Notices by Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖ (christineburns@mastodon.green)

A Guide On How To Write A Letter To Parliament - TransLucent

As a colleague of Stephen Whittle for fifteen years, and having helped utilise the approach he describes here (along with my other key colleague Claire McNab) I thoroughly endorse the step-by-step advice he lays out here for really getting key messages across to your MP.

Writing physical letters may seem awfully retro these days but they’re vital.

https://translucent.org.uk/a-guide-to-how-to-write-a-letter-to-parliament/

Since this is Trans History Week and trans people desperately need people to understand and ‘know’ us right now, please buy yourself a copy of my book ‘Trans Britain’, conceived, compiled and produced BEFORE the world went absolutely mad against us. It tells the history of half a century of slow, careful progress before we became a populist political football. Get it wherever you prefer to buy your books. Hive is a great alternative to Amazon. https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Ms-Christine-Burns/Trans-Britain--Our-Journey-from-the-Shadows/23931110

@Natasha_Jay God, the amount of my earlier life that was used up getting the curly cable on the telephone to lie ‘just so’ around the base. I thought people who overstretched the curly cable were a special sort of evil.

Anti-Trans Activist Hadley Freeman Thinks UK Court Win Means People Have To Be Her Friend

"After a UK Supreme Court ruling, Hadley Freeman celebrated by lamenting the friendships she’s lost over her views. Her side may have won the ruling, but it won't improve her social life."

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/anti-trans-activist-hadley-freeman

@goatsarah Hell would have had to have a total breakdown of the HVAC

@goatsarah God no! We've all got arthritis in our figurative playing fingers. Getting back together would be as sad as seeing Mick Jagger still strutting the boards. The stage is open for tribute acts so long as they're the quality of The Analogues 😀

Guardian: "Rights can be lost in a second -- Older trans people reveal their fears after supreme court ruling"

Apparently Stephen Whittle and I are in today's print edition of the Guardian but it won't be online until tomorrow as they're short of Sunday content now the Observer has gone.

An hour's coverage of the sheer variety of well made attractive Chinese EVs for low-low prices at the Shanghai Motor Show and it's clear both European and US manufacturers are far behind. If erecting tariff barriers is all we've got we are toast.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0zq-qjHayxg&si=HYQ6pzkBTI53Eqy4

..what Parliament meant or didn't mean in constructing the legislation as finally amended and passed. It's not like the game of prognosticating on what passages of the Bible mean and don't mean. And the real giveaway is that nowhere in the case law of tribunals applying the provisions had anyone found a problem with sex and gender in the EA prior to the sudden emergence of a lobby made of freshly-minted one-woman pressure groups and sympathetic newspaper columnists that sprang into being in 2017

One thing that beats me about the Supreme Court's shenanigans is this. The Equality Act is just fifteen years old. I still have my copy of the massive 'Discrimination Law Review' report that constitutes the policy starting point for every aspect of it. The people who drafted it are still alive. Many of those who voted for it are still in Parliament. The extensive debates and committee meetings are all in Hansard. The Bill Managers can be interviewed. So why did the SC resort to 'guessing'..

A number of news outlets are reporting the line that the Supreme Court decision may mean that trans women may be excluded from single sex spaces IF PROPORTIONATE but I've not seen a single one explain that (a) that's not the thing that's changed (the change is that it could be applied to people who have GRCs) but, more importantly, they're not explaining that "proportionate" has a specific meaning in law. It means you have to have a legitimate reason and it can't be a blanket exclusion...

Crucially, a decision to exclude must be made on a case by case basis. Failure to explain that seems to be an outrageous failure of journalistic responsibility as it will inevitably lead to people and organisations thinking they have carte blanche and acting accordingly.

Case in point, this piece by the the BBC, which reads like it was written by an inexperienced intern...

Trans people will feel anxious over gender ruling - Swinney https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74nx8lk82vo

@transactualuk Charing Cross has always taken on people who wanted to detransition. The idea it needs to be something separately constituted is absurd. You are right to be concerned about where this can lead.

Tesla set to report drop in Q1 deliveries on weak demand, Musk backlash - Reuters

https://stocks.apple.com/AnJ-HnVxPQxaRDd0Fk0T5vw

Britain is getting SO close to generating electricity without fossil fuels today -- in fact gas went down to just 1.6 GW this morning whilst I was enjoying an 80 mile round trip to Chester on electricity costing MINUS 50 pence. I suspect wind is getting constrained (paid to turn down its output) as the system managers aren't yet ready to let the system run on just wind, solar, hydro and a bit of nuclear. https://grid.iamkate.com

Y'know I'm no investment wizard but I can't help suspecting someone is making a helluva lot of profit this week if they bailed on Tesla stock before the big fall and bought back in at the low point, which was reached mere days ago. As data continues to show plummeting sales of the cars themselves, the big investors in the overvalued company seem to be defying gravity to drive the price back up. A reminder that stock markets are gambling dens based on 'feels' and chicanery, not real value.

@KimSJ I'm not sure. Normal speculation would occur when people judge the stock has gone as low as it ought and that would push the price up. But, at some time, reality has got to bite. I see the other tech stocks have been rebounding too -- Apple, Amazon, etc..

@KimSJ It had not escaped my notice that a number of vapourware stories had 'leaked' out about the taxi, new battery tech, etc.. But I'm not sure people are falling for that schtick in the same numbers they used to.