Women waiting longer for NHS care than men | The Telegraph

Women face longer waits for NHS care than men, new data have revealed.

Women make up 57 per cent of the 7.36 million backlog and also face a disproportionately longer time waiting for a hospital appointment. At the end of June, 58.1 per cent of the 194,650 people waiting more than a year for treatment were women.

The new data shows the largest speciality for those on the waiting list aged 18-64 is gynaecology – 12 per cent of all 18 to 64-year-olds.

Prof Ranee Thakar, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the new data was “a vital step in addressing the postcode lottery in gynaecology care”.

“At the moment, women in the most deprived areas face some of the longest waits, threatening to entrench existing health inequalities,” she said. “Delays can lead to a need for more complex treatment and significantly impact women’s health, well-being and daily lives.”

[Ed: It would be interesting to know if these stats are similar for the Australian Medicare system.]

Source: Women waiting longer for NHS care than men

What the Bishops’ Mistakes with the Catholic Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis Teach Us About the Trump Administration’s Cover-up of the Epstein Files | Marci A. Hamilton | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

President Donald Trump is desperately trying to divert attention away from his decision to cover up the Epstein files. Good luck. Whatever his role in the Epstein child sex trafficking universe, the cover-up is a separate issue, as the Catholic bishops could tell him. The fundamental problem is this country doesn’t like institutions—whether government, church, university, school, or sport—that cover up child sex abuse.

The biggest problem for Trump here is that he is either a possible defendant for child rape, aiding and abetting or conspiracy to abuse and traffic underage girls or, at the very least, a witness of circumstantial evidence. The men who cavorted with Epstein were scions of society from Bill Gates to Prince Andrew to Victoria’s Secret’s Leslie Wexner and Apollo Global Management’s Leon Black. There were hundreds of victims, and Epstein entertained the male elite in New York City and his private island. Only a woman, his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, has been prosecuted and convicted. That means the masters of the universe likely have been sweating out the slow walk to suppression and Trump’s fumbling now. No doubt some have had some frank or veiled conversations with the Trump administration if not the president himself.

For the populist MAGA folks to watch the man they believed would slay the dragon of the “deep state” deep-six the files of a global child sex abuse ring has to be devastating. It’s like the Roman Catholic faithful learning the Pope was involved in covering up clergy sex abuse—as has every Pope to date including Pope Leo.

Bringing institutions to account—whether the Church or the federal government—requires disclosure, prosecutions, and lawsuits. It also requires changes in the law from eliminating the statutes of limitation to criminalizing not just the act of abuse but the trafficking and grooming as well. The MAGA instinct to find justice for these victims is an American one, and there is a robust movement in the United States to reveal and bring to account all those who have let children suffer. Without the government’s records, it is hard to fully know what to change to make sure this never happens again.

Secret files and shielding the responsible hamper the best efforts to ensure children aren’t abused in the future.

Source: What the Bishops’ Mistakes with the Catholic Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis Teach Us About the Trump Administration’s Cover-up of the Epstein Files | Marci A. Hamilton | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia

“The Network” in the Worlds of the Elites | Dr Naomi Wolf

Half the country is up in arms about President Donald Trump’s inexplicable decision to mock his base, because many are appalled that Attorney General Pam Bondi seems to be orchestrating a coverup of a serial rapist of children. Bondi’s Justice Department released a memo last week: “The two-page document said the department found no evidence of an Epstein client list and that no additional files from the investigation would be made public.

Conservatives are baffled.

Because I spent decades in the same elite liberal circles that sheltered Epstein, I am not puzzled. I think I understand the matrix of this situation.

It has, in my view, to do with “the network.”

I think that it is likely that multiple people who are critical to this administration’s success — my guess is, that these are mostly guys from the Silicon Valley community, who have been the ones to put the fuel of their billions and their technical and media support into President Trump’s campaign and administration’s engines — whether they are innocent or guilty, are in the Epstein files. (Remember why Mrs Gates broke up with Mr Gates?) And I think this nation’s most important scientists, innocent or guilty, are in the files. And my guess is that the funders have confronted President Trump.

If you read the hieroglyphics here correctly, what you should see (this is why it is useful to have been a political consultant; you can read the code, which often involves triangulation or “deniability”) that A/ President Trump is not on this list. B/ President Trump does not wish the horrific baggage of being the one to infuriate all the powerful people who are on this list, by releasing it himself via his AG. C/ They — the Trump administration — want it released by others, ie, the New York courts, so that they themselves don’t receive the appalling blowback.

I also believe that there are make-or-break tech bro Trump supporters on the list, because of a moving interview given by Eric Weinstein on July 14, 2025— interestingly, in the midst of the Bondi furor — to Steven Bartlett, on the “Diary of a CEO” podcast.

