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Eliot Wilson's avatar

I remember sitting in the Public Bill Office in the House of Commons listening to the Second Reading debate on the Equality Bill and having to persuade myself that I had indeed heard the Rt Hon Lady tell the House: “We have also produced an easy-read version of the Bill, which is especially for people with learning difficulties, but I find it really useful myself.”

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Gareth Roberts's avatar

Ha, magnificent!

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Ollie Parks's avatar

Gems:

"[T]he gullible posh do-gooder idiot . . ."

"Just the tip goes in - and hey bingo, pretty soon afterwards you’re lying spreadeagled like Vitruvian Man, being royally dry-rogered."

I want to think that no matter how many libraries' worth of text AI ingests, it will never be able to equal this unique style of British political prose.

Where genderists in the UK out-big-brothered zer American counterparts was the codification of the six (!) prohibited acts including four varieties of discrimination. The ACLU would kill to be able to feed American gender critics into the maw of the UK's gender discrimination tribunal.

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Gareth Roberts's avatar

Thank you!

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Roger That's avatar

"Brent, Law, and Centre - three words grim enough on their own, but positively deadly coming one after the other". I don't know why this is very funny, but it is.

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Paul Cassidy's avatar

I sincerely hope this harridan is alive to see repeal or both the Human Rights Act and the beyond ludicrous Gender Recognition Act.

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steven lightfoot's avatar

Its rather rich that the Equality Act really some animals more equal that others.

We have the same problem in Canada.

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Elizabeth's avatar

Enjoyed that read immensely. As it happens, in 2013, Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, a Trade Union lawyer, removed the definition of women as adult females from the our Sex Discrimination Act to allow gender feelings to take precedence. We’re still dealing with the fallout from ‘What is a woman?’

What do you call three lawyers at the bottom of the Harbour? A good start.

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Low Status Opinions's avatar

Wonderful start to the series. She’s so awful. Weirdly like so many of these people, (especially the women, but sexism alert!) she looks exactly like her personality. Like she’s been cast in her role from an old Spotlight photo. See also Ursula Van der Lyen, Yvette Cooper, Anneliese Dodds…

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Gareth Roberts's avatar

Thank you. Yes - I think we are often prisoners of our faces.

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Petethetrucker's avatar

My mother wanted me to marry a girl, any girl, who looked and behaved like HH. I emigrated.

Ghastly woman. I really try as a person to be well mannered, polite, well behaved and so on. Everywhere.

On meeting women like HH, however, I feel intense anger, disgust, scathing contempt, visceral dislike. I want to annoy her, fart, behave badly.

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John Dunne's avatar

Ghastly is exactly word I would use to describe her. A ludicrously privileged spoilt brat with a limitless supply of arrogance and zero self awareness. She epitomises what is so awful about the British establishment class and the fact they get to have so much influence over our lives.

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WonderWalker's avatar

Thanks for not putting this sparkling writing behind a paywall. I think you've struck a rich seem with this series.

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ashwood's avatar

An excellent opening salvo. I'm a fearful oik I know but the Harriet Harperson joke has always made me laugh.

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Brendon Chase's avatar

That’s going to be the smug, insufferable A.C. Grayling, isn’t it? Go for him!

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Brendon Chase's avatar

Or Philip Pullman… 😂. Still think you should do Grayling, though.

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Gareth Roberts's avatar

Patience!

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Brendon Chase's avatar

👍🙏

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Mark Ramsden's avatar

Very good. Looking forward to the next one.

My wife saw Lord Longford on a train just outside Etchingham, wearing a well tailored suit with plimsolls. He was reading the bible with a magnifying glass hung around his neck with string. His hair looked like the Book of Revelation.

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Andrew Phillips's avatar

Too generous, but a good start

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Anne T's avatar

Harman, from the House of Lords, has supported a bill where the pro-assisted suicide committee are now voting down every single amendment designed to protect members of protected characteristic groups from coercion, gaslighting and a wide range of attitudinal biases. She supports a law which will pressurise people who are less robust than she is, to give up on life. Women’s rights organisations, including those concerned about VAWG and 340 disability organisations, have raised concerns about a bill which like her E Act ‘leaves the back door open’ for a range of deadly consequences. In the end, all that high-minded concern for vulnerable or disadvantaged groups of people turns out to be bullshit.

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Trevor Baxendale's avatar

Superb.

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Dee Harris's avatar

"But you see, the rules were followed. The processes were complied with. It was procedure."

Sounds like TTK. Unless it's a white conservative leaning mother with a husband dying from cancer who tweeted intemperent stuff about a child murderer in Southport. In which case it's OK to shout 'far right bigot' and tell the judges to bang her up for three years and throw away the key.

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Anne T's avatar

Brilliant!

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Anne T's avatar

I mean your analysis of the Equality Act and how it makes everyone anxious and doesn’t really help any of us who are supposed to qualify for extra consideration.

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