A former civil servant who played a key role in drafting the Equality Act has said the supreme court’s ruling about the legal definition of a woman contradicted the act’s original intentions.
Melanie Field, who oversaw its drafting and passage through Westminster in 2010, said the legislation was meant to give transgender people with gender recognition certificates (GRCs) the same legal status as biological men or women.
She said that treating trans women with GRCs as women in relation to sex discrimination protections was “the clear premise” of the policy and legal instructions to the officials who drafted the bill.
The aim, purpose and detail of an Act is what Parliament says it is, not what the civil service say.
Well, that’s assuming that we don’t make that rather Deep State assumption that the civil service really are the people who should say….
Don’t worry Melanie happens to us all.
On having thought about this over the past couple of days, I reckon that she is right and the judges are wrong.
Politicians vote on the printed bill , with amendments agreed in debates and committee. What they interpret the bill to say is immaterial.
Which makes this even more funny.
If Melanie Field’s account of the legislation’s aim is accurate, then she and her team drafting the law made a cis-dog’s dinner of the task, given that the supreme court has ruled to overturn that interpretation.
TMB
Considering the stable from which this Act emerged, that is very likely.
These people work on the assumption that Trannies are women , which is where all this gender certificate and birth certificate stuff comes from. They really do think that this rather unpleasant operation and a bit of paper makes them a woman.
Chances are that things would never have come to his pass, if activists hadn’t kept on pushing the boundaries and moronic politicians hadn’t acquiesced all the time.
The supreme court’s 88-page judgment has upended two decades of policymaking on trans rights, with police forces, hospitals and other public agencies rapidly rewriting their approaches to trans inclusion.
Policymaking >> the law is another indication of the deep state.
@Otto
Politicians vote on the printed bill , with amendments agreed in debates and committee. What they interpret the bill to say is immaterial.
I may be missing your point, but judges can and do read parliamentary debates (and other stuff eg press interviews) in order to construe the meanings of statutes by listening to what proponents said in plainer language they wanted to achieve. The whole point of going to the SC is to get a final interpretation of that meaning because even with the black and white of the statutory text and all the other stuff lawyers pore over in the hunt for meaning they couldn’t agree at first instance or in the Court of Appeal.
By the way, this is an amazing example from the US of departmental corruption, and helps to explain the desperation of the fight back against DOGE. The Deep State funds itself via this sort of bullshit, either directly or as a means of creating defenders, supporters, and foot soldiers.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fmcs-slush-fund-abolished-by-trump?topStoryPosition=undefined
Britain would be a vastly better place if the 10,000* best-paid unelected public sector employees were dragged out into the street and humanely fed to the lions.
* let’s not get bogged down in the actual numbers. And I know we need more lions.
Gender recognition certificates were one of the more barking ideas of the last(?) government. Up with passing a law against gravity.
Of course we have a Deep State. This is just another name for the Ruling Class.
All societies have a ruling class. Feudal societies have an aristocracy. Communist societies have the Party. Representative democracies have ephemeral elected politicians but they’re a distraction from the real ruling class: the civil service (the permanent government), academia, quangos and federal agencies, the media. This is why it they have been subjected to the Long March. That’s the route to actual long-term power.
As far as poor Melanie is concerned I agree with Otto and TMB: it’s always hilarious when they fuck it up and shoot themselves in the foot. All those Rolls Royce brains.
Norman; the main difference that I can see from the past concerning the ‘ruling class’ or ‘Establishment’ is that in the past they felt some sense of ‘Noblesse Oblige’ towards the plebs, whereas today’s gang – quite obviously from their actions – feel nothing but contempt and even outright hatred for the British people.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5107886-melanie-field-the-former-egrc-expert-behind-labours-womens-rights-policy
Seems like Field (who looks like she enjoys comfortable footwear) has serial form in this area and ticks all the right boxes
In the picture I could find of this Field (all the others were of a fat actress) she looks like a bloke.
I do think it’s wrong to think in terms of A Deep State as a conspiracy. There is no formal conspiracy. All the actors are primarily interested in maximising what they perceive as their own personal advantage. It’s their interests are aligned because the incentives are such. If you want to change it, you have to change the incentives. How you do that I haven’t a clue since it’s they are producing the incentives.
