UN expert Reem Alsalem backs Ash Regan’s proposed Bill to criminalise the buying of sex in Scotland | STV News

A UN expert has backed Ash Regan’s Bill to criminalise the buying of sex in Scotland while decriminalising people selling sexual services.

The Alba MSP’s ‘Unbuyable Bill’ won support from the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, on Friday.

Ms Alsalem said the proposals put forward by Regan were “in line” with recommendations she made in a report to the UN Human Rights Council last year.

In her opinion, the UN expert said the Bill provides an “effective framework for ending the exploitation and violence that women are subjected to in prostitution, by discouraging the demand for buying sexual acts and offering exit strategies for the victims”.

Regan launched the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill in Scottish Parliament last month to criminalise the buying of sex in Scotland while decriminalising the people selling sexual services.

The MSP hopes the Bill, which would also quash historic convictions for prostitution and create a statutory right to support for those leaving the trade, will be passed before parliament breaks for next year’s Holyrood election.

Under Regan’s proposals, those convicted of buying sex in Scotland could be fined up to £10,000 if the case was prosecuted in Scotland’s Sheriff Courts – with these courts also able to impose jail sentences of up to six months.

Source: UN expert Reem Alsalem backs Ash Regan’s proposed Bill to criminalise the buying of sex in Scotland | STV News

Nutmeg’s week: We need an inquiry into Pride in Surrey | The Glinner Update

This week Stephen Ireland, the founder of Pride In Surrey, was sentenced to a total of 30 years in jail for multiple child sexual abuse offences, including the rape of a 12-year-old boy. The boy, who was reported missing at the time, was drugged with crystal meth before the assault. Ireland then sent him photos of another Pride in Surrey organiser, David Sutton, and suggested they have a threesome. Sutton, who was also convicted of several child sexual abuse offences, was sentenced to four and a half years.

The role of councils, at least one MP, schools, the police, the media and, above all, Pride in Surrey itself, needs to be investigated to find out to what extent institutional failings enabled paedophiles to abuse. Was protecting an image of inclusivity prioritised over protecting children?

We wrote a detailed report about Stephen Ireland in March, and in particular how he used his LGBT activism to gain access to children. He was, for example, patron of the disgraced children’s charity Educate & Celebrate, he volunteered at a school radio station in which he had children in bondage gear as guests and was even writing children’s books at the time of his arrest.

However, new information has come to light. It wasn’t reported in March that Ireland had smoked a bong with the boy which was later found to have contained crystal meth. During the trial, Ireland said he was in a polycule in 2020 with Charlie Watts and teenage ‘pup play’ fetishist, Samuel Powell, and they smoked crystal meth together. Incredibly, Watts is now the CEO of Pride in Surrey and Powell, still only 22, has been named its safeguarding lead.

Additionally, we now know that multiple child safeguarding complaints were made about Pride in Surrey, and particularly Stephen Ireland, for at least five years before his arrest last year.

He set up a ‘helpline’ for struggling LGBT children, in which they would text him and he would call them back. A whistleblower has said Ireland refused to let anyone else speak to the children who messaged him.

Ireland was a high-profile figure who’d appeared dozens of times on BBC Radio Surrey, including at least once as a presenter, and on national BBC programmes such as BBC Breakfast. You might have thought that anyone getting a 30-year prison sentence for child rape might be a top story, let alone someone well-known who was embedded in various institutions.

But no. BBC News had correspondents in court ready to broadcast on LGBT issues at the time of his sentencing, but none of them attended his trial. One was there for the inquest into why a drag queen had died. It’s worth noting that BBC News has now covered the death of The Vivienne nearly 30 times since January, and when Ireland was convicted in March, BBC South East Today ignored the story and instead ran a piece about … a different drag queen who’d died.

Source: Nutmeg’s week: We need an inquiry into Pride in Surrey

Press Release 4 July 2025 | Alison Bailey

Allison Bailey has won her discrimination case against Linnaeus Veterinary
Limited, trading as Palmerston Veterinary Group, for unlawful discrimination
based on her gender critical beliefs.

In the first case of its kind, Miss Bailey, a gender critical feminist, barrister, and lesbian, has demonstrated that the Courts can and will take action where gender critical women are denied goods and services on account of their beliefs.