Weinstein was til 2022 managing director for the American venture capital firm Thiel Capital. Weinstein is a compelling intellectual, in addition having served at the very top of one of Silicon Valley’s key organizations. He created a physics-based “theory of everything” that he brought to a fellowship at the Mathematical Institute at Oxford, and he was trained in mathematics at Harvard University.

On the podcast, he stated that “[s]ex offender Jeffrey Epstein was a “product of one or more elements of the intelligence community.”

Weinstein argues that the Epstein “construct” was what the military calls “dual use” –that is, that Epstein had multiple missions running concurrently.

One mission, of course, was that of running a grotesque sexual honeypot, exploiting minors, for purposes of blackmail.

But another, Weinstein argues, is the management and direction of Western science itself. Weinstein notes that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, the late publishing magnate/reputed intelligence asset Robert Maxwell, founded the scientific imprint Pergamon Press, the Oxford-based imprint that published medical books and journals, which was bought by Elsevier, which is the main scientific publishing imprint (and the advance guard scientifically for the COVID/vaccine narrative; indeed, Elsevier created a “resource hub” about COVID for “librarians, campuses and health professionals”, an oddly activist offering from what is supposed to be a neutral scientific platform).

Eric Weinstein is correct. Jeffrey Epstein did fund cutting-edge scientists and mathematicians, especially in the fields of genetics and and evolutionary biology. He even convened them via another entity, into a community under his funding structure.

I know that Weinstein is right because I was unknowingly part of a network that overlapped with a part of this network. My agent for almost all of my career, since I was “discovered” by him and since he helped me to publish my first book, The Beauty Myth, a bestseller, at the age of 26, was the legendary literary agent John Brockman.

Jeffrey Epstein funded the Edge Foundation, Brockman’s digital and irl salon. No one knew this. Or, at least, no one I knew, knew this.

Brockman’s famous literary dinners—held during the TED Conference—were, for a number of years after Epstein’s conviction, almost entirely funded by Epstein as documented in his annual tax filings.This allowed Epstein to mingle with scientists, startup icons and tech billionaires [Italics mine].

Here, in one improbable room, in 2010, were Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington; Marissa Mayer, then at Google; Larry Page, who cofounded Google; Craig Venter, who sequenced the human genome; biologist George Church, who later had to apologize for accepting funding from Jeffrey Epstein; weirdly, PCR test inventor Kari Mullis; weirdly, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening; and Nathan Myhrvold, formerly CTO at Microsoft and founder of Intellectual Ventures, the Tech Brotherhood’s Ground Zero of venture funding; Susan Wojcicki, later CEO of Youtube; Jason Calacanis, the tech investor who turned, per his book, $100,000 into $100,000,000; and Michael Tshao, who eventually led Apple’s foray into electronics such as the IPad.

And that is just one single year. The star-studded tech and scientific names march on through the subsequent decade: cofounder of Google Sergey Brin; cofounder of Microsoft Paul Allen; Tony Fadell, “Father of the IPod”.

The Epstein files probably contain many innocent people as well as many guilty ones; but again, they are very likely to contain, innocent and guilty, some of the most powerful of President Trump’s current supporters; and some of the greatest of scientists and some of the most influential technologists of our time.

And even someone as powerful as the American President, in my calculation, can’t cross that most powerful of all powerful “networks.”

In Epstein we are not just looking at a sexual blackmail operation for US and foreign political leaders and hedge fund guys.

We are also looking at a “construct” that seduced and lured scientists; that was institutionally set up to seduce and lure scientists.

It may mean that whoever was steering Epstein — was also steering our science.

That makes it a very different, very significant — perhaps culture-changing; perhaps history-changing — story.

Source: “The Network” in the Worlds of the Elites

The transgender dilemma and how MPs overlooked sex discrimination implications | The Australian

Twelve years ago both sides of politics supported changes to the Sex Discrimination Act but nowhere did they make explicit reference to treat certain biological men as if they were women.

Source: Subscribe to The Australian | Newspaper home delivery, website, iPad, iPhone & Android apps

EXCLUSIVE DETAILS: Trans-Identified Male Killer Sues Ohio Department of Corrections Officials Seeking Transfer to Women’s Prison

A trans-identified male currently serving a sentence of 15 years to life for murder has filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) seeking a transfer to a female prison. Ricardo Janel Taborn claims to have amputated his testicles while incarcerated in a correctional institution for men, and is now legally recognized as a “female” named Riicara Janel Dior.

According to the complaint, filed against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC), Taborn has been incarcerated since 1991, and was found guilty in 1992 of murder. Taborn was handed a sentence of 15 years to life for the crime, and he has been detained in correctional facilities for men since that time.

