh, influenced her thinking.”
However, one politician who worked closely with her during the period was impressed by her hard work and professionalism at a time of political limbo at Stormont and rising tensions over Brexit.
“She went above and beyond the day-to-day job,” they said. “She went out to a lot of engagements to meet different community groups that her department was supporting. There was no sign she was skewed by bias.”
She was accused of pushing for Casement Park, a run-down stadium in east Belfast, to be rebuilt at the cost of £310m. The Times reported claims that she had been “personally dominating” discussions about a possible government bailout.
The Prime Minister told reporters in August that claims she pressed for Casement Park funding were “complete nonsense”. The Government announced this month that it would not be providing any money for the redevelopment.
“There was concern she, as an unelected official, was driving policy,” said Mr Wilson.
“She certainly seems happy to jump into political controversy. I think she relishes it. Which is why it seems she jumped at the chance to join Labour. She wants to be in the middle of political decisions, rather than be an administrator.”
A former government official involved in talks with her in Northern Ireland said there was “disappointment” in London that she joined the Sinn Fein minister in taking a combative approach to financial disputes.
“It was a surprise just how strongly she embraced the executive side of the argument, and indeed the Sinn Fein minister’s side of the argument,” they said.
“In fairness, she was doing her job. But we realised the hope that she could create a better working relationship between the UK government and executive wasn’t an approach she was interested in taking.”
After being turned down for the job of top civil servant at the executive, Ms Gray returned to London in 2021 to resume work at the Cabinet Office.
Her decision to quit in May 2023 to become Labour’s chief of staff is said to have caused “fury” among colleagues for damaging the reputation of the civil service as impartial.
While she was cleared to work for the party, a Cabinet Office investigation found a “prima facie” breach of Civil Service code because she discussed the job working for Sir Keir without telling her bosses.
Some fear the ex-civil servant has bitten off more than she can chew by taking on such a high-profile, all-encompassing political role. It was a “terrible misjudgement” by both Ms Gray and Sir Keir, said one Whitehall source.
Another former Cabinet Office colleague of Ms Gray said: “She is someone who likes control, so her natural instinct is to get involved in a lot of things.”
“But the strategic instinct you need to navigate MPs, the public, the press and the issues of the day is not her skillset. So am I surprised it’s not working out too well? Not really.”
No 10 declined to comment.
Sue Gray allies say briefings unfair and misogynistic
Sue Gray may be under some pressure after acrimonious briefings against her, but she has some powerful allies speaking out on her behalf.
Keir Starmer is standing firmly by his chief of staff. Following reports Ms Gray has clashed with Labour strategy chief Morgan McSweeney and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, the Prime Minister said most of the stories about her are “wildly wrong”.
The PM told BBC the briefings are “not helpful” to the Government, and suggested he would “deal” with briefings when he gets back from the trip to New York for the UN summit.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner warned “entitled men” not to undermine the “formidable” chief of staff. “Sue Gray is another working-class kid that’s worked her way up through the ranks and I wouldn’t underestimate her,” she told LBC.
Baroness Harriet Harman defended the chief of staff’s £170,000 salary, saying she was an “incredibly able person” getting “paid the rate for the job”.
The Labour grandee also argued that misogyny from male Labour staff was behind the attacks. “I think there is something about an older woman in authority that some young men find hard to put up with,” she told BBC Newsnight.
Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds denied claims Sir Keir had intervened to boost Ms Gray’s salary, telling Sky News pay rates was a civil service process that “hasn’t changed”.
And Health Secretary Wes Streeting made light of the flurry anti-Gray briefings at the Labour conference, joking that she was “hiding Lord Lucan and shot JFK”.
Comment This woman is Sir Keir Starmer’s Dominic Cummins without a brain. She is the perfect choice to defend the corrupt U.K Deep State.
R J Cook
Judge says controversial women-only art exhibit is legal
Hannah Ritchie
BBC News, Sydney
A controversial women’s-only museum exhibit could soon re-open in Australia, after an appeal judge overturned a ruling that it breached anti-discrimination laws.
The luxurious Ladies Lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart had sought to highlight historic misogyny by banning male visitors from entering.
It was forced to shut in May when one affected patron sued the gallery for gender discrimination and won.
But on Friday, Tasmanian Supreme Court Justice Shane Marshall found that men could be excluded from the Ladies Lounge, because the law allows for discrimination if it promotes “equal opportunity” for a marginalised group.
“(The Ladies Lounge provides) women with a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged rather than disadvantaged,” he said.
Kirsha Kaechele, the artist who created the exhibit, called the ruling a “big win”.
“It took 30 seconds for the decision to be delivered – 30 seconds to quash the patriarchy,” she said in a statement.
“Today’s verdict demonstrates a simple truth: women are better than men.”
Mona has a longstanding reputation for being provocative, and the exclusive opulence and pageantry of the the Ladies Lounge – which opened in 2020 and housed some of the museum’s most acclaimed works – is no different.
Ms Kaechele said that she had created the space to highlight the exclusion Australian women faced for decades, such as the decision to ban them from drinking in the main section of bars until 1965.
She described the exhibit as a “flipped universe” that provided a much needed “reset from this strange and disjointed world of male domination”.
But one man felt that the message was unlawful, and after being denied entry into the lounge last year, New South Wales native Jason Lau took his case to the Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal.
- A museum tried reverse misogyny. Now a man is suing
- Published20 March
Representing himself throughout the case, he argued that the museum had violated the state’s anti-discrimination act by failing to provide “a fair provision of goods and services in line with the law” to him and other ticket holders who didn’t identify as female.
Mona had responded by claiming the rejection Mr Lau had felt was part of the artwork – so he hadn’t missed out – but the tribunal dismissed that reasoning. Further, it found that women no longer experienced the same level of exclusion from public spaces as they had in the past.
The new ruling will now send the case back to the tribunal, which will have to reconsider its judgement.
A spokesperson from Mona said that several steps remain before the lounge can officially re-open – including the tribunal’s updated ruling.
But the legal team representing the museum said Friday’s decision recognised the intended purpose of the Ladies Lounge “to highlight and challenge inequality that exists for woman in all spaces today”.
“I look forward to sharing what comes next. I think a celebration is in store,” Ms Kaechele added.
Olga Ivshina
Notice how the following BBC extract references 70.000 ‘people’ killed in Russian army were in fact all men. Also notice the ‘people’ in the above image of Ukrainian troops are all men. Women have a long history of cheering men off to war and handing out white feathers to who they have considered cowards. The battle field is one all male space that women have no desire to invade. Any all male art exhibitions would be outlawed as misogynistic with all exhibits scrutinised for signs of sexism. So men are expected to accept conscription to fight, be killed or maimed in rich men’s wars, like Ukraine. R J Cook
BBC Russian
- Published20 September 2024
More than 70,000 people Sic) fighting in Russia’s military have now died in Ukraine, according to data analysed by the BBC.
And for the first time, volunteers – civilians who joined the armed forces after the start of the war – now make up the highest number of people killed on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
Every day, the names of those killed in Ukraine, their obituaries and photographs from their funerals are published across Russia in the media and on social networks.
BBC Russian and the independent website Mediazona have collated these names, along with names from other open sources, including official reports.
