HeadNun

I think the big question is: what is a trans person? Is it someone who genuinely was born into the wrong body, that biology somehow made an error, or is it someone who wishes they had been born a different sex? If it's the latter, they have what's now termed gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is genuinely distressing and evidence shows that a large amount of children with gender dysphoria are autistic and/or suffer from internalised homophobia (ie they think they are gay or lesbian but are too ashamed to confront it and / or have been told by their peers they can identify out of those feelings by changing 'gender'). The question then becomes, how is it helpful to young people to have medical treatment and / or to be encouraged in this myth that adopting gender tropes can somehow help them? If a young person was anorexic, would you give them diet pills, or try with therapy to help them accept their bodies? Many young people learn to accept their bodies once they're out of puberty. You simply cannot be born in the 'wrong body', you are born into the body you're born into and that is that. Many young women who identify as male do so because they are rightly terrified of the hyper-sexualised culture we're living in and the expectations of their male peers, thanks to a diet of hardcore porn, up-skirting, public shaming etc etc. I don't blame them for wanting to somehow identify out of being female. This is an ideology which not enough people are questioning because they wrongly see it as stonewall / the fight for gay rights mark 2. Trans people are protected under the equality act, there is nothing in this country historically that they have been prevented from doing. But there comes a point where biology comes into play, as do the rights of women and girls. Rosie Duffield has never said she has a problem with trans people, she has said there are issues around men identifying as women being allowed into what should be 'safe' spaces, ie female only. The main rape centre in Edinburgh allows males or trans women and the director, herself a trans woman, has said that women who are uncomfortable with biological males there need to reframe their thinking - how is that going to make a female who's suffered sexual abuse at the hand of a man feel safe and listened to? These are issues that have to be resolved and it seems the only place to draw a line is with biological sex. A man can simply never know what it feels like to be a woman, no matter how much they identify as one. I know quite a few trans people. Two of them are kids - one gay and autistic, the other autistic. In my opinion it's dangerous for their parents to perpetuate a myth that there is actually something 'wrong' with them, and that it can be resolved by identifying out of it. They need to be taught they were born into the right body and learn to love and accept that. I also know a middle aged trans woman, who is perfectly nice, but he refuses to use male loos, refuses to use male changing rooms, even though I know a lot of women don't like it. That looks like male entitlement to me, because there is no empathy at all with the women who feel threatened by his / her presence, his preferences take precedence and I'm afraid to say that that is very male behaviour. Why has there been a recent explosion in trans people? Is it that there has always been this many and they just didn't realise, or it went undiagnosed? I suspect not - the only reason can be social contagion. If it's not a medical condition, which it cannot possibly be, then it must be in the mind.

They're not fascists either. This word is used far too readily as a blanket term for anyone with views to the right of centre these days. But yes these kind of counter protests add fuel to the flames. If there hadn't been a counter protest outside the EDF, Lozza Fox et al would never have made the 6 o'clock news.

Thank you Naiada, I'll give Adam a try.

It seems my Mac has been attacked by some malware, or something, and now all my google searches default to Bing. I've tried lots of online tutorials to get rid of it, without success. Does anyone know anyone local (or not, as I'm sure they could remote in), who could fix this for me? Obviously I'd pay, I'm just not sure how to find someone.

I've had one lot of post in over two weeks. Important items haven't materialised. I wonder if there's even any point in going through the rigmarole of reporting to RM. I'll be on hold for days...

Is it really? It always seems busy. That's incredibly sad, I love Luca's and they also bake amazing bread. Yes I agree, it always seems busy and their food is great. There's a sign in the window saying they're selling stuff off. I guess its another victim of the rise in energy costs/produce/etc etc. I chatted to the owner the other day and he cited all those reasons, as well as Brexit meaning there are less tourists. Very sad indeed.

Is it really? It always seems busy. That's incredibly sad, I love Luca's and they also bake amazing bread.

Have you had your bloods taken? If your B12 levels are low (some people struggle to absorb B12)naturally, it's a form of anaemia) then you should be able to get the injection from your GP.

I agree with Spring Time - puppies don't need nap times. Like adult dogs, they just sleep whenever they need to. I didn't bother with puppy classes, we've managed for thousands of years without them, so I don't really get the point. But I can assure you, your puppy will love the interaction and will be 'dog tired' when it's over, so there's no need to worry about it not getting enough sleep.

Has anyone else noticed the rat population in Peckham park has exploded? I used to spot one a week, now I'm seeing three in ten minutes.

Ignore most advice and go with your gut. I left my pup to cry overnight until he was in an utter state and it was the wrong decision. Best thing to do for the first two nights is sleep on the floor next to their crate to comfort them. It was 18 months before I could happily leave him alone - did all the training and it didn't work. Might be different for you though. You can try as hard as you like with the potty training but they have no bowel or bladder control when brand new, so be patient and expect accidents. Instinctively they want to go outside, they just haven't figured out how to hold on yet. Some love crates, others hate them. Mine hated his for ages and now takes himself off there all the time. And yes, it is a cage. I invite him to sleep on my bed and he chooses the cage every time. Every dog is different - a dog training expert told me my nervous dog was untrainable and offered me a refund. I knew this was rubbish. He's over two now and a happy little camper who understands most of what I'm saying (but chooses to do what he bloody-well wants).