And I think Jonathan nails it quite accurately. Previously, you had a ruling class at least notionally cleaved to a standard of behaviour probably goes right back to Knightly Chivalry. But I suspect you need an hereditary system for that where people are thinking further than the current generation. These days it’s all self, now. .
‘I do think it’s wrong to think in terms of A Deep State as a conspiracy. There is no formal conspiracy.’
And you know this how?
“.. . to give transgender people with gender recognition certificates (GRCs) the same legal status as biological men or women.”
Since they are biological men or women they already have the same legal status.
It makes no difference whether the Deep State is a shadowy cabal meeting in secret and plotting their own advancement and the ruination of the rest of us, or a disparate collection of groups meeting in semi-secret and working towards their own advancement at the cost of the rest of us.
The idea that no-one is meeting and discussing stuff is too absurd to be taken seriously – words and phrases like ‘shadowy cabal’ and ‘plotting’ throw some people off.
I tend myself toward the notion that it is more rather than less organised, and more intentional and politically theorised – there has to be some reason for what is being done to Europe other than ‘it’s for the benefit of the elites’ because it’s actually not; it’s being done for ideological reasons (IMO).
But it doesn’t really matter. They have to be stopped, is what matters.
TMB is right, she’s just admitting her incompetence at drafting legislation.
This is why our laws shouldn’t be drafted by turbodykes.
BiS, yes it’s all self, now — but someother is to blame, ever.
The life of a roving bandit is nasty, brutish, and short. The bandit chief is the meanest nastiest bandit around…. until he meets another, meaner, nastier. “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” Sharing a bit of power in exchange for a longer, more peaceful life, is a great motivator in the progress toward civilisation.
But, now the power is too diffuse, too comfortable; exemplary punishments upon Tower Hill are lacking (or maybe lions)
|And there’s this:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/18/anti-migration-philosopher-renaud-camus-banned-from-uk/
Camus would be talking about his great replacement theory. The Home Office don’t want him to do it here. Even though anyone who’s interested can find out and observe whether it is true or not. Why would the Home Office deny discussion if it wasn’t a lot too close to truth than they are comfortable with? They let in flat earthers and lizard people enthusiasts.
The Home Office is not on our side.
Not press interviews. A comprehensive look at what contextual aids to interpretation the courts use can be found at:
https://scott-wortley.medium.com/the-strange-case-of-melanie-field-is-an-individual-civil-servants-views-on-policy-relevant-in-1cd89a9e69ef
@And you know this how?
Because they’re not natural conspirators. For a working conspiracy you need people who will suppress personal advantage to a common aim. These people have got where they are by maximising perceived personal advantage. The only thing keeping them together is their interests align.
Conspiracies are things of the have nots not the haves. And they’re difficult to keep together even then. The more people involved, the harder.
BiS, incentives. Under feudalism, when pretty well everyone was fervently religious (or pretended to be), there was a strong incentive not to go to the Wrong Place on Judgement Day. Combine this with the autarky of the times, when landowners relied on their peasants to feed them, and Jesus’s pretty clear views on the duties of the rich to the poor, and you get a strong, rational, self-interested basis for Noblesse Oblige.
Secular globalism destroys all that and replaces it with individualistic autocratic tyranny. The amusing thing though is that the lefties bent on destroying the family still want – and get – the best for their nepo babies. Blood is still thicker than water. Thus the ruling class shape-shifts but perpetuates itself.
As for conspiracy, my dictionary defines it as ‘a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful’. There’s no shortage of that in plain sight if you add to that statement “or otherwise further their ends”. Look at what happened with Covid. There need be no central controller stroking a white cat: all you need is the Guardian, Twitter, Common Purpose and their equivalents. Using these media, people learn what the expected position is and take it for fear of ostracism, loss of status and income. Incentives.
“I do think it’s wrong to think in terms of A Deep State as a conspiracy. There is no formal conspiracy.”
That’s what they want you to think !
