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geariod.bsky.social
Gearoid
@geariod.bsky.social
940 followers 2.9K following 660 posts
Old, patched up but somehow still in working order. Just.
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Reposted by Gearoid
donmoyn.bsky.social
The decline of democracy in the US means you can’t visit the US if you commented on the decline of democracy in the US
clarajeffery.bsky.social Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 5h
This is INSANE www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/t...

and these are our closest allies!
Travelers visiting the United States from countries like Britain, France, Germany and South Korea could soon have to undergo a review of up to five years of their social media history, according to a proposal filed on Tuesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The change would affect visitors eligible for the visa waiver program, which allows people from 42 countries to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa as long as they first obtain electronic travel authorization. In a document filed on Tuesday in the Federal Register, C.B.P. said it plans to ask applicants for a long list of personal data including social media, email addresses from the last decade, and the names, birth dates, places of residence and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings and children. Under the current system, applicants from visa waiver countries must enroll in the Electronic System for Travel Authorization program. They pay $40 and submit an email address, home address, phone number and emergency contact information. The authorization is good for two years.
December 10, 2025 at 1:53 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
dieworkwear.bsky.social
immigrants score the lowest on tests, but they also take all our jobs, while at the same time taking all the welfare and buying all the homes
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 10h
Stephen Miller: "If you subtract immigration out of test scores, all of the sudden our test scores skyrocket"
December 9, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
just riffing on this, in 1944 my grandad's friend Paddy, who would go on to become a very distinguished writer, kidnapped a German general in occupied Crete and took him up into the mountains with a resistance team, from where he was sent on to the UK by submarine. Now, up in the mountains ...
beijingpalmer.bsky.social BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h
there is not any particularly strong evidence that study of the humanities make people good people. the elites of many brutal empires were extremely well-read!
December 9, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
tupped.bsky.social
New Gist: Waving the Ban Hammer
Patrick O'Donovan has proposed a National ID system, a Meta-endorsed regulation model and a mass surveillance machine, all in one.

It's government by Dunning-Kruger.
www.thegist.ie/the-gist-wav...
The Gist: Waving the Ban Hammer
Patrick O'Donovan has proposed a National ID system, a Meta-endorsed regulation model and a mass surveillance machine, all in one. This is the Gist.
www.thegist.ie
December 9, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
ciara2001.bsky.social
Hmm, RTE "He said Mr Burke was using the courts to pursue a political campaign against transgenderism, and that was an abuse of process."

The Journal "In a new ruling today, judge Cregan said that Burke and his family were using the courts to pursue a political campaign against transgender rights."
December 9, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
hleehurley.com
"A High Court judge said teacher Enoch Burke and his family could be using his court case to make money and that it was clear Mr Burke had "something to hide" about his income"

"He said...was using the courts to pursue a political campaign against transgenderism, and that was an abuse of process"
Enoch Burke has 'something to hide' over income - judge
A High Court judge has said teacher Enoch Burke and his family could be using his court case to make money and that it was clear Mr Burke had "something to hide" about his income.
www.rte.ie
December 9, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
blairaf.com
Unclear how a $19 billion dependency on a US tech giant will "promote and protect Canada's digital sovereignty"

blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issue...
Microsoft Deepens Its Commitment to Canada with Landmark $19B AI Investment
Today, Microsoft is announcing the most important commitment in Microsoft Canada’s history. We’re adding to our investments – with a total of $19 billion CAD between 2023 and 2027, including more than...
blogs.microsoft.com
December 9, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
danielsohege.bsky.social
There are some spectacularly misguided "assumptions" in the Home Office's impact assessment on its changes to immigration rules. More than that though, it confirms not only will these changes cost the country billions, they are also discriminatory. 1/
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6937e6...
Mandatory specific impact test - Statutory Equalities Duties Complete Statutory Equalities Duties The Home Office assess that there may be some indirect impacts as a result of the changes including raising the skills threshold and salary requirements. These are more likely to affect younger people who are likely to be earlier in their career and therefore less likely to have reached the higher salary of more experienced colleagues. It may also affect those where there is still evidence of lower pay including women and those with disabilities. However, the Home Office consider that these changes are justified for legitimate policy aims of lowering net migration and reducing reliance on overseas workers. In relation to social care, the Home Office assess that there may be some indirect impact of closing the route on those from countries which make up the majority of care workers including Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana, India and Pakistan. This may indirectly affect characteristics including ethnicity, religion, race. The department also know that the sector is more commonly occupied by women so likely to have a greater impact on women than men from those countries. The Home Office also recognise that this may have an impact on user of care services who are likely to be older people and those with disabilities. The Home Office believes that despite these points the changes are justified for a number of policy reasons including reducing net migration and ending reliance on overseas recruitment.
December 9, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
gregsargent.bsky.social
Awful: Trump just admitted in a new interview that he knows "very little" about the Honduran ex-president he pardoned. This guy trafficked a gazillion times more drugs into the US than anyone Trump has executed. Wrecks his case for the boat bombings.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2041...
Trump Accidentally Sabotages Case for Bombings in New Interview Fiasco
The president’s claims about the boat killings and his pardon of the Honduran ex-president in a new Politico interview should finally convince Republicans that they, and we, must get to the bottom of ...
newrepublic.com
December 9, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
lifeisterrible.bsky.social
December 9, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
servicepup-rune.bsky.social
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has launched a “know your rights” guide for trans and non-binary people in Ireland.

www.iccl.ie/news/iccl-pu...
ICCL publishes Ireland’s first ever “Know Your Rights” guide for trans and non-binary people
The guide sets out in plain English the rights of trans and non-binary adults and young people, with information on areas including legal gender recognition, family life, healthcare, and equality, saf...
www.iccl.ie
December 9, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
junlper.beer
the way that ai is being advertised now is that everyone has to pretend to be incompetent and incredibly incapable and useless at everything
moreperfectunion.bsky.social More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 16h
Jimmy Fallon: "And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?"

Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."
December 9, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
natacha.bsky.social
The only person to come out of the SPeggie/NHS tribunal vindicated and with a completely untarnished reputation is Dr Beth Upton.

Not SPeggie,
Not the NHS management,
Not Four Women Scotland,
Not the media,

Just Dr Upton.
December 9, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
magnets.bsky.social
LGBT+ people in Scotland should see the Record the same way Scousers see the Sun imo
December 9, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
marcusjdl.bsky.social
True headline: “Peggie Found By Tribunal To Have Committed Transphobic Hate Incident”
December 9, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
sarahoconnorft.ft.com
Welcome to Britain, a country so short of dentists that an MP's 87-year-old mum pulled her teeth out with pliers. Also a country with thousands of foreign-qualified dentists who can’t work until they pass an exam so oversubscribed it’s like trying to book Glasto tickets. www.ft.com/content/f4e5...
December 9, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
vermontgmg.bsky.social
I can’t believe how much of the Trump era is about solving problems that *don’t* exist while making all the problems that *do* exist, worse.

There is no one who thinks the biggest problem with air travel right now is not having an area to do pull-ups.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d
Duffy on what he's doing to improve the airport experience for travelers: "Maybe I want a workout area where people might get some blood flowing doing some pull ups or step ups in the airport."
December 9, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
sathnam.bsky.social
With this there would have been no Mo Farah. No Freddie Mercury. No Lenny Henry. No George Michael. No Meera Syal. No Sadiq Khan. No Sajid Javid. No Salman Rushdie. No Hanif Kureishi.
December 9, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Gearoid
lesleymcdowell.bsky.social
I've only seen The Herald report it accurately: www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/2568...
'Dr Beth Upton is the real winner in the Sandie Peggie tribunal ruling'
NHS Fife’s handling of the dispute between Peggie and Dr Upton was an absolute dumpster fire but Dr Beth Upton should have cause to celebrate.
www.heraldscotland.com
December 9, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
mimmymum.bsky.social
Remember when Helen Joyce was called out as "not an expert" by Australian courts - Now Maya Forstater has been told the same in the Peggie judgment! 👏👏👏

The judgement states outright that the evidence submitted by her & Sex Matters was “not skilled evidence.”