September 16th 2024
Why Gut Health Issues Are More Common in Women
5 minute read
September 13, 2024 12:26 PM EDT
There’s a hidden gender gap when it comes to digestive problems, with women taking the lead in this unpleasant contest. While men are hardly immune to gastrointestinal woes, certain digestive problems are considerably more common in women. “Women aren’t broken—they’re just different,” says Dr. Jeanetta Frye, a gastroenterologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. For one thing, she says, “women have more visceral hypersensitivity so they may feel gastrointestinal symptoms more intensely.”
Symptom sensitivity aside, there’s clear evidence that certain digestive disorders are more likely to affect women than men. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)—a disorder that involves repeated bouts of abdominal pain and changes in bowel movements (diarrhea, constipation, or alternating bouts of the two)—is two to six times more common among women than men. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, affects twice as many women as men, according to the American College of Gastroenterology.
In addition, celiac disease—an autoimmune disorder that causes bloating, chronic diarrhea, constipation, gas, and other GI symptoms and is triggered by eating gluten—is diagnosed nearly twice as often in women as in men. And functional dyspepsia (a.k.a. chronic indigestion) is also more common in women. So is a lesser known brain-gut disorder called cyclic vomiting syndrome—characterized by recurrent episodes of nausea, vomiting, and dry heaving, separated by symptom-free periods in between, says Dr. David Levinthal, a gastroenterologist and director of the Neurogastroenterology and Motility Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Across the board, “disorders of gut-brain interaction are more prevalent in women than men,” Levinthal says, and the same is true of motility disorders like gastroparesis (delayed emptying of the stomach) and chronic constipation.
A mysterious gender gap
Why are women more susceptible to GI disorders? What is it about being born female that puts their digestive systems at risk? The answer is complicated and not completely understood.
This much is known: Reproductive hormones may play a role. “The female hormones estrogen and progesterone have a profound effect on the GI tract in terms of motility, pain sensitization, and how the brain delivers messages to the GI tract,” explains Dr. David Johnson, chief of gastroenterology at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk and past president of the American College of Gastroenterology. As a result, women may experience flare-ups of GI disorders at certain times of the month (such as during menstruation) or during pregnancy.
Read More: 15 Things to Say When Someone Comments on Your Weight
For another thing, “women have a more easily activated immune system than men do,” says Levinthal. This is significant because immune function, including inflammatory processes, plays a role in celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease.
What’s more, the gastrointestinal tract itself is longer in women, and that difference in length can affect transit time through the GI tract, Johnson says. In addition, women’s stomachs empty slightly more slowly than men’s do—“why that is isn’t known,” says Levinthal, but it may explain women’s greater susceptibility to gastroparesis. Research also suggests that the intestine’s nerve cells are more sluggish in women, which may be why IBS and gastroparesis are more common in women.
Another possible contributing factor has to do with psychological issues. “Anxiety and depression, which are more common in women than men, can worsen the severity of disordered gut function,” Levinthal says. “Feeling stressed or depressed or anxious is linked with how our guts work.” When you’re stressed out or anxious, you may be more likely to experience flare-ups of these GI disorders.
Giving your gut the right TLC
Regardless of gender, it’s important to “do everything you can to be proactive about your digestive health rather than just reactive,” Johnson says. That means staying well hydrated and consuming a healthy diet rich in plant-based foods (like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds), and lean protein, and avoiding sugary, highly processed foods.
Read More: 9 Weird Symptoms Cardiologists Say You Should Never Ignore
In particular, “fiber helps good bacteria flourish in the gut,” Johnson says, which contributes to the health of the gut microbiome, the community of bacteria and other microbes that naturally live in the GI tract. Research has found a strong correlation between gut bacteria and the risk of GI disorders such as IBS, IBD, and others.
Being proactive about your gut health also means taking steps to manage stress, get plenty of sleep, and exercise regularly. “The more you move your body, the more your gut is moving, too,” says Dr. Samuel Akinyeye, a gastroenterologist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. That movement is likely to help with many of these disorders.
If these measures don’t help sufficiently, there’s no reason to suffer alone. Medications and other treatments are available for all of these digestive disorders. “If you have symptoms you don’t understand, talk to a gastroenterologist,” Frye advises. “A lot of women are embarrassed to talk about their GI symptoms—I want them to feel empowered to discuss them. I tell my patients that it’s a safe space, and I’m not embarrassed to hear anything. This is why I’m here.”
September 15th 2024
Northants Police Chief Constable dismissed for gross …Banbury FMhttps://banburyfm.com › news › northants-police-chief-c…
21 Jun 2024 — Former Chief Constable Nick Adderley has been found to have committed gross misconduct and breached the standards of professional behaviour.
People also ask
Who was the Chief Constable who lied to the police?
Adderley was photographed wearing a Falklands war medal, a medal he has worn on his uniform since 2009. Adderley was 15 at the time of the conflict. The misconduct hearing heard that he “built a military naval legend that wasn’t true” and lied over many years to people in the police force.24 Jun 2024
Chief constable who lied about naval career dismissed for gross …
September 13th 2024
The “Peter Principle”: Why most companies are filled with people out of their depth – Jenny Thompson
Why would someone who has spent their entire career following orders become a great leader overnight?
Key Takeaways
- In 1969, Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull coined the term the “Peter Principle” to express how competent workers get promoted to a point where they are no longer good at their jobs.
- For example, this can happen when people who have been followers for all their careers are suddenly expected to be leaders.
- Here we look at ways we can learn from the Peter Principle — and how we can avoid its pitfalls.
Engaging content on the skills that matter, taught by world-class experts.
But it’s too much, too early. The wheels start to wobble. Peter misses deadlines and forgets to reply to emails. He works late into the evening but never seems to get things done. He doesn’t have a lunchbox anymore because he doesn’t have time to eat lunch. Peter is stressed, anxious, and woefully out of his depth. He’s been overpromoted and he’s incompetent.
Peter feels isolated and alone, but Peter is not alone. All over his company there are people like him —people who have been promoted to a position they’re unable to do well. It’s a problem that cripples any bureaucracy, and it’s got a name: The Peter Principle.
The Peter Principle
In 1969, Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull wrote the book The Peter Principle, where they laid out the theory that all employees will, eventually, hit a point in organizational hierarchy where they are ill equipped to do their job. The book was originally intended to be a satire — a lighthearted observation that most people can identify with. Hull and Peter argued that anyone good at their job will, eventually, get promoted. And they’ll carry on getting promoted until they reach a point where they are not good at their job. At which point they’ll not be promoted anymore but will linger in their post, flailing around in a job they’re not competent enough to do. And so, the book argues, a company will eventually be made up predominantly by people who are ill-equipped to do their job well. It’s a hierarchy of incompetence — children, dressed in suits too big.
One example of how this happens is the fact that “good followers do not become good leaders.” To work your way up the ladder, you often have to follow the rules, obey instructions, and pepper your interactions with varying degrees of sycophancy. You’re aiming to be likeable and friendly without being ingratiating. And so, “good followers” get promoted. But there comes a point in a promotion cycle when you need to stop following and take the lead. You need out-of-the-box thinking and need to rally the troops for a brave, daring assault that no one else saw coming. What Hull and Peter point out is that it makes no sense at all to assume that someone who’s lived their career in unoriginal subordination would suddenly become Abraham Lincoln with a corner office.
Learning from Peter
Of course, not all companies are filled with incompetents, and the Peter Principle is not some law of fate. Here are three things we can learn from Hull and Peter’s idea and how we can avoid it.