I’m perfectly happy with notions of personal advantage. However, once one is dealing with societies and other collective bodies (secret or otherwise), whose personal advantage? These groups have (rather than “baddie stroking white cat”) founders, key influencers and more. And beyond that there are the minions, bag carriers and others who are beholden to that club (the purpose of the initiation process for some societies). For example, we know that both Bush presidents were members of Skull & Bones. A different type of collective: we know TTK is a member of the Trilateral. Elsewhere, Schwab openly boasted at one of his forums (it’s openly accessible on Twitter) that half the Canadian cabinet at the time were his trainees (so to speak). And Schwab himself was financed by others to set that particular body up…
For evidence of effect, we only need to look at various ludicrous policies that often suddenly get enacted “as one” across a load of countries in the west. Happens all the time. Whatever else that is, it is clearly not *just* personal advantage of various individuals acting independently.
Who was the guy who went to Davos to co-launch Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset and promise the plebs they’d no longer be allowed to own property?
It was Charles the Fool, wasn’t it? Has he learned to brush his own teeth yet?
If our own monarch is against us, why is he our monarch, and what need have we of his family? Anybody know?
We need a state figurehead. I like Kate’s legs, so she’ll do. I miss Brenda and Phil the Greek. The rest can basically fuck off.
A political open letter from the Scots, dated 1320:
But if he should cease from these beginnings, wishing to give us or our kingdom to the English or the king of the English, we would immediately take steps to drive him out as the enemy and the subverter of his own rights and ours, and install another King who would make good our defence. Because, while a hundred of us remain alive, we will not submit in the slightest measure, to the domination of the English.
Why did medieval man see things more clearly? Without reciprocal obligations, any social order will be tyrannical and intolerable. The purpose of a king is to protect his subjects, a monarch who refuses to do that is illegitimate and should be driven out.
Steve, from that perspective Brenda reigned over possibly the biggest and most ignominious collapse of Royal power in British history. Daughter of an emperor she nearly saw her domain federated into the EU, which would have happened if Remain had won.
I admire her steadfastness and constancy but as a ruler she was an almost unmitigated disaster. Still miss the old bird, though. Our England died with her.
Norman – We need a state figurehead
Does anyone actually need Charles? What do we need him for?
I don’t think he’s ever apologised for his Great Reset plan. He’s regularly represented by an inanimate object in Parliament, so why can’t we replace him with a novelty plastic drinking bird? Or possibly a tampon.
Hope he enjoyed Eid x
Norman – Still miss the old bird, though. Our England died with her.
Nostalgia is the most useless of emotions. The old has comprehensively failed, so it’s time to look to the new. That’s something Righties historically tend to be bad at, but if modern Britain was a car you’d write it off. If we’re going to get it back on the road, there’s no point in using the same, failed parts.
Never look back, darling, it distracts from the now.
The monarchy, the armed forces, the judiciary etc. are woke, joke institutions. There’s no more reason for them to continue to exist than the Equality Act 2010. Charles wants a Great Reset, so I suggest we reset Britain’s relationship with his family, try to find actual leaders.
You have it exactly Norman.
There need be no central controller stroking a white cat: all you need is the Guardian, Twitter, Common Purpose and their equivalents. Using these media, people learn what the expected position is and take it for fear of ostracism, loss of status and income.
All these people see the individual person advantage of going with the current status quo. There’s no grand conspiracy required. They all have the same incentives.
I suspect the only way we will get out of this is a conspiracy. Because no one on their own is going to shift it. Which will require people to forego their personal advantage in the cause. Very difficult to get people to do. How do you incentivise that?
You saw this with Covid. United we didn’t have to put up with all that bollox. But individually we did because most other individuals did. The incentives were to conform.
BiS – You saw this with Covid. United we didn’t have to put up with all that bollox. But individually we did because most other individuals did. The incentives were to conform.
I was ready for Saj Javid to exclude me from society like he kept threatening.
I was never going to get the jabs, as soon as they tried making it compulsory, because fuck em. Btw I think the government lied to us about COVID jab uptake, as they lied in everything else. I reckon there were a lot more holdouts than they admitted.
But yeah, COVID. Not sure the government and ‘institutions’ are aware of how much public goodwill they burned during that shameful episode. There’s millions of people whose mental health worsened during lockdowns who will never forget.
si coniurationem quaeris, circumspice.
