BC LAW
Saved by @Alex1Powell

We need to talk about the 'expert' witness statement evidence led by Ms Bell in her successful case before the Tavistock. THREAD

 You can see who gave evidence in her support from these extracts from the Tavistock's Skeleton Argument.
Helpful for you to bear in mind that her solicitor was a man called Paul Conrathe, who has a long association with the religious right in the US (I have talked about him a number of times but this is as good a starting point as any). https://t.co/GqoBNcRaEA
I am not going to address here other criticisms that might be made of the form in which that evidence was given or the timing of its service before the court. I am just going to address, in alphabetical order, the individuals whose evidence Mr Conrathe led on Ms Bell's behalf.
The first witness, alphabetically, was Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford, Michael Biggs.

Mr Biggs was exposed for posting transphobic statements online under a fake twitter handle: @MrHenryWimbush according to this report.
https://t.co/EDPCZt6Mih
The tweets posted under that account include “transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons." It also accused The Lancet, amongst the world's oldest and best-known general medical journals, of "endorsing eugenics".
The second, alphabetically, is Professor Neil Evans.

Although he was described as an “internationally recognised neuroendocrinologist” he is in fact a Professor at the Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health & Comparative Medicine: https://t.co/42WlwZ4NBe
Amongst his papers on veterinary medicine are a study on puberty blockers in sheep which was taken up by the Christian Institute which describes itself as "committed to the truths of historic, biblical Christianity" https://t.co/tYHpxYmIE8.
The third, alphabetically, is Professor Gene Feder. He is plainly an eminent academic and practising GP (https://t.co/1VrW5hyElU) but he doesn't seem to have any particular expertise in this field.
The fourth is Professor Gillberg, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Centre, University of Gothenburg.

Professor Gillberg was involved in a major scandal in Sweden involving the shredding of evidence. https://t.co/B6lpLvRSqA
The fifth, is Professor Paul Hruz. Professor Hruz's evidence was explicitly relied on by the Divisional Court.

Paul Hruz is linked with the religious hate group, the Alliance for Defending Freedom https://t.co/1skuO8GRiP
Professor Hruz is also linked with the US Heritage Foundation. https://t.co/N4i0ULnB4T
According to this report, Professor Hruz's own university entirely disavows his notional expertise in the field (https://t.co/bEV2wtt4BG) but that did not stop the Divisional Court from placing considerable reliance on it.
There is a lot more to say about Professor Hruz but let me move on to the sixth in alphabetical order, Professor Stephen Levine (whose evidence was also relied on by the Divisional Court).
Stephen Levine has given evidence for the ADF.

As the ADF puts it here: "aggressive pro-abortion and LGBT activists aren’t just targeting churches and creative professionals. They’re also targeting our children—and they’re lying about it" (https://t.co/I3lIwrXkw2).
The seventh was Professor Patrick Parkinson.

He is a Professor of the University of Queensland. So far as I can see, his evidence should not have been before the Divisional Court at all but nevertheless it was.
According to this report (https://t.co/cd0jTdWsuQ) "Parkinson compared transgender people to the coronavirus, declaring it an 'epidemic.' Previously, he has... campaigned against LGBTQIA+ adoption and has ties to Freedom For Faith and The Australian Christian Lobby."
Parkinson has written in favour of conversion therapy https://t.co/f7trpOYGvo
He chairs or chaired the conservative think tank Freedom for Faith and was commission by the Australian Christian Lobby but stepped down from his role as head of the Law School. https://t.co/eobAtU88JS
Freedom for Faith were recently angered by a decision to stop LGBT conversion practices in Australian churches https://t.co/37LMspdeG7
The eight witness was Professor Sophie Scott. You can see her academic specialisation here https://t.co/kEJ0U5oJ14. Plainly she is an eminent academic but she does not claim any particular expertise on the question before the Divisional Court.
The final witness was Professor John Whitehall, Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, Western Sydney University Medical School. Whitehall is another particularly interesting individual.
You can read about Whitehall here.

He has admitted that that, in 50 years in medicine, he has never treated a child for gender-related issues and has (or had) published no papers to do with gender dysphoria or trans healthcare. https://t.co/v9PD1VGLZg
Whitehall was listed as a speaker in support of gay conversion therapy for the Australian Christian Lobby. https://t.co/CdxibDKR3m
He was Vice-President of the US-based Christian Anti-Communism Crusade https://t.co/smlpcbXHAW
He was former Deputy Present of the Christian Democratic Party whose is Fred Nile. Nile has said homosexuality is a “mental disorder” and is “immoral, unnatural and abnormal.”
Summing up on John Whitehall, he has multiple links to right-wing, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion and anti-trans groups.
These are the people whose evidence Ms Bell's lawyer placed before the Divisional Court, and at least some of which influenced it in the decision it made.