Top Stories
The learning pit. If you spend any time talking to teachers or parents, they’ll probably be able to tell you about “the learning pit.” The learning pit is where you throw a student a task that is far beyond their current abilities so that they can’t possibly achieve it yet. Then, with scaffolding and careful support, you help them climb out of the pit to fist-pumping success. The idea is that we all need a degree of pit-panic. We need to feel challenged and to struggle a bit if we’re to grow. No one gets stronger by lifting the same weight every day; you need to increase the load. The Peter Principle is not bad in itself but rather highlights the need to train or coach people “on the job.” With our opening story, we don’t know the ending. It might be that after a year of struggling, Peter learned competencies he didn’t know — he grew from the challenge and came out of the pit. But you cannot let someone drown before they’ve learned how to swim. Every promotion needs support. Every new role needs training.
The leadership gap. On Big Think+, the principal of Bersin by Deloitte, Josh Bersin, talks about “the leadership gap,” where companies around the world are finding it hard to recruit competent leaders. Echoing what Peter and Hull wrote 80 years ago, Bersin tells us, “Every individual performer, individual contributor who gets promoted to a supervisor or managerial job isn’t really taking on a new job. They’re really taking on a new profession.” For so much of our early working life, a certain skillset is required. That often involves following instructions and being a team player. Then, suddenly, we’re expected to give instructions and to be a team leader. Without some substantive transitional period between the two, we’re bound to meet this “leadership gap.” Of course, Bersin does not leave us empty-handed, and his advice on Big Think+ is invaluable.
Right person, wrong job. Sometimes, a promoted employee cannot be trained up suitably for a new role. Sometimes, their skillset simply won’t bend to the needs of the job, and their natural work style isn’t right for that title. In this case, what do you do? It seems silly to fire the person since they were clearly hugely competent up to this point. In our modern work culture, it’s hard to demote a person — pride and “Oh, I just bought a new house” put a stop to that. The best solution, sometimes, is to create a job that suits that person better. Or, better yet, to move them sideways to a position where their skillset will be better applied. History is littered with examples of this. Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant writer but unskilled at speaking, so he was given the role of drafting the Declaration of Independence while Samuel Adams handled the oratory. Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976, but after the company went public in 1980, he soon found managerial roles hard work and so consciously turned to engineering and innovation. In 2019, Xin Jin of University of South Florida and Michael Waldman of Cornell University concluded that “lateral moves” like this were correlated with job satisfaction and wage increases. The paper contains proven and practical advice about how any company can implement lateral moves well.
September 10th 2024
Former partner accused of killing Rebecca Cheptegei dies in hospital from burns
- Hospital confirms Dickson Ndiema Marangach’s death
- Olympian Cheptegei, 33, died days after being set on fire
ReutersTue 10 Sep 2024 10.06 BSTLast modified on Tue 10 Sep 2024 10.30 BST
The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who had been accused of killing her by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated said on Tuesday.
Cheptegei, 33, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in the 1 September attack and died four days later.
Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7.50pm local time on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died. “He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters.Quick Guide
Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the East African country, particularly within its running community.
Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.Rebecca Cheptegei’s family speak after death of runner set on fire by former partner – video
Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence.
Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women study.
Comment Most of the killings are in the Third World. Women who are dumoed or dump their ex partners have more subtle ways of killing a man. False domestic violence and false rape being high on their list when it comes to character assassination.
Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei’s attacker dies in hospital
Dickson Ndiema Marangach doused Cheptegei in petrol and set her on fire, leading to her death in Kenya on Sunday.
Published On 10 Sep 202410 Sep 2024
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The man who attacked Ugandan runner Rebecca Cheptegei has died from injuries sustained when he poured petrol over the Olympic athlete, the Kenyan hospital treating him said.
Police said that Dickson Ndiema Marangach assaulted Cheptegei in her home in western Kenya on September 1. The mother of two sustained 80 percent burns and died last week.
Amid the war in Gaza, Palestine dares to dream of FIFA World Cup 2026
In the course of the attack, Marangach also incurred 30 percent burns and was being treated in the intensive care unit at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in Kenya’s Rift Valley city of Eldoret.
Marangach died at 7:50pm local time (16:50 GMT) on Monday, Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at the hospital said.
“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told the Reuters news agency.
Police in Kenya said Marangach snuck into her home in Endebess, near the border with Uganda, while she was at church with her children aged nine and 11.
R J Cook
August 27th 2024
Ofcom is the regulator for online safety in the UK, under the Online Safety Act. Our job is to make sure online services, like sites and apps, meet their duties to protect their users.
Does Ofcom regulate social media?
Instead, our role is to make sure social media sites and other regulated online services have appropriate systems and processes in place to protect their users. Importantly, in our role as online safety regulator, we will always take into account people’s rights, including freedom of expression and privacy.
Online safety rules: what you need to know – Ofcom
August 24th 2024
‘I turned to bodybuilding at 75 following a cancer diagnosis’
‘I’ve always been confident in myself, but this was a new level of acceptance’By Marilynn Larkin As Told To Talene AppletonPublished: 21 August 2024
Marilynn Larkin
After I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, my world was turned upside down, but I refused to let fear take over—I wanted to do something. So six months ago, I picked up
the phone to call the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation for more information before signing up to compete.
The promoters were thrilled to hear I was interested because they want more representation in the Masters (over 50) age group, especially in the women’s division. I’m currently 75 and I felt my participation could make a meaningful impact for the sport and in my own life.
Natural bodybuilding is all about building up your muscles and “sculpting” your physique the old-fashioned way—without steroids or any of those artificial enhancers. Just good, clean hard work, lots of lifting weights, and eating right. I competed once before—but that was 22 years ago.
My relationship with fitness began in my childhood as a tomboy who loved movement. I’m a mover and a doer—I’ve always loved to move
My love for physical activity blossomed through college, where I fenced and danced, among other badass and acrobatic pursuits. I don’t have many regrets in life, but I do wish I learned martial arts.
Marilynn Larkin
Marilynn at a dance class in New York City.
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When the fitness movement gained momentum in the 70s, I dove in head first, becoming involved with fitness studios like Elaine Powers Figure Salons (what a throwback!)
I decided to start working out with a personal trainer, who encouraged me to enter my first bodybuilding competition
I was 54 at the time, and the oldest person competing. I placed in the competition, but I wasn’t particularly interested in signing up for another one. I quickly realised that what I loved most about bodybuilding was the training process, not game day.
Throughout my training phase, people would stop me in the gym and on the street to ask me what I eat, how I train, or tell me I inspired them. I loved the feeling of inspiring others just by doing something I genuinely love, which ultimately motivated me to get my personal training and group fitness certifications in 2005.
I quickly realised that what I loved most about bodybuilding was the training process, not game day.
While I was working with clients as a personal trainer, I recognised a strong connection between posture, confidence, and self esteem. I went on to develop a posture program using resistance bands and I traveled around New York City to teach it at various professional conferences and schools.
Fast forward to 2023: My routine was disrupted emerging from the pandemic, leading me to delay seeking medical attention for a lump I initially attributed to soreness from doing 80+ pushups per day. By the time I sought help, the cancer had progressed, ultimately metastasising to my liver. Despite the severity of my diagnosis, I opted for lumpectomies and radiation over mastectomy and chemotherapy, prioritising my quality of life and minimising time away from the fitness routines that allow me to feel centred and at my best.
Marilynn Larkin
Marilynn posing at her first natural bodybuilding competition in 2002.