Taborn alleges that he began taking feminizing hormones in 2020 after acquiring a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” presumably from medical professionals employed by the ODRC.

On July 7, Taborn was sympathetically profiled by Ideastream Public Media.

“I’m a woman. I’m real demure, ladylike. I’m a girl’s girl, so I want to be acknowledged as that,” Taborn told Ideastream. “There’s no way possible you can keep a woman safe in a man’s prison. That’s just not even logical.”

Curiously, in another report filed by Taborn that year, he demonstrates knowledge of a male inmate who was transferred to a woman’s prison in Ohio. The inmate, Michael Cole, had previously been held at AOCI during a period when Taborn was also detained there.

As previously reported by Reduxx, convicted killer Michael Cole successfully petitioned for transfer to a female facility in Ohio some time between 2018 and 2020.

Cole, who adopted the feminine name Michelle, was convicted for the 2016 murder of another trans-identified male Cole had met through a “transgender support group” on Facebook. The victim’s body was found dumped in the driveway of a residence in Cleveland’s east side, and was described as “wearing only underwear and had white plastic bags covering [his] head and both hands,” according to police reports.

Cole was later accused of sexually assaulting a female inmate while housed in women’s pre-trial detention, but he was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

After the allegations that Cole had raped a female detainee while in a Hamilton County jail, he was relocated to the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW), another female facility.

Source: EXCLUSIVE DETAILS: Trans-Identified Male Killer Sues Ohio Department of Corrections Officials Seeking Transfer to Women’s Prison

Trans changing room row nurse cleared of misconduct as tribunal resumes | BBC

A nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor has been cleared of gross misconduct following disciplinary proceedings by NHS Fife.

Sandie Peggie was suspended from her role last year after she objected to Dr Beth Upton, who is a transgender woman, using female facilities.

The nurse had faced allegations of misconduct, failures of patient care and misgendering Dr Upton.

NHS Fife said an internal hearing found there was “insufficient evidence to support a finding of misconduct”.

News of the decision came on the eve of the resumption of an employment tribunal in Dundee after a five-month break in proceedings.

Ms Peggie claims her treatment was unlawful under the 2010 Equality Act and has brought a case against the health board and Dr Upton.

NHS Fife and the doctor are defending their actions – at a cost to the public purse so far of at least £220,000 – arguing that they complied with NHS policy.

Source: Trans changing room row nurse cleared of misconduct as tribunal resumes

Exclusive: Female prisoners going without food and clean water | The Saturday Paper

A leaked report shows staff shortages have created rolling lockdowns at a Melbourne prison, where there have been numerous suicide attempts and limited access to water.

As many as seven prisoners a month are attempting suicide at a women’s prison on the edge of Melbourne, where staff shortages mean women are being kept in lockdowns that resemble solitary confinement.

Prisoners report shortages of food and a lack of access to clean drinking water during these lockdowns.

“We were going days without water,” says Ashleigh Chapman, who was released from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre last month. “We were getting quite sick and a lot of us had lost a lot of weight.”

Chapman says that as the lockdowns escalated this year, the water in her unit turned green and was not drinkable, but prison officers were not allowed to fill up her water bottle. She says the water was turning her sink green and had a strong metallic taste. Prison officers were told about the issue on multiple occasions.

Kelly Flanagan, who was also recently released from the prison, said there was green water in her cell. She says it smelt strongly of sewage and was making people ill.

Chapman says prison officers initially filled up drink bottles for the women from taps outside the cells, but were eventually instructed not to do this, leaving the women able to buy water from the canteen only once a week.

The lockdowns at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, Victoria’s only maximum security women’s prison, are not due to the behaviour of women or any unrest in the prison. Instead, they have been attributed to staff shortages, with large numbers of prison officers calling in sick, meaning not all parts of the prison can be unlocked.

Ordinarily, cells are opened about 8am and women are given about 11 hours out-of-cell time a day. During this time women attend appointments for housing, addiction, mental health and legal support, as well as visiting with loved ones and making phone calls.

Nerita Waight, chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, says the organisation is deeply concerned about the conditions in the prison, with clients reporting that programs, calls and visits are still being disrupted.

“It is unacceptable to punish the women further for the sheer incompetence of the department to manage its staffing requirements,” Waight tells The Saturday Paper.

Source: Exclusive: Female prisoners going without food and clean water | The Saturday Paper

Mother of victim of necrophiliac David Fuller reacts to inquiry that found crimes like his ‘could be repeated’ | UK News | Sky News

Fuller, a hospital electrician, is known to have violated at least 100 corpses, often filming or photographing his crimes.

