The GutterView Transcripts

VICKI COUCHMAN Girl Guide leaders expelled for questioning trans policy Andrew Gilligan Sunday September 23 2018, 12.01am, The Sunday Times Two Guide leaders who had raised safeguarding concerns about the organisation’s transgender policy have been expelled and had their units closed down. Dozens of children face disappointment because there is no one else to run the units. The expelled leaders say they will take legal action against Girlguiding if their removals are upheld. Helen Watts, one of 12 leaders who signed a letter to The Sunday Times in April asking for a review of the policy, was told on Friday that her membership was being terminated after more than 15 years with the Guides. At least one other signatory, based in the northwest of England, was expelled. Documents seen by The Sunday Times suggest disciplinary investigations have been launched against at least five Guide leaders. Watts, the leader of a Rainbows unit for girls aged 5 to 7 in Ealing, west London, said: “I am ve

  Police interview charity chief Nicola Murray after tweet ending referrals to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre Nicola Murray, left, was visited by officers in November after her message about the crisis centre, run by Mridul Wadhwa Mike Wade Saturday January 29 2022, 12.01am, The Times The founder of a charity supporting women who have suffered domestic violence has been interviewed by police after she was reported for hate crime after stressing its female-only services. Nicola Murray was left “shocked and panicky” when detectives arrived at her door after an online announcement by Brodie’s Trust that it would no longer refer women to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC). Talking to the officers, Murray, from Stanley, near Perth, was taken aback when she said they told her: “We need to speak to you to ascertain what your thinking was behind making your statement.” Murray, 43, founded Brodie’s Trust in 2018 to support women from all over the world “who’ve suffered pregnancy loss through dom

The Independent’s double standards for  J.K. Rowling 14 December 2021, 1:45pm It's fair to say that J.K. Rowling's latest  intervention  has put the cat amongst the pigeons. The Harry Potter author criticised Police Scotland's new policy for trans suspects after the force confirmed it will  record rapes by offenders with a penis  as carried out by a woman if they identify as female, regardless of whether they have legally changed gender. Rowling's implicit criticism of this move – riffing on Orwell that: 'War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman' – has sparked a terrific backlash, with much of it seeming to come from angry, pompous middle-aged men. But leaving aside the Jolyons of this world, the most extraordinary attack seems to have come from the  Independent  whose editorial standards are  well known  to Mr S. The defunct newspaper has run a comment piece from Noah Berlatsky, under the  headline

  STUART WAITON Transgender fetish is a truly shameful modern invention Stuart Waiton Monday November 27 2017, 12.01am, The Times I f it wasn’t already obvious that society has lost the plot it has become so — the Scottish government is proposing to allow 12-year-old children to change their gender. Self-professed progressives who run many of our institutions think that they are being radical and enlightened by cheering on this infantile development. They couldn’t be more wrong. In the late Seventies the brilliant American historian Christopher Lasch wrote the bestselling book  The Culture of Narcissism . He described a society that was losing its moorings. Cut adrift from religion and then politics, he prophetically argued, the trend is for people to turn inwards to find a sense of meaning. Fast forward 40 years and we find an ever-fragmenting world of identities in which the cult of  health and wellbeing sits comfortably with our vain attempts to express our selves with piercings or