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Bodybuilding was more than just a physical challenge; it was a journey of self-acceptance, empowerment, and relentless commitment to myself
I knew I needed a challenge to help me move forward with my life following the diagnosis and I immediately thought of bodybuilding. The sport is all about allowing your body to reach its full potential and accepting it as it is, which is just what I needed. Preparing for the competition involved a 16-week training program under the guidance of my trainer (even though I’m a trainer, I like working with a trainer for my own workouts), who I’d been working with for three years and trusted completely. Despite setbacks from my cancer treatment, I was determined to rebuild my strength with conservative progressive overload, thoughtful programming, and a focus on balance and symmetry in my physique.
During those 16 weeks, I strength trained an average of three times a week and did cardio twice a week. My trainer made sure to vary the exercises to keep sessions challenging and prevent plateaus. We transitioned from my typical program of doing three sets of 10 reps at a particular weight to heavier weights with four sets of eight reps on average, targeting areas of my body that needed more focus, like my lower body, which I’ve always found tough to work on. We mixed up the exercises often—for example, switching up my favourite exercise, cable rows, to bent-over rows, single-arm rows, and other variations—to ensure that my muscles were consistently being pushed in different ways.
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In addition to in-person sessions with my trainer, I also worked with a virtual coach who taught me the bodybuilding poses and created an on-stage routine for me. So, I was pretty busy with three sessions per week at the gym and online group and private coaching workshops.
Mentally, the journey was tough but incredibly rewarding. I had to overcome the self-consciousness caused by the physical changes from my cancer, such as swelling in my belly from the liver metastasis. Before I could step on stage in front of a bunch of strangers in a spray tan and minimal clothing, I first had to accept the way I looked. I’ve always been confident in myself, but this experience demanded a new level of acceptance and reinforced my belief that physical fitness and mental resilience are deeply intertwined.
In June 2024, I competed in my second-ever bodybuilding competition
I placed first in the Masters division of the Hercules Pro/Am World Natural Bodybuilding Federation in White Plains, New York.
Fitness, for me, has always been about the journey, not the outcome. It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about pushing my limits, trusting my body, and finding joy in the process. However I must admit, this accomplishment felt pretty amazing, and I’m still amazed that I did it.
My cancer has remained stable throughout the last year, and I’ve chosen to continue living with it rather than opting for aggressive treatment. I had thought about entering another competition taking place this September, but realised it would be too much along with launching my new motivational and posture platform, GET UNBENT. I’m planning to compete next in early spring 2026! Meanwhile, I’m training hard so I maintain my gains, while enjoying a respite from the pre-comp diet.
Nick Colvill
Marilynn posing on stage at the Hercules International Natural Bodybuilding Federation competition in White Plains, New York in June 2024.
These four factors were key to my strength transformation success
1. I found a trainer who I trusted completely and who played an indispensable role
Having someone guide me through a results-driven strength training program made all the difference, allowing me to feel supported throughout the journey. My trainer’s approach was not just about lifting heavier weights but also about ensuring symmetry and balance in my physique, which is so crucial for bodybuilding. We focused on areas that needed improvement, and my trainer always adapted the routine based on my needs and any limitations. This trust and consistent communication were crucial, especially during my recovery period when I had to rebuild my strength.
2. I didn’t let fear take over during the bodybuilding prep process and ever since my cancer diagnosis
I like to say, ‘Feel your fear, then go through it.’ I don’t want to say I never felt fear—I was scared to death after my diagnosis. But then I realised, there’s so much more I want to do, and bodybuilding became a way to push through my fears. It’s all about giving yourself permission to find what lights you up, then go after it.
3. I focused on the journey, not just the outcome
I gave myself permission to not let self-consciousness hold me back from pursuing this goal, regardless of what the finish line would look like. Practicing self-acceptance throughout my training (and life!) and finding support in my community throughout this process was paramount.
4. I continued to prioritise my nutrition.
As soon as I received my cancer diagnosis, I cut out alcohol and fried foods, cut way back on sugar, and committed to a clean diet. This made my bodybuilding prep smoother since I was already eating this way. I don’t view it as discipline, but as a commitment to myself and my goals. During prep, meals became simpler and more focused on fuelling my body for the rigorous training ahead.
Marilynn Larkin
Marilynn and a dance partner ballroom dancing in New York City.
Read: These are the 5 things to consider before getting a bob haircut
Related stories:
- Inside The Exercise and Diet Habits of Three Record-Breaking Female Bodybuilders
- How to strength train in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond
- Weight training for beginners: Benefits, tips, lingo + workouts
- 6 reasons why a weight loss plateau is totally normal
Cut through the noise and get practical, expert advice, home workouts, easy nutrition and more direct to your inbox. Sign up to the WOMEN’S HEALTH NEWSLETTER
August 18th 2024
Mumsnet has its flaws, but the depth of experience shared …
The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com › article › may › mumsn…
11 May 2024 — … Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. … Some of this resistance is good old-fashioned misogyny, but some is valid.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a columnist, feature writer and editor for the Guardian newspaper. In 2012 she co-founded The Vagenda, a feminist blog which was published in book form by Vintage. In 2014 Rhiannon was short-listed for a press award for young journalist of the year.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett was born in London, raised in Wales, and has lived in France and Italy. She now lives in North London with her husband and her cat, Mackerel.
She writes columns and reviews fiction for the Guardian, where she also edits part-time. She has also written for the Observer Magazine, i newspaper, Vogue, TIME, the New Statesman, Stylist, Elle, and many other publications.
Her first novel, The Tyranny of Lost Things, was about trauma and memory and was published by Sandstone Press in 2018. She also co-wrote The Vagenda (based on the successful feminist satire website of the same name) with Holly Baxter, which was published by Vintage. She is writing a second novel, Female, Nude, which is about art, class, and femininity, and is set in Greece, and her new book, The Year of the Cat, a work of creative non-fiction, is forthcoming.
PEW Literary Agency Limited, 46 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LP | +44 020 7734 4464
81-year-old woman becomes oldest person to have gender ..
Ruth Rose, a former RAF navigator who has three children with her ex-wife, began transitioning to female four years ago, aged 77. As well as undergoing hormone treatment, in July she went under the knife and became the oldest person in the UK to have gender surgery.
What age can you get gender reassignment surgery in the UK?
The age for accessing medical NHS gender identity treatment is decided on by the NHS, not the Gender Recognition Act. Surgical treatment is not available to people under 18. Cross-sex hormones are available to those aged 16 and above under guidance.
How long is the NHS waiting list for gender reassignment surgery?
Transgender health services are one of several NHS services that have recorded increasing waiting times over the years. The number of cases on the overall NHS list for consultant-led elective care, reached 7.6 million in January 2024, with some waits being more than two years, according to the most recent data .20 Mar 2024
Do all humans start as females?
During early development the gonads of the fetus remain undifferentiated; that is, all fetal genitalia are the same and are phenotypically female. After approximately 6 to 7 weeks of gestation, however, the expression of a gene on the Y chromosome induces changes that result in the development of the testes.
August 16th 2024
What parents get wrong about raising boys – iNews
What parents get wrong about raising boysinews.co.ukhttps://inews.co.uk › Lifestyle
How to raise happy, well-adjusted sons amid toxic masculinity? One author and mother of boys says she’s found something parents miss. Marisa Bates has the answer to raising boys in an age of ‘toxic masculinity.’