Nevres Kemal’s daughter Azra Kemal was 24 when she died before her body was sexually abused by Fuller three times in the mortuary of Tunbridge Wells Hospital in July 2020.

Ms Kemal told Sky News it was “a disgrace” she has to “prove that this has devastated me” as she fights to get compensation.

It comes as an inquiry into the case concluded that “offences such as those committed by David Fuller could happen again”.

The report by Sir Jonathan Michael found that “current arrangements in England for the regulation and oversight of the care of people after death are partial, ineffective and, in significant areas, completely lacking”.

Fuller was given a whole-life prison term in December 2021 for the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1987.

During his time as a maintenance worker, he also abused the corpses of more than 100 women and girls at Kent and Sussex Hospital and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital before his arrest in December 2020.

Source: Mother of victim of necrophiliac David Fuller reacts to inquiry that found crimes like his ‘could be repeated’ | UK News | Sky News

Australian feminists unite for UN shadow report: Why women’s voices matter in international human rights – Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances

Our coalition of independent feminist organisations has submitted its shadow report to the United Nations Human Rights Council as part of Australia’s fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

Legal reforms in Australia have left women in a state of deep uncertainty about our rights. The law’s failure to clarify the definition of ‘woman’ (thanks to the widespread adoption of sex self-identification) has created confusion and forced women to bear the cost of litigation merely to test the boundaries of our rights in practice.

Legal ambiguity is undermining essential spaces and services for women, especially those escaping violence or seeking trauma support. The erosion of clear data collection by sex further hampers our ability to address male violence or develop evidence-based policy. We are calling for urgent government action to reinstate sex-disaggregated data and to safeguard special measures intended to benefit women, as clearly mandated by international law.

Read the full report, below.

Source: Australian feminists unite for UN shadow report: Why women’s voices matter in international human rights – Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances

Lindsey Smith, R (on the application of) v The Chief Constable of Northumbria Police – [2025] EWHC 1805 (Admin)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
KING’S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT

LEEDS COMBINED COURT CENTRE

Date: 16/07/2025

Before :

MR JUSTICE LINDEN

1. This is a claim for judicial review of the decision of the Defendant to authorise officers of the Northumbria Police Force (“the Force”) actively to participate in the “Newcastle Pride in the City 2024” event (“the 2024 Event”) on 20 July 2024, in which she also participated. Permission was granted by Hill J on 23 May 2025. She also ordered that the hearing of the Claim be expedited so that, if possible, a judgment would be promulgated before “Newcastle Pride in the City 2025” which is due to take place on the weekend of 19/20 July 2025 (“the 2025 Event”).

2. The Claimant describes herself as a lesbian who is “gender critical”. She believes that a person’s sex is an immutable characteristic and that “gender ideology”, which recognises a person’s gender identity, is “wrong and dangerous”. Her evidence is that gender ideology has been embraced by the organisers of the Event, Northern Pride Events Limited (“Northern Pride”), and was supported by many of the participants in the Event, who also strongly oppose gender critical beliefs. She entirely accepts that it was necessary for the Event to be policed, but she objects to what she sees as the Force and/or members of the Force associating themselves with the views of supporters of gender ideology and transgender activists by actively participating in the Event.

……….

Decision

. . .

[I]t is not hard to imagine circumstances in which the officers in question might be called on to deal with a clash between gender critical people and supporters of gender ideology, and therefore situations where the former had cause for concern as to whether they were being dealt with impartially. The Claimant gives the example of allegations of harassment and counter harassment on social media and, of course, harassment can take other forms as Professor Stock would no doubt agree. By way of other examples of situations in which the police might be required to deal with a clash between the competing perspectives, there might be an issue for the Force as to whether gender critical people should themselves be permitted to demonstrate and, if so, where and when. There might be an attempted counter demonstration by gender critical people which required the police to deal with it. There might be an attempt to eject a gender critical person from the March. In all of these cases, the fact that the officers had publicly stated their support for transgender rights by taking part in the 2024 March would be likely to give the impression that they may not deal with the matter fairly and impartially.

When one adds the fact that the Force’s static display, staffed by police officers, was adorned with the Progress Flag and included the Northumbria Police badge and the blue, pink and white of the transgender flag as part of the same display, the impression that there was an expression of institutional support for gender ideology and transgender rights is enhanced further. Similarly, the fact that a police van, which might have been used for law enforcement purposes, was also painted or marked prominently with transgender colours served to add to the impression that the Force as a whole was associating itself with a particular viewpoint and, as far as gender critical people were concerned, taking sides.

. . .

I therefore allow the Claim and will make an appropriate declaration accordingly.

Source: Lindsey Smith, R (on the application of) v The Chief Constable of Northumbria Police – Find Case Law – The National Archives