Ipso

Thursday

Rod Liddle

The hidden violence behind the trans ruling

It is ten months since the then merely aspirant education secretary Bridget Phillipson addressed the important issue of where transgender people should go for a quick slash. Bridget was very much of the opinion that if you had a gender recognition certificate, then you should make for the cubicle which matched with whatever it said on that piece of paper, because it’s the ‘humane approach’. She added: ‘But I would expect that if you were someone that had gone through that formal process of recognition you are, to all intents and purposes, for legal purposes, regarded as being in a different gender, regardless of the sex into which you were

Charles Moore Charles Moore

After Francis, who?

After Francis, what, or rather, who? The coverage so far, rightly admiring of the Pope’s unvarnished, rather un-papal Christianity, has played down how much turmoil he leaves. His openness to all human beings – the poorer, the better – clashed with his old-fashioned, authoritarian, even angry will. Benedict XVI was more traditionalist but much more pacific. There is therefore a case for a conciliatory, transitional candidate. The Church, however, like so many secular institutions nowadays, may be too polarised for that. The liberals, mostly appointed by Francis, dominate the voting cardinals, but lack wide appeal. Liberalism in religion tends towards its own dissolution. The young Catholics starting to swell church

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Migration mystery, Ipso’s trans muddle & are you a ‘trad dad’?

46 min listen

This week: why don’t we know how many people are in Britain? How many people live in the UK? It’s a straightforward question, yet the answer eludes some of the nation’s brightest statistical minds, writes Sam Bidwell for the cover this week. Whenever official figures are tested against real-world data, the population is almost always undercounted. For example, in England alone, nearly 64 million patients are registered with GP practices – higher than the Office for National Statistics (ONS)’s estimated population of 58 million. Sam argues there are serious consequences for our society at large, including for tax, housing and our utilities. Who is to blame for this data deficiency?

Conrad Roeber

How Ipso surrendered to the trans lobby

Two months ago, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) upheld a complaint against The Spectator for referring to Juno Dawson, a transgender author, as ‘a man who claims to be a woman’. It may have struck some as unfathomable. I was less surprised. As I read the news, it took me back six years to when I was lead author of a report for Ipso, examining how the press treats trans-related issues. I have been a management consultant for more than 30 years so am used to being asked by institutions as varied as the BBC and the Football Association to help shape strategy. For Ipso’s project, it effectively asked

Thursday

Andrew Tettenborn

The Tories should think again on targeting Netflix

If you want to understand the curious attitude of our government towards media freedom, look at two provisions in the draft Media Bill, published yesterday. One is refreshingly liberal; the other curmudgeonly and authoritarian. First, the good news. The Bill reads the last rites over the Leveson Report of 2012. A worrying document embodying lofty patrician contempt for the popular press, this had called for highly intrusive controls over it. This included closer supervision of what journalists were allowed to do and editors to publish, an increase in damages for breach of privacy and a noticeable tightening of the dead hand of data protection on newspaper information-gathering. And, to cap