In her new book, BoyMum: Raising Boys in an Age of Toxic Masculinity, she spoke to dozens of young men and a wide range of experts and specialists to understand what is to be part of what she describes as a “microgeneration” – those who were entering puberty, aged around 11 or 12, just as Hollywood kick-started #MeToo
How To Break the Cycle of Toxic Masculinity
- Don’t be afraid to accept help, ask for help, and receive help from others.
- Allow other people to be their authentic selves.
- Avoid judging others or tearing them down simply for who they are.
- Pursue your own self-development.
- Work on reducing and controlling your hostile behavior.
At what point does masculinity become toxic?
Toxic masculinity is a term that has been gaining traction in the past few years. This term refers to the dominant form of masculinity wherein men use dominance, violence, and control to assert their power and superiority.
Incorporate these nine ideas for raising boys without toxic masculinity with your own, so you and your family can be part of the solution.
- 1Ditch Harmful Phrases. …
- 2Talk About LGBTQIA+ People. …
- 3Teach Respect For Women’s Bodies. …
- 4Slash The Sexual Conqueror Myth. …
- 5Call Out Wrongness. …
- 6Reframe Expectations. …
- 7Have Check-Ins.
Comment These are definitely not my views, which will follow soon. R J Cook
August 14th 2024
https://www.waterstones.com/author/robert-cook/435753/
Statistics on Male Victims of Domestic Abuse – ManKind Initiative
Over 483,000 men and 964,000 women are victims of partner abuse. (ONS 2022/23). One in seven men (13.9%) and one in four women (27%) will be a victim of domestic abuse in their lifetime (ONS figures 2022/23).
28 Mar 2024 — In a case called “the worst incidence of controlling and coercive … cases centre around male to female abuse. Charity Women’s Aid …
21 Feb 2019 — Alex Skeel, 22, recently shared his story of domestic violence in a BBC documentary Abused By My Girlfriend, where he described the horrific …
Male domestic abuse: stories of men like youMen’s Advice Line UKhttps://mensadviceline.org.uk › Male victims
Male domestic abuse: stories of men like you … Before Thomas was born, I bought a house in my own name (she told me that she had bad credit, so couldn’t go on …
24 Sept 2020 — Bradford-based charity Men Standing Up takes male domestic abuse referrals from across the country. … worse.” Ean Monk from the charity said: ” …
25 Oct 2023 — And because abuse is not widely discussed by both victims and perpetrators, many speculate intimate partner violence is probably vastly under- ..
Male victims of domestic abuse: a hidden problem that gets worse as we get older. 24/04/2019Sam Harrington-LoweAgeing, Coming of Age, Date order, Family, …
29 Apr 2013 — It is about domestic abuse and/or conflict, not domestic violence · The data does not differentiate between cases where there is one incident of …
Black people
Although completely accurate numbers are not easily available, researchers generally agree that, among ethnic minority groups in the United States, Black people are the most likely to experience domestic violence—either male-to-female or female-to-male—followed by Hispanic people and White people.25 Oct 2023
26 Feb 2021 — Domestic abuse includes non-sexual abuse, sexual assault and stalking. You can read more about the definition of domestic abuse used in the …
What countries does this apply to?
- England
- Scotland
- Wales
Article 10 protects your right to hold your own opinions
Article 10 protects your right to hold your own opinions and to express them freely without government interference.
This includes the right to express your views aloud (for example through public protest and demonstrations) or through:
- published articles, books or leaflets
- television or radio broadcasting
- works of art
- the internet and social media
The law also protects your freedom to receive information from other people by, for example, being part of an audience or reading a magazine.
Restrictions to the right to freedom of expression
Although you have freedom of expression, you also have a duty to behave responsibly and to respect other people’s rights.
Public authorities may restrict this right if they can show that their action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to:
- protect national security, territorial integrity (the borders of the state) or public safety
- prevent disorder or crime
- protect health or morals
- protect the rights and reputations of other people
- prevent the disclosure of information received in confidence
- maintain the authority and impartiality of judges
An authority may be allowed to restrict your freedom of expression if, for example, you express views that encourage racial or religious hatred.
However, the relevant public authority must show that the restriction is ‘proportionate’, in other words that it is appropriate and no more than necessary to address the issue concerned.
Using this right – example
This right is particularly important for journalists and other people working in the media.
They must be free to criticise the government and our public institutions without fear of prosecution – this is a vital feature of a democratic society.
But that doesn’t prevent the state from imposing restrictions on the media in order to protect other human rights, such as a person’s right to respect for their private life.
Example case – Observer and The Guardian v United Kingdom [1991]
The Guardian and The Observer newspapers published excerpts from Peter Wright’s book Spycatcher, which included allegations that MI5 had acted unlawfully.
The government obtained a court order preventing the newspapers from printing further material until proceedings relating to a breach of confidence had finished.
But when the book was published, The Guardian complained that the continuation of the court order infringed the right to freedom of expression.
The European Court of Human Rights said that the court order was lawful because it was in the interests of national security.
However, it also said that that wasn’t enough reason to continue the newspaper publication ban once the book had been published, because the information was no longer confidential anyway.
What the law says
This text is taken directly from the Human Rights Act.
Article 10 of the Human Rights Act: Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Article 11 protects your right to protest by holding meetings and demonstrations with other people
You also have the right to form and be part of a trade union, a political party or any another association or voluntary group. Nobody has the right to force you to join a protest, trade union, political party or another association.
Restrictions to the right to freedom of assembly and association
There are some situations where a public authority can restrict your rights to freedom of assembly and association.
This is only the case where the authority can show that its action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to:
- protect national security or public safety
- prevent disorder or crime
- protect health or morals, or
- protect the rights and freedoms of other people.
Action is ‘proportionate’ when it is appropriate and no more than necessary to address the issue concerned.
You may face a wider range of restrictions if you work for the armed forces, the police or the Civil Service.
What the law says
This text is taken directly from the Human Rights Act.
Article 11: Freedom of assembly and association
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
2. No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, of the police or of the administration of the state.
Example case
In August 2010, the English Defence League (EDL) planned a protest in Bradford. A counter demonstration by Unite Against Fascism was also planned. Some local people wanted the protest banned and there were concerns about a repeat of the violent clashes that had happened at previous EDL events. West Yorkshire Police had a duty to protect the protest unless there was clear evidence that violence would occur. They examined the human rights aspect of the situation and talked to local people, in particular the Muslim community, about the right to peaceful protest. After this explanation the community realised that the police had to allow the protest. Community groups worked with the police to persuade young people not to get involved in criminal activity on the day.
See the publication ‘Human rights, human lives: a guide to the Human Rights Act for public authorities’ for more examples and legal case studies that show how human rights work in practice.
Article 10 protects your right to hold your own opinions
Article 10 protects your right to hold your own opinions and to express them freely without government interference.
This includes the right to express your views aloud (for example through public protest and demonstrations) or through:
- published articles, books or leaflets
- television or radio broadcasting
- works of art
- the internet and social media
The law also protects your freedom to receive information from other people by, for example, being part of an audience or reading a magazine.
Restrictions to the right to freedom of expression
Although you have freedom of expression, you also have a duty to behave responsibly and to respect other people’s rights.
Public authorities may restrict this right if they can show that their action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to:
- protect national security, territorial integrity (the borders of the state) or public safety
- prevent disorder or crime
- protect health or morals
- protect the rights and reputations of other people
- prevent the disclosure of information received in confidence
- maintain the authority and impartiality of judges
An authority may be allowed to restrict your freedom of expression if, for example, you express views that encourage racial or religious hatred.