However, the Court shamefully refused to hear from any trans voices. It rejected (at least) three would be interventions.
Even if you do not care to listen to the views of the trans community you should be deeply alarmed that these or some of these highly marginal figures in world medicine are influencing the law around healthcare for children in the UK.
And if you do not care about the trans community - but you do care about abortion rights or gay rights - you should be deeply alarmed at the influence those who are no friends of 'progressives' are gaining in the UK.
If you'd like to support our efforts to protect perhaps the most vulnerable community in the country from the attentions of the US Religious Right (shamefully propped up by some who call themselves progressive) you can do so here. https://t.co/75Zjv7MQJi

More from Jo Maugham

Jo Maugham QC
Jo Maugham QC
@JolyonMaugham
If you want to know what happens to populations living in austerity who trade with the US on WTO terms, take a look at Tonga. THREAD

I visited Tonga in 1981 and it was, like so many other Pacific Island nations, slowly adjusting to Westernisation. The people ate mostly fish and vegetables. /1

Now it has rates of Type 2 diabetes of up to 40%, life expectancy has fallen by 10 years and well over half the population is obese. So what happened? (stats https://t.co/1XQHdqL8o8) /2

What happened was that the US discovered that Tonga was a great dumping ground for a cheap and locally unsaleable product known as a Turkey 'tail', essentially a gland of 40-45% fat. /3

They were fatty and, because cheap, attractive to a poor population. By 2007, in another Pacific Island nation, Samoa, 20 kilos per person were being sold every year. But it banned them for public health reasons. https://t.co/2f1N8tuMp6 /4
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Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
The High Court gave us 'permission' to bring some of our judicial review arguments in relation to the Government's odd PPE contracts. We are today asking again for permission to bring the others. You can read our (remarkable) Skeleton and Statement here.

We chose these three contracts (Clandeboye/Ayanda/Pestfix) in June/July when we had much less understanding than we do now about what was going on. Once you appreciate that fact, what we have already uncovered (before disclosure) about those three is all the more remarkable.

Let me just focus on one aspect of those contracts: the quality of the product supplied by those companies (respectively, a confectionery wholesaler, a 'family office', and a pest control specialist).

And, rather than me editorialising, let me quote the words of those companies themselves, or Government, or Government agencies.

This is what Government says about what we bought from Clandeboye (we spent a total of £108m on gowns).

But how can they not be cleared for use as gowns? And yet be "authorised for distribution... as part of the PPE ensemble"? It doesn't sound like what we got was gowns.
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Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
So, just before Christmas, Government what it called a "response" to this New York Times account of cronyism in pandemic spending.

And I said, when that "response" - which you can read here https://t.co/gLEJzuqoAx - was published that every single notional rebuttal by Government of a claim made by the New York Times was false, misleading or both.

And it's time for me to make good.

Here's the first "rebuttal" by Government to the New York Times' claim that: "The government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive V.I.P. lane."


A number of points might be made.

(1) Government cannot say the NYT got it wrong. (2) the NAO found the VIP lane (later renamed the high-priority lane) "sat alongside" the normal lane. And I have shown elsewhere VIP contracts were handled by different teams all the way through.


(3) Although Govt says "offers of support raised by Opposition MPs were dealt with expeditiously" the NAO report does not record any referrals made by an Opposition MP leading to a contract - and the Government response telling does not say any did.
GOVERNMENT
Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
We at @GoodLawProject have a paralegal attending the case management hearing in the Tavistock's appeal in the Bell case on behalf of our trans defence fund. Occasional updates from them as the hearing progresses...

The 'stay' - effectively a suspension of the legal effect of the first instance decision - will continue. That has been agreed between the parties.

Judge doesn't want oral submissions from any of the would-be intervenors at the case management hearing. (I wouldn't read anything in to that.)

Tavistock supports the intervention by @stonewalluk, @BrookCharity, @TheEndoSociety and @Genderintell, is neutral on those from @libertyhq and @TheBMA and opposes those from Transgender Trend and Dr Bell and a 'parents' group'.

