Mick Hartley

Blog

  • Keeping the receipts

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    Full list at this Glinner substack from May 2022.

  • Man against calf

    Arthur Rothstein, September 1939. "Calf-scramble. Central Iowa Fair, Marshalltown, Iowa."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration]

  • Sexist stereotyping

    Blimey. A Labour MP, no less.

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  • Like trying to feed a shark broccoli

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  • The ruling is clear

    as, but instead was…

    — Julie Bindel (@bindelj) April 22, 2025

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    …"but instead was monstered by Labour blue-fringes, and Starmer did NOTHING to defend or protect her."

  • One of the greatest failures in the history of campaigning

    More on the weekend's trans protests, from Sarah Ditum in the Times:

    By distorting reality to pretend that trans women (males) are oppressed by natal women (females), the trans movement has laundered beliefs and language that in any other context would be instantly tagged as woman-hating. “Suck my dick”, as seen on placards at the weekend, is a progressive slogan so long as you claim to identify as a woman.

    In terms of achieving its political objectives, the trans rights movement is one of the greatest failures in the history of campaigning. Not only did its push for GRA reform collapse but its insistence on forcing an extreme interpretation of the Equality Act ultimately led to its defeat in the Supreme Court. And the more the public has been exposed to the reality of the trans movement, the more the public has disapproved.

    But I suspect that political objectives were never the point for many adherents. Instead, the attraction of the movement was, precisely, the opportunity for men to tear down those uppity women with the temerity to say “no”. Meanwhile, cowardly women embraced it as a signal that they were not like those nasty hags: if you join in with the hate, maybe it won’t be aimed at you.

  • Swastikas in Clissold Park

    Horrifying. This is near me. I know this playground. 

    Half a dozen swastikas were sprayed across a children’s playground in Hackney, north London, on Sunday.

    The Nazi-era symbols were daubed on rocks in the playground at Clissold Park in Stoke Newington, just a stone’s throw from two local synagogues – Adath Yisroel Synagogue and Kehillah North London, both of which border the park.

  • Ill-informed challenges to Supreme Court decision

    an style=”font-size: 11pt”>Criticising a Supreme Court judgment is not a novel activity, and citizens should be involved in debate about law reform. But lawyers, politicians and journalists must be mindful that their voices carry weight. It is irresponsible to make ill-informed or lazy challenges to the carefully reasoned decision of the country’s most exceptional legal brains.

    The Supreme Court has decided what parliament intended by following established rules of statutory interpretation, which are explained in the judgment. What civil servants or politicians think they remember about what was said or intended during the drafting and passage of the Equality Act is entirely irrelevant to this exercise.

    But of course that hasn't stopped the partisan takes. 

    Undermining the legitimacy of the judgment on such misconceived grounds helps nobody, and is all the more regrettable against the backdrop of misinformation that has been disseminated about the law relating to sex and gender from ostensibly trustworthy sources over many years.

    The Equality and Human Rights Commission is working at pace to produce clear, authoritative guidance. Employers, service providers, sporting bodies and other duty-bearers under the Equality Act should urgently review their policies and practices, using reliable specialist advice that does not emanate solely from interested lobby groups. What is needed is constructive dialogue about how the law can work for everybody, based on a shared and accurate understanding of the law as it is, rather than the law as activists would prefer it to be.

    In other words – this is the law: deal with it.

  • Another Taliban

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  • Easter message

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    Well, that's the next pope sorted.

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