However, the relevant public authority must show that the restriction is ‘proportionate’, in other words that it is appropriate and no more than necessary to address the issue concerned.
Using this right – example
This right is particularly important for journalists and other people working in the media.
They must be free to criticise the government and our public institutions without fear of prosecution – this is a vital feature of a democratic society.
But that doesn’t prevent the state from imposing restrictions on the media in order to protect other human rights, such as a person’s right to respect for their private life.
Example case – Observer and The Guardian v United Kingdom [1991]
The Guardian and The Observer newspapers published excerpts from Peter Wright’s book Spycatcher, which included allegations that MI5 had acted unlawfully.
The government obtained a court order preventing the newspapers from printing further material until proceedings relating to a breach of confidence had finished.
But when the book was published, The Guardian complained that the continuation of the court order infringed the right to freedom of expression.
The European Court of Human Rights said that the court order was lawful because it was in the interests of national security.
However, it also said that that wasn’t enough reason to continue the newspaper publication ban once the book had been published, because the information was no longer confidential anyway.
What the law says
This text is taken directly from the Human Rights Act.
Article 10 of the Human Rights Act: Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
August 13th 2024
| The Guardian – Transgender |
| Waiting list for children’s gender care rose after opening of new specialist hubs More than 5,700 under-18s in England and Wales by end May were waiting an average of 100 weeks for first appointment … |
Hilary Cass & The Cass Report
Hilary Cass completed her early education at the City of London School for Girls. She studied at the Royal Free hospital medical school, graduating with a degree in medicine in 1982.
Dr Hilary Cass OBE is a consultant in Paediatric Disability at Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. She was President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health between 2012 and 2015, and was awarded an OBE in 2015 for services to child health.
Hilary has had two driving passions throughout her career; firstly, to develop inclusive, multi-professional models of care for children and young people, which cut across the boundaries between hospital, community, and primary care settings, and secondly to empower doctors in training to take control of their lives and the environment in which they work, because she believes that they are the best engineers of the future NHS.
After qualifying at Royal Free Hospital, London in 1982, Hilary trained as a general paediatrician, and then went on to develop her higher specialist training in the field of disability. She has held clinical consultant roles in three tertiary centres.
Over the years her clinical interests have included children with autistic spectrum disorders, children with cognitive impairment secondary to epilepsy, children with visual impairment, and management of children with multiple disabilities, with particular reference to feeding and communication problems. She runs a national service for children with Rett syndrome and has published widely in this area.
Since 2008, recognising the important interface between disability and palliative care, she started to take on a more active clinical role in this area. She established the Paediatric Palliative Care Service at Evelina London, before moving into her role as RCPCH President.
She attended the exclusive City of London School for Girls School ? The Cass Review was commissioned by NHS England in 2020, after a sharp rise in the number of patients referred to the NHS who were questioning their gender. In 2011-12 there were just under 250 referrals to the service; in 2021 – 22 the number had risen to over 5,000 referrals. The response was a “gender-affirming” approach to care, putting children on a life-altering path involving puberty blockers and hormone treatment. Vulnerable young people overwhelmed the service demanding medical interventions – despite a lack of evidence on the long-term effects.
Peter Lynas of the Evangelical Alliance writes :’ The Bible reminds us that we are made in the image of God. This is what grounds the Christian belief that all human beings must be treated with respect, love and dignity. From this flows the unique and transcendent value of every human being, the equality of every person and our understanding of inherent human rights.
…while the Cass Review obviously doesn’t contain a theological section, its conclusions are largely consistent with the biblical picture.
God created human beings in His image, both male and female. Man and woman are distinct, possessing equal value, made to glorify Him and together reflect His image. The human body, and therefore biological sex, is an intrinsic part of human identity. Cross-gender identification is problematic because it distorts the creational order of male and female.
A Christian Response to Cass
So, here are some of the key conclusions of the Cass Review that Christians should care about. The report highlights the “wholly inadequate” evidence for the medical pathway and instead recommends more holistic treatment. It highlights concerns around social transitioning – which means treating a child as their preferred gender in terms of name, pronouns and clothing choices. Dr Cass says that young children should have therapy before they are allowed to socially transition. In fact, the report says under-25s should not be rushed into changing gender, but should receive “unhurried, holistic, therapeutic support.” These “life-changing” decisions must be properly considered in adulthood as the report notes that brain maturation continues into the mid-20s.
Childhood trauma, neglect and abuse feature heavly in the cohort of patients seeking gender changes, the report shows. Puberty blockers and hormone drugs should not be given until a child is at least 18, and there was no evidence the drugs ‘buy time to think’ or ‘reduce suicide risk’. The report also looks at why so many younger females are wanting to change gender and highlights an anxious, distressed and digital generation who consume more social media, are exposed to more online porn, and have lower self-esteem and more body hang-ups – particularly young women and girls. This correlates with Jonathan Haidt’s research and his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.’
Comment I think it is amusing when religious fanatics quote science, in their defence. But if we subsitute the word Nature for God, then we should see sense in what Lynas is saying. The difficulty in dealing with the problem of little boys wanting to be little girls or vice versa, is how can one challenge how vested intersts, such as feminism and resultant marginalising and blaming men for everything deemed bad. TERF feminists hate transsexuals. But blaming men, notably white men because feminists see black men as fellow victims, is just another arrogant attack on nature – or God.
Religous extremism flourishes in a society where billionaires like J K Rowling espouse that transsexuals are all rapists.That is the sort of hate speech that motivated young Brianna Ghey’s weird sick sadistic killers. Dr Hilary Cass is from a very privileged background and should not be allowed the last word on this subject when it comes to the psychology. The psychology of one parent families and deprivation is the big issue here.
The solutions are more complex than Cass condemining the medication. Young western people are dying of all sorts of drugs, including the anti psychotics that turn them into zombies and suicide cases. Religion has no place in this world. That includes Islam, because Marx was quite correct calling religion the opium of the masses. I say my prayers every day and have done so since childhood. It is an animal instinct. Talking to God makes many of us feel less alone when we are alone. But I would never be an acolyte of the mainstream churches because they are just as much in the business of social control as children’s gender identity clinics. Religions are, including Islam, key operators in the world of politics, with money in charge of their operations. They have little, if anything to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
R J Cook
Cass Review: Gender care report author attacks ‘misinformation’
- Published
- 20 April
By Thomas Mackintosh
BBC News
The author of the landmark Cass review into gender identity services for young people says she is “very angry” about “misinformation” spread about her work.
Dr Hilary Cass’s review this month found “remarkably weak” evidence on treatments such as puberty blockers.
The physician told the BBC some claims spread online about her evidence were “completely incorrect”.
She said adults who “deliberately spread misinformation” put young people at risk, which was “unforgivable”.
The Cass report, external, published on 10 April, looked at gender identity services for under-18s in NHS England.
It found gender medicine to be operating on “shaky foundations, external” when it came to the evidence for medical treatment like prescribing hormones to pause puberty or to transition to the opposite sex.
It said: “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”
https://emp.bbc.co.uk/emp/SMPj/2.53.9/iframe.htmlMedia caption,
Watch: Dr Hilary Cass discussed gender care for children after her review was published
Speaking to the BBC’s More or Less: Behind the Stats podcast, Dr Cass was asked about particular claims spread online about her review – one that “98% of the evidence” was ignored or dismissed by her, and one that she would only include gold-standard “double-blind randomised control” trials in the review.