Yes that's what happened - a BBC breaking news alert on my phone. Turns out there was a Met misconduct hearing after he was charged and confessed, in which they decided to sack him. It was all over the news that day. Seemed strange to to report it as breaking news when there surely could not have been any other conceivable outcome. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64302608

Has anyone done one in the local area? I don't want to spend months on end wasting an hour stuck in traffic, only to have to turn back as soon as I get to the test site. So I'm thinking about doing one of these 'pass or die' courses and just getting it out of the way. Has anyone ever done one of these and has success?

I don't think the OP has said he / she is going to contact the RSPCA, just hope the owners of the dog that was kicked will read this.

I couldn't believe it today when I got a BBC breaking news alert announcing that he'd been sacked... it felt like a joke.

I know her too - she's come up to me on several occasions with her card, hustling for business. I never liked the vibe I got from her and didn't actually believe she was a dog walker.

It appears that Ngozi Fulani isn't her real name. I did think Fulani was an odd surname, and that it was odd to have a name like that if your origins are the West Indies. It's Marlene Headley, I think. And she's aired views before that the royal family is racist and subjected Harry and Meghan to domestic violence. It looks as if, even though Susan Hussey was probably pretty tactless, she was walking straight into a trap. If Headley had a non British name and was wearing a costume that looked to be from another country, it's fair to assume she might be proudly representing another country and want to talk about said other country. Who knows... I mean if I turned up in the EDT in full in C17th Huguenot dress and called myself Marie La Touche, it might be reasonable for people to be curious.

That was genuine baiting. The intent was very clearly there.

I ask people where they're from all the time, if I can tell they weren't born here. It invariably leads to interesting conversations, during which I usually learn a lot and we often find some common ground. I've found that people enjoy talking about their home countries and culture, no one has ever been offended. I was raised in Africa for some of my life, have worked all over the world and, even though I'm white (Scots Irish), I have a Nigerian name, which causes no small amount of hilarity whenever I meet someone Nigerian and it's always a great conversation starter. In my experience, white racists tend not to be well travelled and tend not to be interested in finding out about people's backgrounds and culture. In the case of BP, I cannot be sure that that tweet is a word-for-word transcript of the exchange. Ngozi Fulani was wearing what looked to be some sort of African dress and has a west African name, which may have lead SH to think she wasn't from the UK. Once she'd heard Hackney, it might have been prudent to leave it there, but it's possible, she was trying to A) start a conversation and find out more about Ngozi and B) try to get some details so she could brief the palace about her, ahead of introducing Ngozi to someone else. I also gather there were people from all over the world there. Perhaps she pushed it too hard but, in the all the years she's been of service to a very much non-racist queen, I find it hard to believe that she purposefully and maliciously went out of her way to make Ngozi feel uncomfortable. Context is everything and sometimes the way something is felt isn't the way it was intended.

Yip. Sums the ridiculousness of it all up perfectly.

I said we're becoming a more class-less society, and I stand by that. Historically, wealth had little to do with social class. You could be upper class yet poor, and if you were working or lower middle class and had made money, you'd be looked down upon by higher classes and described disparagingly as 'nouveau riche'. Petit bourgeois was a similar insult which, as Jenijen rightly said, was more about the attitude of a certain socially aspirational lower middle class. The Macmillan dictionary definition is not quite how it's used. That's what I mean when I talk about class, and thankfully a lot of that snobbery is disappearing. That's not to say other social divides aren't forming, and that the rich-poor gap isn't widening, and that it isn't totally shit, but they're two totally separate things.

Yep, swiped at me just last night. She's a wee minx. My dog is petrified of her.

I see the 500 degrees pizza place is being replaced by....... a pizza place

TBH, comrade, I'm not convinced of the accuracy of your definition of "bourgeois", either in a Marxist/Marxian sense or the vernacular sense, which both correctly describe Soderberg. But you obviously have strong feelings about it, so feel to imagine Soderberg described as "yet another coffee shop/bakery for the bourgeoisie", which I hope you find dogmatically acceptable. https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/bourgeois_1 If Dulwich becomes plagued by as many Kulak-oriented shops (perhaps they would sell petrol cultivators, or yokes for oxen) as we have smug identikit coffee shops, I will come back to moan about the preponderance of kulak-oriented shops. Until then... I have to agree with Penguin here - 'bourgeois' might describe the patrons, but I don't see how a bakery can be bourgeois. Anyway, this word surely no longer describes anyone these days, it's a pejorative way to describe social climbers in the past who belonged to the lower middle classes. Surely these days we're a far more class-less society. These places might be predictable, perhaps, with a large dollop of twee, but not bourgeois.

Have a listen / watch to this too. https://drchatterjee.com/how-to-heal-chronic-pain-with-dr-howard-schubiner/