This is the Tribunal’s exact wording!
Highlighted paragraph: Evidence from Ms Forstater and Mx Valentine 1038. We turn to address the evidence from Ms Forstater and Mx Valentine, which the parties had described as “research evidence”. That is not, so far as we are aware, a term of law. Nothing was cited to support the use of that term. It is not skilled evidence as explained below, and the parties did not suggest that either witness was skilled or expert in that sense. It was not necessarily inadmissible, given the terms of Rule 41, and until read and considered the extent to which it might be relevant could not be assessed, but the weight to attach to it was a different consideration Highlighted sections: 1040. In many respects the evidence in the statements was more in the nature of material for the public debate on wider issues as to what the law should be, and on occasion it appeared to us to be polemic, rather than evidence relevant to the issues at an Employment Tribunal. 1041. Opinion evidence was addressed in Walker and Walker on Evidence, Fifth Edition (“Walker”), which explained the distinction between evidence of fact, and of belief or opinion. Opinion evidence may be led from what Walker describes as an ordinary witness (the classification of witnesses is between ordinary and skilled), and examples of that are given. Ms Forstater 1042. The statement from Ms Forstater was not presented as impartial evidence, but specifically as one given in support of the claimant. It had at paragraph 10 an argument as to facts, of which Ms Forstater said that she was certain. They are however we consider not facts, but expressions of her opinion. The assertion at 10 (b) for example was “Sex is in general readily perceptible and is salient to other people.” That we consider cannot be other than her opinion, for which no support from any document in the Supplementary Bundle appeared to be referred to in her written witness statement. It was contradicted by other evidence, and the terms of a Note issued by EJ Tinnion on 5 January 2025 in relation to the second respondent. It did not appear to be an assertion related to the second respondent in particular, but as a more general proposition. 1043. The assertion at (d) had a further series of propositions which were opinions although presented as facts. If the 1992 Regulations, then as discussed they are not within this Tribunal’s jurisdiction, and the comment appears to be an argument over the policy of the law, or how the law should be interpreted, neither of which are relevant evidence before us. 1044. The sub-paragraphs include, by way of example, (ii) “women are in general more fearful of men than men … Highlighted sections: That is again an expression of opinion without cross reference to any document in the Supplementary Bundle. Sub-paragraph (v) was “unless rules about single-sex spaces are clearly stated and enforced it leaves women open to risk of sexual harassment and assault, and makes these spaces feel unsafe.” That again is an expression of opinion. The witness statement purports to expand on the comments at paragraph 10 stating that the facts stated are true. In our view they are not reliable as evidence from a person not a skilled witness on the propositions that are advanced. 1045. Where there was reference to documentation it is in our view both partial and incomplete. Part of it is based on research undertaken by Sex Matters, an organisation of which she is the Chief Executive Officer. It is a campaigning organisation, as set out in paragraph 4. There is an obvious risk that that research is impacted by the nature of it, which is not suggested to be an independent academic study .... In our view it would not be dealing with a case fairly or justly to rely on expressions of opinion from a person campaigning on one side of the argument on such an issue. We did not consider that the case of Connor on which the claimant founded, cited above and which indicated that in some situations evidence which was not expert in nature could be sufficient, was applicable to such a matter. 1047. Our review of the literature referred to by Ms Forstater reveals that the broad generalisations she seeks to take from it are not sufficiently supported by the document or document founded on, both from the terms of the document and the other documents in relation to the same broad issue, to be treated as reliable evidence.
December 9, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
thatdocphoenix.com
Radio 4 and BBC and Channel 4 News and all the papers completely skewing the Peggie story so your average person will have no idea what actually happened. Doesn’t this make you furious? Integrity in journalism is dead, not just in the US
December 9, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
goodlawproject.org
An important point to come out of the Sandie Peggie case is that 'gender critical' employees can't take matters into their own hands and confront trans employees. If they do that it is likely to be harassment/ bullying/ a hate incident.
So far as her other comments are concerned, they were impermissible manifestations of her belief and were in our view what amounted to an incident of harassment by the claimant of the second respondent related to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, reasonably perceived by the second respondent to be so, and were a breach by the claimant of section 26 of the Act and of the Bullying and Harassment Policy. The second respondent was entitled to view the actions of the claimant in those particular regards as being such harassment, or as a “hate incident” within the policy, and the first respondent was entitled in principle to act on the complaint made, but the detail of how it did so depends on all the circumstances as more fully addressed below. The second respondent was also entitled to regard the claimant’s actions as a breach of the second respondent’s Article 8 rights, so far as the claimant’s expression of her beliefs was impermissible. 1034. We also considered that the claimant had acted deliberately to be able to challenge the second respondent whilst they were alone. What she did was to wait until other members of staff had left the changing room, and for the second respondent to leave the cubicle, before raising her own beliefs directly with the second respondent in the manner we have set out. 1035. Whilst the claimant had not been informed as promptly and in the detail we considered appropriate, and the first respondent did not consider whether to revoke permission at all, the claimant did not herself raise any formal grievance under the policy. She is an experienced member of staff who had access to union advice. She knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that the first respondent having granted permission to the second respondent she required to have raised her concerns with the first respondent as the decision-maker rather than with the colleague to whom it had been granted, and in any event ought not to have done so in the manner that she did.
December 9, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
dieworkwear.bsky.social
me dressed up and exercising at the airport before my 8 hour flight
December 9, 2025 at 3:20 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
chrisgeidner.bsky.social
OK, seriously. This is wild.