She said the 98% claim was “completely incorrect”.
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A total of 103 scientific papers were analysed by her review, with 2% considered high quality, and 98% not.
“There were quite a number of studies that were considered to be moderate quality, and those were all included in the analysis,” she said.
“So nearly 60% of the studies were actually included in what’s called the synthesis.”
And on the “double-blind” claim – where patients are randomly assigned to a treatment or placebo group, getting either medicine or nothing – she said “obviously” young people could not be blinded as to whether or not they were on puberty blockers or hormones because “it rapidly becomes obvious to them”.
“But that of itself is not an issue because there are many other areas where that would apply,” she said.
“If you were doing a trial, say, of acupuncture, people would know exactly what treatment that they were getting.”
August 9th 2024
Britain’s oldest transgender person: ‘I became a woman at 81’
Friday 17 August at 3:25pm
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.657.0_en.html?gdpr=1#goog_672612661
This week, charity Age UK announced they are offering advice on gender change, to support the growing number of over-60s seeking the operation. This announcement has been applauded by 85-year-old gran Ruth Rose, who underwent gender reassignment surgery herself aged 81 – making her one of Britain’s oldest transgender people.
Born James, Ruth knew she wanted to be female since she was nine years old. Unable to live the life she yearned for, she married a woman and had three children. But, in the end, Ruth had to reveal her true self, and four years ago finally underwent the surgery she says made her achieve total acceptance as a female.
Ruth joins us with her story.
Invited to the freak show – by R J Cook
Comment More to come on this issue, including how two vested interest police forces conspired to present me as clinically insane, corrupted my medical care with triage input to my GP who duly forwarded it to the police who have had major problems recognising my status as a woman. Thames Valley Police even used fabricated evidence to arrest and detain me in February 2018 on the basis that I had sent senior officers evidence of myself working for my eldest son and his criminal associates as a ‘gay escort’ in a home based brothel.
My home was raided by 7 Thames Valley Police Officers to search my home, confiscating vital property, including mobile phones , computers, and documents in the hope of finding evidence of as many offences as possible to add to my already substantial criminal record ( sic ). They were led by the promising then young Acting CID Constable Bellamy who eventually took me to Crown Court in September 2018, for leaving upsetting progressively rude messages on his phone because he would not update me on his ‘investigations’ ( sic ).
All of this was misrepresented to the GIC, via my GP Dr R Kamble forwarding correspondence, as a criminal conviction when in fact the female judge said : “I listened to your messages in the order they were made. You started with a polite request for information. Increasingly frustrated, you ended up simply doing what the Ameriacans call venting.”
Reverting to her magistrates powers, she gave me a six month conditional discharge. However, in 2021, I discovered that the matter was still on record and presented as a serious criminal conviction for malicious communication and harassment.
This was all fed to the Gender Identity as fact for the purposes of character assassination and avoiding facing legal action. It is how Andrew Malkinson did 17 years in jail for a rape he did not commit and for which the only evidence against him was a CPS conspiracy of lies.
That is what the police do to protect themselves. This gross misconduct toward me led to a psychiatric assessment that I am a paranoid schizophrenic, bi polar, alcoholic unfit for gender reassignment surgery unless I accepted powerful anti psychotic drugs. As I pointed out at the time, if I had taken those drugs, then I would not have known whether I was a mouse or a monkey, let alone a woman.
Directed to intervene by the London Gender Identity Clinic, in the run up to my gender reassignment surgery, the psychiatrist Dr Christopher Ramsay from Aylesbury’s Whiteleaf Centre made a surprise one hour visit 15 minutes after I had returned from a long overnight HGV shift on March 19th 2019. Working at the GIC’s behest, Ramsay was well briefed, going through the motions and acting on police input. Bearing in mind it was winter time and I had been driving for hundreds of miles and handballing freight, Ramsay used my talking too fast to get rid of him, as pressured speech and a sure sign of schizophrenia. He was accompanied by a large African male mental health nurse in case I got ‘uppity’ and a young male student psychiatrist who had been invited to the freak show.
Ramsay lied on subsequent record, that I had refused a second assessment. He concluded that I am a paranoid schizophrenic, delusional, bi polar long term alcoholic but ‘didn’t need hospital yet.’ Among other things, he informed my GP that if I saw all of the police and medical records on me, then I would be very upset. He added that I was more likely to die by misadventure than suicide.
That is life in police state Britain, a progressively authoritarian kingdom that makes Russia look like wonderland when they want it to be more like the U.K and what its elite allies across the western world require. The recent English so called far right riots are being blamed on Russia and used as an excuse for more and stronger policing. The causes of such social unrest must never be considered. Social media companies must face tougher laws with serious consequences for non compliance.
Within 3 days of his March 19th 2019 visit, Ramsay had uploaded a report to my NHS Records. Mental Health judgements are profound. Once a person has been labelled there is always public doubt and even fear. As I have discovered, this highly favoured police scenario when all else fails, can be very hard if not impossible to escape.
Because of this, my driving licence, vital to what was then a 12 year period as a commercial driver, was invalidated, getting me fired, costing me well over £`100,000 in net lost income to date and pushing me ever closer to bankruptcy.
The system, with its key operatives, puts its’ collective and careers first. Whistle blowers are damned. Ultimately, ordinary people, at the bottom of the social herarchy, do not matter. That is why there are so many miscarriages of justice and NHS failures. The police, who apart from computers, have faced no serious effective reform since they were created in the Victorian age, starting with Peel’s 1829 Metropolitan Police Act. This was primarily to protect the rich, which is what they exist and are expanding for now.
That second psychiatric assessment took me four years of internet posts and complaints, with more serious trouble from the police, to achieve. When at last it came in March 2024, I faced a more than competent female psychiatrist, with time, patience and skill to consider the evidence over time – as required by law.
The current legal sitiation and related work is restricting my time for writing editorial here. However, I hope to return to the sites main pages, and the wider world, shortly. At the moment, I have a 15,000 word legal document to complete.
on August 6th 2024. Image Appledene Photographics.
R J Cook
August 5th 2024
World’s biggest iceberg spins in ocean trap
Jonathan Amos and Erwan Rivault
BBC News
- Published4 August 2024
Something remarkable has happened to A23a, the world’s biggest iceberg.
For months now it has been spinning on the spot just north of Antarctica when really it should be racing along with Earth’s most powerful ocean current.
Scientists say the frozen block, which is more than twice the size of Greater London, has been captured on top of a huge rotating cylinder of water.
It’s a phenomenon oceanographers call a Taylor Column – and it’s possible A23a might not escape its jailer for years.
“Usually you think of icebergs as being transient things; they fragment and melt away. But not this one,” observed polar expert Prof Mark Brandon.
“A23a is the iceberg that just refuses to die,” the Open University researcher told BBC News.
The berg’s longevity is well documented. It broke free from the Antarctic coastline way back in 1986, but then almost immediately got stuck in the bottom-muds of the Weddell Sea.
For three decades it was a static “ice island”. It didn’t budge. It wasn’t until 2020 that it re-floated and started to drift again, slowly at first, before then charging north towards warmer air and waters.
In early April this year, A23a stepped into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) – a juggernaut that moves a hundred times as much water around the globe as all Earth’s rivers combined.
This was meant to put boosters on the near-trillion-tonne berg, rifling it up into the South Atlantic and certain oblivion.