Counsel for Bell opposes - I hope I have that right - the joint intervention.
LAW
Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
From time to time, indeed quite a lot, I receive letters from Pestfix's lawyers who boast of acting for the world's leading tech companies (and a pest control specialist with last reported net assets of £18k but now engorged with profits from £350m of PPE contracts).

Sometimes I have to send those letters off to lawyers acting for @GoodLawProject who charge quite a lot of money (we might now be well into five figures) to advise me on the various ways to tell Pestfix's lawyers to sling their hook.

What I find especially crappy about this is that Pestfix doesn't like its actions being in the public domain. Their letters are marked "private and confidential" to try and stop me telling you they are using profits from public contracts to muzzle my work.

And if I do tell you, they complain to the court that it is my actions that lead to public opprobrium being heaped upon them. For my part, I tend to think it is mostly their actions.

Anyway. I mention this by way of precusor to observing that the NAO has quietly made some changes to their report about, inter alia, the £350m in PPE contracts won by a small pest control specialist in Littlehampton that got into the VIP channel for reasons no one can explain.
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In a final address, @JusticeATR Makan Delrahim says some of the changes recommended by House Judiciary are "quite sensible." DOJ needs more funding for antitrust, and he backs higher filing fees for mergers.

He has six recommendations: 1) Create bright line rules and alter burden of proof for mergers.

“Courts need additional guidance in these cases.” In cases where a company has more than 50 percent market share, burden should be on merging parties for any transaction in that market, he says

DOJ would still have to prove the market definition and the market share of the dominant firm.
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A Warning:

The 'Freeports' in at least 10 locations in Britain will evolve into Charter Cities with their own laws. They will NOT be legally bound to ANY of the trade agreements between the UK and EU or any other country. They will be used to bypass all International scrutiny

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TXgrlWatching 💻🛡⚔...
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Absurdistwords
Absurdistwords
@absurdistwords
Pretty much every professional field EXCEPT police have clear, rigorous, transparent consequences for unethical behavior, negligence and malpractice.


The idea that we can "disbar" lawyers but not police is absolute foolishness.

All the factors that make disbarment a necessary tool for lawyers apply to cops... except that cops don't need to be qualified in the first place.

It is a rank absurdity of the criminal justice system that one needs to be educated and certified with a degree in order to argue on behalf of someone's life in court, but to have no qualifications necessary to detain, assault, or prematurely end that same life.

There are countless circumstances in which a lawyer's unethical behavior will result in them not only losing their job but never being able to practice it again.

But corrupt and murderous cops can be rehired indefinitely.

A lawyer's entire career can be ended forever if they were found to have knowingly put someone on a stand to lie.

Police officers however are allowed to lie in court on the stand under oath.

So much that lawyers aren't penalized for putting cops on the stand to lie.
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Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
A Call for Help!
1. we have a petition/open letter for the WHO
https://t.co/Bie8pUy7WJ
2. 372 people signed it but we want to boost it
3. I post link ascomment on related YT videos
Tks @KevinMcH3 for the tip
4. You can help by liking the comments
5. That will increase visibility!


6. Links for YT videos with comments are here
1. China curtails hunt for virus origins
https://t.co/NhcYdtsd2Y
2. China: nearly 500,000 may have been infected in Wuhan
https://t.co/KRUQ5hFrii
3. WHO becomes US-China battleground | DW Documentary
https://t.co/8ah8M8bpiB


4. Gravitas: The 'hidden hunt' for COVID-19 origins
https://t.co/hHhhUqgPYt
5. Seeking the invisible: hunt for origins of deadly Covid-19 coronavirus will take scientists to Wuhan
https://t.co/tCPQqjUZF3
6. WHO team to probe COVID-19 origins in

7. How forensic researchers track down origins of SARS-CoV2
https://t.co/r7A1lkr5li
8. Bats, roadblocks & the origins of coronavirus - BBC
https://t.co/Kh9jacC54t
9. New coronavirus strain is far more infectious and spreading among young - BBC

10. https://t.co/OcpAZ9nrl3
11. https://t.co/OcpAZ9nrl3
12. https://t.co/OcpAZ9nrl3
13. https://t.co/PhmoSfvbD8
14. https://t.co/TsvB7SYN2c
15. https://t.co/0o5YbmiUbJ
16. https://t.co/ir7QiwmlWt
17. https://t.co/PTT3KZDi8F
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