Joanna Williams

As doctors down stethoscopes and walk out of hospitals in their ongoing strike for better pay and working conditions, the public might reasonably conclude that the NHS is underfunded. How, then, do we make sense of this week’s revelation that NHS England is set to open three new departments focusing on equality and diversity? Either there are insufficient funds to pay doctors and nurses a decent wage or there is money to splash out on rainbow lanyards and unconscious bias training. Both cannot be true at the same time. The three new NHS England departments, set to open in April 2024, will be called ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’, ‘People and Culture’ and ‘People and Communities’.

What’s the point of museums? According to researchers at the University of Leicester, museums should help children explore their gender identity. Academics have issued 44-pages of detailed guidance on how museum directors can tackle 'growing uncertainty and anxiety surrounding trans-inclusive practice' while stimulating 'positive explorations of gender' for children. The University of Leicester has got this all wrong. Whether it is school sex education classes, TikTok videos, libraries hosting drag queen story hours, picture books about grandad attending Pride, or television programmes about boys who want to become girls, children are bombarded with opportunities to explore their gender identity.

Who is to blame for Birmingham City Council’s dire financial situation? The council has long been struggling to pay its bills and effectively declared itself bankrupt yesterday. In a brief statement, a spokesperson for the Labour-run council pointed the finger at ‘equal pay claims’ as the cause of the problem, explaining:  The council is still in a position where it must fund the equal pay liability that has accrued to date (in the region of £650m to £760m), but it does not have the resources to do so. Europe’s largest local authority has indeed paid a high price for its gender pay gap. After a 2012 legal case found in favour of 174 of the city’s women, the council has so far doled out £1.1billion.

Carla Foster is to be released from prison. Her 28-month sentence for illegally obtaining abortion pills and terminating a pregnancy sparked angry protests from feminists and pro-choice activists when it was handed down last month. Now, following weeks of legal dispute, the Court of Appeal has reduced her sentence to 14 months suspended. Having spent 35 days behind bars, Foster is set to be freed immediately. Good. The Court of Appeal’s judgment is to be welcomed. It demonstrates compassion for a woman who found herself in a highly unusual and distressing situation and it allows her to be reunited with her three children.

Keir Starmer clearly does not abide by the principle ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. On the contrary, with this week’s announcement of Labour’s plans to overhaul England’s education sector, Starmer has proven that even in the rare instance of something working well, Labour can be relied upon to make it worse. Come the next election, Conservative activists looking to tally up the party’s successes will almost certainly land on education. Sure, they will have to close their eyes to the devastating impact of lockdown school closures and continued disruption by striking teachers. And they might have to cross their fingers and hope no one quizzes them on the mess that is Relationships and Sex Education.

Carla Foster spent last night in a prison cell. In 2020, after having obtained abortion pills under false pretences, the 44-year-old mother of three terminated her pregnancy at between 32 and 34 weeks gestation. This week, she was found guilty under section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 for administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion. She has been sentenced to two years in prison. Foster’s imprisonment has sparked shock and anger among commentators, campaigners and politicians. ‘There is a mechanism the government can use to show mercy to women convicted today for having an abortion – it’s a royal prerogative and was last used in 2020,’ tweeted Labour’s Stella Creasy.

What is it with Humza Yousaf? Scotland’s First Minister has plenty on his plate: police are investigating the SNP’s financial affairs, feminists are pushing back against his plans for gender recognition reform and now lawyers are boycotting the pilot scheme for jury-less rape trials that he has vocally championed. At some point, this stops being simple misfortune and instead suggests serious political miscalculation. Criticism of the Scottish government’s plans to try rape cases without a jury has been building. Now, with at least seven legal bodies having voted to reject the proposed changes to court proceedings, a near unanimous boycott looks likely to render the pilot scheme unworkable. Good. From Bud Light to Maybelline make-up, calls for boycotts are two-a-penny nowadays.

Parliament’s ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok cannot come soon enough. But it’s not just cyber security we need to worry about. Our social media happy MPs clearly need saving from themselves. Matt Hancock might be the parliamentary champion of toe-curling film clips but other MPs are bidding to out-cringe him.  Labour’s Stella Creasy filmed her response this weekend to a critic who had moved from bombarding her office with emails, to reporting her to social services for exposing her children to 'extreme views'. Creasy was quickly cleared but the whole situation left her, understandably, angry – not least when police told the MP she should 'expect to be challenged' because of the public nature of her role. I sympathise.

What are schools for? The answer used to be obvious: school was where children went to learn how to read, write and count, while the lucky ones picked up some history, algebra, chemistry and literature along the way. But not any more. Nowadays, academic subjects have become a sideshow to the main event: changing children’s attitudes and values. Whether it is relationships and sex education classes that teach children there are 73 genders, citizenship lessons that preach the importance of fair trade, or personal, social and health education workshops on white privilege, today’s schools seem more concerned with coercing children into accepting a particular set of beliefs than they are with teaching subject knowledge.

Striking was part of my childhood. One of my first memories is of walking through Middlesbrough town centre and seeing people with ‘Coal Not Dole’ badges, holding buckets and asking us to ‘Dig Deep for the Miners’. Long before I left primary school, I knew what it meant to be a ‘scab’ and why it was important never to cross a picket line. I backed the men who looked like my dad, men who worked hard but needed more money for their families, over the bosses that wanted to keep them poor. The world has moved on but the class divide continues and I have not changed sides. At the same time, I am not foolish enough to think that today’s strikes by junior doctors, teachers, nurses and university lecturers are of a piece with the mass walkouts of the 1980s.

Concern with what schools are teaching about sex, gender and relationships has been growing. Parents worry their children are being exposed to inappropriate sexualised content and that they are being taught to question their gender identity. Some even report discovering their children are using new names and pronouns while at school without their knowledge or consent. Yet these fears are frequently dismissed as reactionary parents trading in anecdotes and panic. Nothing to see here, has been the message from schools and campaigning organisations alike. Until now. A report from Policy Exchange reveals the extent to which gender ideology is being promoted in schools and the shocking ways in which this puts children at risk.

What shocks me most about Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages is the flippancy surrounding decisions to scare, manipulate and control the British public. We were told, repeatedly, that government ministers were ‘following the science’. But thanks to Isabel Oakeshott we now know that schools were closed, children masked, families and friends separated, visitors kept out of care homes and quarantine periods prolonged, less because of ‘science’ and more, it seems, for political convenience.   So where is the outrage? People lost lives and livelihoods. Children missed out on education and exercise. Physical and mental health suffered. Lengthy NHS waiting lists and economic problems will be with us for many years to come.

Only once have I been asked if I would like to be photographed with my head sticking out of a giant bleeding vagina, but the memory has stuck with me. It was at a book festival in Gothenburg and I was there to promote a Swedish translation of my book, Women Versus Feminism. Despite the language barrier, I was pretty certain the six-foot stand-in vulva was intended to promote period awareness. As a middle-aged woman, I felt I was already quite period-aware and so I politely declined the selfie. Unfortunately, the vagina’s handlers were reluctant to accept this excuse. Not the middle-aged bit – that was self-evident. It was the ‘woman’ part of my lived experience they found troubling.