Judge Jay Bybee (1) raises a new issue — the Domestic Violence Clause of the Constitution — to consider in the troop deployment cases; (2) extensively details its historical application;
The solution to the second issue and to George Mason’s question was the Domestic Violence Clause in Article IV , Section 4, which provides: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. The Clause’s phrasing directly inverts the Declaration of Independence’s grievance that the King “kept among us . . . Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” The Declaration of Independence ¶ 13 (emphasis added). The Militia and Domestic Violence Clauses were to be read together to keep the federal government and the states in their respective lanes. We can quibble around the edges of these examples, and it is possible that I have missed other examples or even counterexamples, but the historical record from George Washington to George H.W. Bush—is, in the main, consistent: federal use of the Militia is constrained by the Domestic Violence Clause. Nor is this historical pattern confined to domestic unrest involving only state law or interests: in most episodes, federal interests, laws, and policies were the primary target of the unrest. From the earliest examples of presidential practice to modern day deployments, presidents have understood that state governments must first request assistance as a necessary condition for the federalized deployment of the Militia in response to domestic disturbances. An important exception to this rule comes out of the Fourteenth Amendment: If states actively oppose or resist the enforcement of the laws in violation of the Privileges or Immunities, Due Process, or Equal Protection Clauses, the federal government may deploy troops to execute the laws of the United States. In such cases, the Domestic Violence Clause provides no basis for objection when the states themselves are the source of or have acquiesced in the unrest. But otherwise, the President may not deploy the Militia without state consent.
December 9, 2025 at 3:37 AM
Reposted by Gearoid
kirstimiller30.bsky.social
Peggie tried to portray to the world that Dr Upton was hostile invader of the women's changeroom (Peggie and Maya failed badly). The court found Peggie’s and Maya’s evidence as totally unreliable.

Dr Upton was cleared of no wrongdoing. Her evidence was considered reliable.
December 9, 2025 at 5:23 AM