It doesn’t even matter how it works, what we see is indistinguishable from the result of a conspiracy against the people and the nation state. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it is the way it is because our betters want it that way. Whether they do it to look cool at Hampstead dinner parties or because the Chinese are bribing them or the Guardian is in the charge of lizard people or everything is commanded by a white cat who has gained control of a dodgy kraut, the result is the same.
I wonder if women (real women, that is) are up in arms about trannies who have had their bollocks cut off, and the skin of their penis turned inside out to make a fake vagina, plus hormone injections to grow tits (plus implants, like wot many real women have) – or is the problem blokes who just declared themselves female so that they can enter women’s bogs and changing rooms to ogle or worse? Ditto do men care if they are standing alongside a so-called bloke with a skin tube to allow them to piss in a urinal and have had their tits cut off? Most men I know would like a woman (declaring herself to be a man) to stand next to them at the urinals to admire what is on show while pissing. Possibly with the added bonus of sucking the said object afterwards?
Frankly, I can’t see why a GRC should be granted without the whole surgical intervention.
BIS,
“I suspect the only way we will get out of this is a conspiracy. Because no one on their own is going to shift it. Which will require people to forego their personal advantage in the cause. Very difficult to get people to do. How do you incentivise that?”
Look, the simple problem is that the Conservative Party got overrun with the likes of Cameron and his pals.
It’s easy to fix this problem. You metaphorically starve these cunts of oxygen and you take no notice of them.
1. All central jobs to be advertised on a central job site, and any media can re-advertise them and collect CVs and get a bounty when candidates are selected. Every man and his dog can compete with the Guardian, taking a chunk out of their income.
2. No paid time for trade unions. If you’re doing trade union activities, it’s off the clock.
3. With immediate effect, no new spending to charities. If a service is required, it will be run by government, or put out to open, competitive tendering.
4. You take no notice of The Guardian, the Church of England or Prince Charles. These are all communists and few of the people that vote for you like them anyway. You make it very, impolitely clear to the rest of the media where you stand on them.
5. You make sure that all your MPs have a visceral dislike of these types. That none of them worry about offending them because they’d like to go to dinner parties or fuck them.
6. You start cutting back government, and you start doing it quickly. The arts, the business department, overseas aid. Not reforming them. Eradicating them. People can pay for their opera. Heck, there isn’t actually a problem with the opera people like, it’s all the Modern Wank that subsidies pay for.
7. Reform the civil service rules on employment so that they can be fired quickly.
8. Actually work hard and give a shit (unlike the Conservatives).
Steve,
“Does anyone actually need Charles? What do we need him for?”
At this point, it’s nationalised cosplay. It’s as fake as Disneyland and at least there, you get to meet Snow White. Have a palace and some guards in funny hats outside so that American tourists can photograph the changing of the guard. People travelling around in a horse and carriage as if anyone serious still does that.
If it adds up, in tourist dollars then fine, but he can be a professional about it and not a fucking embarassment.
@Interested – “It makes no difference whether the Deep State is a shadowy cabal meeting in secret and plotting their own advancement and the ruination of the rest of us, or a disparate collection of groups meeting in semi-secret and working towards their own advancement at the cost of the rest of us.”
It makes a huge difference. If it’s one organisation, it’s possible to negotiate and compromise for mutual benefit. If it’s just a bunch of people forming unconnected groups, then negotiation is at best impossible and may be worse than useless. Any agreement with one group won’t be considered binding by others. And others may even be encouraged by any concessions to be even more vigorous in pursuing their campaigns.
@Norman – “my dictionary defines it as ‘a secret plan…’. There’s no shortage of that in plain sight”
I think you might like to re-consider that. What kind of secret plan is in plain sight?
@rhoda klapp – “It doesn’t even matter how it works”
It very much matters how it works. A big organised conspiracy can be negotiated with and contained. A bunch of independent individuals or groups cannot.
@Norman – “my dictionary defines it as ‘a secret plan…’. There’s no shortage of that in plain sight”
I think you might like to re-consider that. What kind of secret plan is in plain sight?
I think you might like to re-consider the latter part of the definition: ‘by a group to do something unlawful or harmful’. I was pointing out the visibility of such groups and the consequences of their actions, of which there is no shortage in plain sight. Thus do their plans lose their secrecy. Interested, PF and rhoda all offer concrete examples. All confirm POSIWID.