Miss Bailey was expelled without warning from her vet’s practice in 2023. She alleged that her expulsion was due to her gender critical beliefs: she believes sex is binary, biological, immutable, and important — views that would have been entirely uncontroversial at any other time in history. She considers the belief that gender identity can override biological sex to be unevidenced, pseudoscientific, quasi-religious, and dangerous. She believes that gender identity ideology gained ground so quickly in the past decade because it was erroneously linked to LGB rights by self-interested lobby groups, with disastrous consequences for women and girls, children, the vulnerable, and the same-sex attracted, all lawful beliefs protected under equality legislation.

In its judgment, the Court has now agreed with Miss Bailey and found that her expulsion was unlawful and discriminatory.

Source: Press-Release-Final-4-July-2025-9am.pdf

Judgement available here: https://allisonbailey.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Bailey-v.-Linnaeus-Veterinary-Ltd-judgment-04.07.25.pdf

 

Trans books for toddlers are an outrage | The Telegraph

A new audit of the publishing industry shows toddlers are the latest target of gender zealots – and yes, it’s as disturbing as it sounds.

The parents of Britain have had enough. Enough gender propaganda. Enough school awareness days à la this week’s Rainbow Friday, promoted by the charity Just Like Us, which has been accused of a pro-trans agenda. Enough hours explaining to our tweenagers that JK Rowling isn’t, in fact, a wicked hater and that it’s Harry and Hermione who have lost the plot.

If you thought the whole trans nonsense had been settled in the Supreme Court, after a panel of Appeal judges ruled that no matter how long their false eyelashes or how shrill and strident their opinions, trans women are not women – think again.

Now pre-schoolers are under siege from a slew of sparkly picture books in which daddies turn into mommies (sic) by dint of growing their hair and painting their nails. Because we all know that’s all it takes to be a woman, folks.

Titles include She’s My Dad!, Julián is a Mermaid and Call Me Tree. No. I’m not making this up.

N]ew research into the publishing industry carried out by UK pressure group Sex Matters and its US equivalent, SEEN in Publishing, has revealed that a “shiny, sparkly world of trans identities” is being promoted to young readers, with “many aimed at toddlers”.

This new audit of the publishing industry found that of 21 publishers surveyed, a fifth of their output on transgender-related products was targeted at children, leading the report to raise concerns that the message in the early-reader books was often that becoming transgender will “resolve bodily hatred and create enduring joy in the form of ‘trans euphoria’”.

However, I think we can take solace in the fact that common sense is in the ascendant. Or it would be if we can stop a tsunami of gender-fluid evangelism sweeping through our nurseries and recruiting a generation of innocents into what remains of the discredited, delusional gender war.

Source: Trans books for toddlers are an outrage

French court convicts ex-Ubisoft executives over culture of workplace harassment | France 24

A court near Paris has found a former Ubisoft [the publisher of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry] executive guilty of attempted sexual assault and handed suspended jail terms to two other former executives for allowing a toxic environment of harassment to prosper at the French gaming giant.

 A French court sentenced three former Ubisoft executives on Wednesday to suspended prison terms for enabling a culture of sexual and psychological harassment at the gaming giant.

Thomas François, a former editorial vice president who was also convicted on a charge of attempted sexual assault, was handed a suspended three-year term, while former chief creative officer Serge Hascoet was given an 18-month suspended sentence.

Former games director Guillaume Patrux received a 12-month suspended sentence.

Source: French court convicts ex-Ubisoft executives over culture of workplace harassment; https://www.france24.com/en/20200714-metoo-fallout-at-french-video-game-company-ubisoft-could-signal-industry-shift

 

Buy tickets – Building International Terf Sisterhood – Euston, London

WDI International Conference 26-27 July 2025 London, UK

Building International Terf Sisterhood &

End Sex Falsification and Restore Safeguarding – UK Campaign

WDI invite you to a women only, hybrid international conference at the Wesley Hotel (gone are the days when we had to keep the location secret) near Euston and Kings Cross, London, UK. The spread of gender identity politics has been swift and wide reaching. Women’s Declaration International has been working for seven years to defend women’s sex based rights against this politics and has a declaration signed by 547 organizations and nearly 40,000 individuals from 160 countries. This conference will be a wonderful time to get together and will help us share information about how to defend women’s rights. The conference theme will be our great collective success building International Terf Sisterhood but as always we will be focussing on all the issues raised in the Declaration. If you can’t attend in person you can join us online.