Instead, A23a went precisely nowhere. It remains in place just north of South Orkney Islands, turning in an anti-clockwise direction by about 15 degrees a day. And as long as it does this, its decay and eventual demise will be delayed.
- Scientists probe the secrets of mega icebergs
- Published17 April
- A23a: Tracking the world’s biggest iceberg
- Oceans’ extreme depths measured in precise detail
- Published11 May 2021
A23a has not grounded again; there is at least a thousand metres of water between its underside and the seafloor.
It’s been stopped in its tracks by a type of vortex first described in the 1920s by a brilliant physicist, Sir G.I. (Geoffrey Ingram) Taylor, external.
The Cambridge academic was a pioneer in the field of fluid dynamics, and was even brought into the Manhattan Project to model the likely stability of the world’s first atomic bomb test.
Prof Taylor showed how a current that meets an obstruction on the seafloor can – under the right circumstances – separate into two distinct flows, generating a full-depth mass of rotating water between them.
In this instance, the obstruction is a 100km-wide bump on the ocean bottom known as Pirie Bank. The vortex sits on top of the bank, and for now A23a is its prisoner.
“The ocean is full of surprises, and this dynamical feature is one of the cutest you’ll ever see,” said Prof Mike Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey.
“Taylor Columns can also form in the air; you see them in the movement of clouds above mountains. They can be just a few centimetres across in an experimental laboratory tank or absolutely enormous as in this case where the column has a giant iceberg slap-bang in the middle of it.”
How long might A23a continue to perform its spinning-top routine?
Who knows, but when Prof Meredith placed a scientific buoy in a Taylor Column above another bump to the east of Pirie Bank, the floating instrument was still rotating in place four years later, external.
A23a is a perfect illustration once again of the importance of understanding the shape of the seafloor.
Submarine mountains, canyons and slopes have a profound influence on the direction and mixing of waters, and on the distribution of the nutrients that drive biological activity in the ocean.
And this influence extends also to the climate system: it’s the mass movement of water that helps disperse heat energy around the globe.
A23a’s behaviour can be explained because the ocean bottom just north of South Orkney is reasonably well surveyed.
That’s not the case for much of the rest of the world.
Currently, only a quarter of Earth’s seafloor has been mapped, external to the best modern standard.
An earlier version of this story contained an illustrative map of the English Channel containing an iceberg that was slightly over-sized. This has now been amended.
You’re Allowed to Have Dark Moods
6 minute read
Ideas
August 1, 2024 7:00 AM EDT
Alessandri is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s first bilingual university. Her first book, Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves through Dark Moods (Princeton), is out now in paperback
In the years leading up to my father’s death, he suffered. I know this because he didn’t hide it. I witnessed one of his worst days in the hospital one week after suffering a stroke. His potassium level dropped dangerously low, and the doctor decided to administer it intravenously through his forearm. I scanned my phone for information and learned that the arm is a nasty place to inject potassium. I found grown men online who reported having had to stop their infusion due to stinging pain in their arm. When the drip started, my father cried out ¡No me abusen! (“Don’t abuse me!”) ¡Sean buenas conmigo! (“Be good to me!”) ¡Por favor! (“Please!”). Hearing his cries made me want to vomit, and he didn’t stop until the drip finished. In his old age, my father lived by the rule “if it hurts, tell someone about it.”
In contrast, when my mother was in the early stages of her death just three months after my father passed, her plan was to stifle her cries. Like a lot of people, my mom was raised on the belief that you shouldn’t burden people with your pain, and she understood full well that hearing her in physical agony would break my heart. Despite her resolve to shield me from her pain, one evening, as the caregiver was adjusting her body, my mom let out a cry. Immediately, she turned to me and said “I’m ok.” She had not been able to stifle that one, yet her first thought went to soothing me. My mother’s selfless act brought a knot to my throat, but it didn’t surprise me.
Many of us were raised on the belief that telling people about your pain puts a burden on them, so we end up telling everyone we’re fine when we’re dying inside. I used to think that masking your pain was noble; existentialist philosophy taught me otherwise.
Read more: Let’s Talk About Our Grief
Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wasn’t about to hide his suffering for the comfort of others. He wrote: “Whenever I have felt a pain I have shouted, and I have done it publicly.” Unamuno intended for his public cries to “start the grieving chords of others’ hearts playing.” Human hearts are like stringed instruments, he reasoned, and they can experience sympathetic resonance if they huddle close enough together. One bleeding heart can set off an entire symphony of compassion. We see it happen on deathbeds: When the power of positive thinking finally surrenders to breathing machines and ice chips, shared suffering can draw hearts into a sad embrace. When Unamuno’s six-year-old son died of meningitis, his grief was a catalyst for his fellow Spaniards to feel not sympathy but empathy, for him and each other. Unamuno told his readers that, although bodies use joy for connection, souls bond in sadness. Deep connection awaits us all, but it requires letting go of the idea that there is virtue in pretending we’re ok when we’re not.
Anyone experiencing a dark mood is faced with a choice: hide it from your loved ones or share it with them. If, like my mother, you believe that you shouldn’t announce your pain because it makes people feel helpless or burdened, then you’ll continue to hide your darkest moods from the people you hold dear. But if Unamuno was right that announcing your pain is a way of inviting people in, then my mother’s move to shield me from agony also kept me locked out of her sacred heart, whereas my father’s cries kept his heart open to me.
Of course, inviting a person to compassionately witness your dark moods is risky. In face, a student of mine at the University of Texas Rio Grande where I teach tested Unamuno’s theory. In an effort to forge deeper connections, she made herself vulnerable to the world, telling multiple people about her struggles. It did not go well, in part because the walls of U.S. society are still plastered with #nobaddays and #goodvibesonly. Under this regime, friends and loved ones get confused into thinking they’re meant to be cheerleaders, replacing our negativity with their positivity. Cheerleaders are those sweet people in our lives who remind us that we’re beautiful and strong when we’re feeling ugly or weak. “Don’t say that!” they counter at the first sign of self-doubt. “You’re going to get that job!” Cheerleaders feel responsible for making us feel better, which means that they perceive our dark moods as a problem, sometimes a puzzle.
Cheerleading often fails, but not because sufferers are addicted to negativity. When we hear “You got this!” instead of “I’ve been there” after we’ve disclosed something difficult, we can be left feeling lonely and misunderstood on top of sad or anxious. A nasty run-in with the bright side can give us a new reason for masking, not because we don’t want to burden our friends but because we don’t want them to pummel us with affirmations. We didn’t need to hear that it’s the company’s loss for not hiring us or that we’ll get the next one. In telling the truth, we were hoping that our people could remember what insecurity feels like and sit there with us, not stick their fingers in their ears and will our pain away.
What if humans are not responsible for making each other feel better? If everyone could agree that pain is inevitable and we are largely impotent against life’s losses, then fewer people might feel compelled to become cheerleaders. They could become confidantes instead. A confidante is the person we turn to when no one else gets it. They stay present when we tell the truth instead of trying to unlock our confidence. Without the pressure to be enthusiastic or offer words of wisdom, confidantes recognize that what we really need to know is that we are loveable even in our darkest mood, and they show us by showing up.
It’s not easy to be emotionally honest in a world that teaches its young to “be like a proton: always positive.” But the potential payoff of sharing dark moods with confidantes is huge: genuine connection, co-feeling, compassion, and a real sense that we are not the only one forging a path in this beautiful and terrifying world.
https://time.com/7006184/embracing-dark-moods-essay/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb
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