Steve,
“Nostalgia is the most useless of emotions. The old has comprehensively failed, so it’s time to look to the new. That’s something Righties historically tend to be bad at, but if modern Britain was a car you’d write it off. If we’re going to get it back on the road, there’s no point in using the same, failed parts.”
Nostalgia is fine if you remember that your brain filters out the bad stuff and that the first experiences of music, cinema, sex, alcohol are powerful. I’m nostalgic for the days of sitting in fields drinking and smoking with my friends, shagging teenage girls, listening to Bauhaus. But really, 1985 was shit compared to today in many ways. I know that my love of Bauhaus is because at a certain age in your life, your brain starts loving music and they were at the right time and if I was born 20 years earlier I’d probably have an affection for the Stones. People in the late 18th century probably got nostalgic for Bach. “This Mozart, it’s not proper music, not like in our day”.
I do think it’s wrong to think in terms of A Deep State as a conspiracy. There is no formal conspiracy.
That’s just what they want you to think.
@ Western Bloke
listening to Bauhaus +1
WB – I think Charles has done as admirably as could be expected by any conventional standard since the coronation, despite difficult health circumstances.
It’s no doubt only a minority of weirdos like me who remember his Great Reset speech, during the Crazy Times of Covid when TPTB hit the proles with a Tyson flurry of political psyops and fresh horrors. And yet, what a strange speech that was.
I think he made a mistake slimming down the monarchy. Doesn’t convince anti-monarchists and eventually you’ll slim the whole firm to nothing. I think he should have ruled like a medieval tyrant-Pope, but maybe that’s just me.
However, it is depressing to note how rarely modern kings wear tights and commission the forging of large cannons, or bombards.
WB – But really, 1985 was shit compared to today in many ways.
A lot of people were unhappy in the 80’s. That’s why The Smiths were so popular.
Personally, I blame the eight minute cassette tape loading times.
Charles: “It makes a huge difference. If it’s one organisation, it’s possible to negotiate and compromise for mutual benefit.”
You can’t negotiate with Lizard people or globalist progressives who know for sure they are right. But I repeat myself.
This rather reminds me of the latest anti smoking law that was passed in Victoria some years back. The wording was along the lines of “smoking is not allowed where food is being served”, which was aimed at outdoor restaurant/cafe areas (indoor smoking obviously having been banned long ago). The idea being those areas would become lovely places for non smokers to enjoy al fresco dining, and the acceptable boundaries for smoking would be pushed back that bit more.
Businesses of course weighed this up in terms of their normal trade, and a surprisingly large number just banned food in their smoking areas. Or had time of day rules. Or just served you inside, and where you took it after that was your business.
TPTB (and the lobbyists that pushed for it) were of course appalled. But that’s not what we meant, they wailed. The idea that a lot of establishments valued their clientele who regularly came in for several coffees or drinks while smoking over the possibility of selling a few more meals simply did not occur to them.
@Charles
@Interested – “It makes no difference whether the Deep State is a shadowy cabal meeting in secret and plotting their own advancement and the ruination of the rest of us, or a disparate collection of groups meeting in semi-secret and working towards their own advancement at the cost of the rest of us.”
It makes a huge difference. If it’s one organisation, it’s possible to negotiate and compromise for mutual benefit. If it’s just a bunch of people forming unconnected groups, then negotiation is at best impossible and may be worse than useless. Any agreement with one group won’t be considered binding by others. And others may even be encouraged by any concessions to be even more vigorous in pursuing their campaigns.
There’s no negotiating with these people, and no ‘compromise for mutual benefit’. We don’t have to worry as to whether they view any agreement as binding if we treat them in the required manner.
But what I meant was it makes no difference how they arrived at the position of power over us, and whether they’re actively plotting to kill us all or are merely incompetent and ambivalent about the consequences of their power and their stupidity for the rest of us: what matters is their power, and their decisions, and the consequences.
or a disparate collection of groups meeting in semi-secret and working towards their own advancement at the cost of the rest of us.”
It doesn’t have to be & isn’t even that. WEeve seen what happens. People are part of the groups. because not being is hazardous to their interests. They’re not really even secret.