Source: Buy tickets – Building International Terf Sisterhood – Euston

Universities ‘don’t protect academics from trans harassment’ | The Telegraph

Universities have failed to protect gender-critical academics from interference and harassment, a government-commissioned report has found.

A review led by Professor Alice Sullivan, a sociology expert at University College London (UCL), found that many academics had faced “barriers to research” as well as abuse and intimidation because of their gender-critical views.

The report, which was commissioned by the previous Conservative government and analysed submissions from 140 academics, claimed failure to support such individuals was “a stain on the higher education sector”.

Universities have failed to protect gender-critical academics from interference and harassment, a government-commissioned report has found.

A review led by Professor Alice Sullivan, a sociology expert at University College London (UCL), found that many academics had faced “barriers to research” as well as abuse and intimidation because of their gender-critical views.

The report, which was commissioned by the previous Conservative government and analysed submissions from 140 academics, claimed failure to support such individuals was “a stain on the higher education sector”.

It alleged that administrative bloat at UK universities in recent years and the growth of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) departments were interfering with academic freedom.

Source: Universities ‘don’t protect academics from trans harassment’

Lia Thomas: UPenn to ban trans athletes after swimmer probe | BBC

The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to block transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports after a federal civil rights investigation stemming from swimmer Lia Thomas.

The US Department of Education announced the agreement, saying the Ivy League institution would apologise and restore to female athletes titles and records that were “misappropriated by male athletes”.

The university said it would update its records set during the 2021–22 season to “indicate who would now hold the records under current eligibility guidelines”, but it did not say whether Thomas’ records would be erased.

Thomas became the first trans athlete to win the highest US national college title in March 2022.

The deal marks the latest development in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on transgender athletes participating in sports. He signed an executive order days after coming into office that sought to prevent transgender women from competing in female categories of sports.

The university was among several that his administration opened investigations into over possible violations of Title IX, a 1972 civil rights law that bans sex-based discrimination in any education programme or activity that receives federal funding.

Two months later, the Trump administration paused $175m (£127m) in federal funding to the college over its transgender athlete policy.

Under Tuesday’s deal, the university must stick to “biology-based definitions” of male and female, in line with the president’s executive orders, said the education department.

Last year, Thomas took legal action in a bid to compete again in elite women’s sports, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland rejected the case.

It came two years after governing body World Aquatics voted to ban transgender women from such events if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.

Human Rights Campaign, the largest political group lobbying for LGBT rights in the US, issued a statement criticising the deal.

Source: Lia Thomas: UPenn to ban trans athletes after swimmer probe

WoPAI Intervenes at Human Rights Council Session | Women’s Platform for Action International

In support of the Sex Based Violence Report by Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls Reem Alsalem, WoPAI attended the 59th HRC Session to speak.

Source: WoPAI Intervenes at Human Rights Council Session | Women’s Platform for Action International

Man, 92, who allegedly raped and murdered woman in 1967 caught after DNA advances, court told | UK news | The Guardian

Detectives caught a 92-year-old man who it is alleged murdered and raped a woman in her home almost six decades ago after advances in DNA techniques led them to the suspect, a jury has been told.

An extensive police operation was launched in Bristol in the summer of 1967 after the death of mother of two Louisa Dunne, 75, but her killer could not be found, a jury at the city’s crown court heard.

Evidence relating to the case was stored and last year a DNA match was allegedly made between material found at the murder scene and a man named Ryland Headley, the court was told. Headley, from Ipswich, Suffolk, denies murder and rape.

The jury heard that soon after the murder, Headley moved to Suffolk, where in 1977 he raped two women, threatening to strangle or smother them if they did not follow his orders.

He threatened to strangle the 84-year-old if she did not do what he ordered, the court heard. Headley told the 79-year-old he had a gun and warned her that, if she did not follow his instructions: “I’ll put a pillow over your face and smother you.”

Source: Man, 92, who allegedly raped and murdered woman in 1967 caught after DNA advances, court told | UK news | The Guardian