Thank heavens for JK Rowling and her ilk for standing up for free speech

Thank heavens for JK Rowling, Sharron Davies, Professor Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel – among others – for standing up for free speech and common sense; for knowing what a woman is and not being afraid to say it; and for fighting to protect women’s and girls’ safe spaces, the integrity of women’s sport and for defending biological sex.

Who’d have thought it would be so dangerous to state the obvious, that men and women are physically and biologically different. To be cancelled and lose your job – and now in Scotland to be potentially arrested for a so-called “hate crime” – for simply stating a fact about what a woman is, makes the mind boggle.

Free speech is essential, and the most precious aspect of a functioning liberal democracy. Allowing people to freely assert their opinion allows people to understand one another and the choices they are making, and you need to hear different sides of an argument to get the full picture from which to draw your own conclusion.

That is why a report by Dr Hilary Cass, which came out this week, is so important. She is the consultant paediatrician who was asked to look into how the NHS should care for children and adolescents who are questioning their gender identity.

The review was partly in response to a huge increase in the number of referrals to The Gender Identity Development Service, run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which had grown from under 250 referrals in 2011-12, to more than 5,000 in 2021-22. How can the numbers have possibly surged like this in just 10 years?

There are nearly 400 pages in the report but it is well worth reading.

Dr Cass rightly has concerns over the widespread adoption of “affirmative care” – in other words just going along with the child’s claims, where children are effectively being allowed to change gender in schools and by doctors without any real questioning, and where debate was being closed down for fear of being labelled transphobic.

Dr Cass said: “There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop.”

Absolutely, it must.

It’s the left who have been closing down the debate with its culture wars and cancel culture.

The SNP’s Hate Crime Bill was passed on April 1, supposedly under the ruse of protecting people, when really it’s all about stopping people being allowed to say anything that the Scottish Nationalists do not agree with.

It is chilling.

And remember how Labour turned on its own MP Rosie Duffield for standing up for the rights of biological women and all but hounded her out of the party.

Stopping debate is not just a legal and democratic outrage – as JK Rowling is so brilliantly proving – it is also letting down the most vulnerable in society, those in desperate need of a caring conversation and significant explanation of the steps they are planning to take.

The “politically correct” left in this country is so intolerant of other opinions that, step by step, it is doing everything it can, starting with bullying, but now in Scotland via the criminal law – to stop people being able to speak freely, even when what they are saying is factual.

Well, we can’t say that George Orwell didn’t warn us can we?

Reeves to raise £5billion a year

Rachel Reeves this week announced she would raise £5billion a year by the end of the next Parliament from a clampdown on tax evasion. Rachel might like to know that since 2010, when the Conservatives took over from Labour, its “compliance yield” ie action against fraud, avoidance and evasion already totals a staggering £353.8billion.

When Labour have got no answer to how they will pay for their mammoth spending plans, they always trot out the clamping down on tax avoidance or evasion... don’t believe it.

Given Reeves, right, announced this in the middle of the media storm surrounding Angela Rayner’s tax arrangements following her house sale, I think we can safely conclude that there is no love lost between the two of them.

Fairer sex gain unfair advantage

Hot on the heels of the Sentencing Council’s ridiculous decision to make courts give lighter sentences to people from deprived backgrounds and to people who had a previous negative experience of authority, I’m afraid it’s at it again.

It now wants to give even lighter sentences to women because they claim women offend because of substance misuse, homeless-ness and financial issues.

As it happens there are more men who suffer from those three things than women, but yet the politically-correct council wants to apply this get-out-of-jail-free card to women only.

For every single category of offence, women are already far less likely to be sent to prison than a man, so what on earth is it doing? Pandering to the left-wing liberal agenda that believes that women shouldn’t be sent to prison, it would seem.

So much for equality then? Magistrates and judges will be told they will have to discriminate on the grounds of sex. How does that sit with their oath to act without fear or favour, affection or ill-will?

What has happened to the old maxim that everyone is equal before the law?

If these 15 unelected and unaccountable members of the great and the good of the liberal legal establishment want to impose their political views on us they should stand for election and not seek to abuse their position to do so.

The Sentencing Council is another Blair initiative that we could well do without. It needs to be scrapped.

Our bets for the Grand National

I have never made any secret of my passion for horseracing, and following Ladies’ Day at Aintree yesterday, above, at 4pm today they will come under starter’s orders for the greatest show on turf... the Grand National. Even Esther, whose passion for racing does not extend as far as mine, will be tuning in to watch, and not just because it’s in her home city of Liverpool.

Thankfully, the animal rights extremists have said they will not disrupt the race this year – let’s hope they remain true to their word.

I managed to pick the winner last year, Corach Rambler, so the chances of two in a row are remote. Corach Rambler must have a great chance again, but I will be having a flutter on Vanillier. Esther is backing Mr Incredible. I think she picked it because of me, but she is robustly refuting that!

Jonathan Ross's admirable honesty 

You have to hand it to Jonathan Ross. At least he’s honest about the personal stuff. This week he cheerfully admitted that he sometimes goes a full week without stepping into the shower. In fact, he once went a fortnight without a single scrub-a-dub-dub. He was on holiday in Florida and reckoned a daily dip in the pool would do – only to gradually realise he was giving off a right old pong from one armpit. So he shaved it. Job done.

Maybe it’s mixing with all those Hollywood A-listers – loads of them are shower-shy, too (Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt). And at least when Ross DOES step under the faucet, he doesn’t follow Jessica Biel’s example. She EATS in the shower.

“We all do it, right?” she asks on Instagram. Hmm.

Will you tell her, or shall I?