Males have a significant physical advantage over females. That is just science. No hormones or surgery can negate the advantage. #TruthIsNotACrime #TruthIsNotAHateCrime #FactIsNotHate #MenAreNotWomen #WomenAreNotMen

Thank you, Baroness Deech, for pressing the Government on the age at which children can genuinely understand and consent to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and for raising concerns about bone health, fertility, sexual development and brain maturation. How can an 11- or 12-year-old assess long-term risks to bone health, fertility and development? Can a child sufficiently understand and evaluate the potential lifelong consequences of puberty suppression or masculinising and feminising hormones to give genuinely informed consent? The Government's reliance on parental consent, child assent and trial safeguards was beyond disappointing.... These do not answer the fundamental question.

Who decides what our children are taught and who scrutinises those decisions? Having worked in education and safeguarding for many years, I believe these are questions we should always be asking. External organisations do not become exempt from scrutiny simply because their materials promote 'inclusion'. Political impartiality, parental transparency and safeguarding are responsibilities, not optional extras. An important analysis from @ProtectTeach. 👇

🎅🎄 WE'RE DOWN TO SINGLE FIGURES! 🎄🎅 JUST 9 WEEKS UNTIL CHRISTMAS MORNING! ❤️ Yes, NINE! We've officially crossed the line from double digits to single digits, and I feel this deserves some sort of celebration! 🥳 In exactly nine weeks, Father Christmas will have been, Rudolph will have demolished his carrot, the mince pies will have mysteriously vanished, and millions of people will be surrounded by wrapping paper wondering why nobody remembered to buy batteries! 😂 Meanwhile, Christmas enthusiasts are practically jingling already, while the "IT'S ONLY OCTOBER!" brigade are considering muting me until Boxing Day. And I have a very important question… 🎅 Have you watched a Christmas film yet? And for those of you who insist it's far too early… I regret to inform you that I'll be back next Friday with an even smaller number! 🤣 This countdown is for everyone who LOVES Christmas, everyone who wants to know, everyone who NEEDS to know, and especially those who didn't know they needed to know! 63 DAYS TO GO! 🎄❤️ You're very welcome! 😇🎅

23 OCTOBER 1843 STEAK, CHAMPAGNE AND ABSOLUTELY NO HEALTH AND SAFETY. THE DAY FOURTEEN MEN DECIDED TO HAVE DINNER ON TOP OF NELSON'S COLUMN. The Victorians gave us steam railways, remarkable engineering, magnificent architecture and extraordinary feats of invention. They also occasionally gave us the sort of decisions that make you wonder whether anybody had considered the consequences. Take 23 October 1843. London's magnificent Nelson's Column was nearing completion in Trafalgar Square. The statue of Admiral Lord Nelson had not yet been lifted into its final position. So, naturally, a group of fourteen men decided that this was the perfect opportunity for a celebratory meal. At the top of the column. Approximately 170 feet above Trafalgar Square. Their menu? Steak. Champagne. And, presumably, an extremely relaxed attitude towards gravity. The food and drink were hauled up to the dizzying dining location by pulley. There, perched above London, the party enjoyed what must surely qualify as one of the most spectacularly impractical dinner engagements in British history. One can only imagine the conversation. "More champagne?" "Certainly. Just don't drop the bottle on the pedestrians." Nelson's statue was installed the following month, completing the principal monument. The four enormous bronze lions at its base would not arrive until 1867. So, if you are walking through Trafalgar Square today, spare a thought for the fourteen Victorian gentlemen who looked at a towering construction site and thought: "You know what this needs? A steak dinner." The original London rooftop dining experience.

23 OCTOBER 1951 BEFORE THE FAMOUS DNA PHOTOGRAPH, ROSALIND FRANKLIN WAS ALREADY CHANGING SCIENCE. Most people who recognise the name Rosalind Franklin associate her with DNA, X-ray crystallography and the celebrated Photograph 51. But Franklin's scientific achievements extended far beyond the structure of DNA...And 75 years ago today, she published a particularly important piece of research. On 23 October 1951, the Proceedings of the Royal Society A published her paper: Crystallite Growth in Graphitizing and Non-Graphitizing Carbons. It doesn't exactly trip off the tongue. But its scientific significance was considerable. Franklin had been investigating carbon materials and what happened to their internal structures when subjected to extremely high temperatures. Her research showed that different carbons behaved in fundamentally different ways. Some could develop an increasingly ordered graphite structure when heated. Others resisted that transformation, even under intense heat. The explanation lay partly in the arrangement and connections of the tiny ordered regions within the materials. In graphitizing carbon, these regions could gradually rearrange into a more orderly structure. In non-graphitizing carbon, stronger cross-linking and less favourable orientation made that process much more difficult. She was demonstrating that the microscopic organisation of a material could determine its behaviour. The research contributed to the scientific understanding of carbon structure and graphitization. Among those who reviewed Franklin's paper for the Royal Society was Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, herself a pioneering crystallographer and future Nobel Prize winner. Two remarkable women scientists, connected through the exacting process of scientific research. Franklin would go on to make her best-known contributions to the study of DNA, but reducing her entire career to one photograph does her a disservice. She was an accomplished scientist before her DNA work, and her later research also investigated viruses. She died in 1958, aged just 37. Rosalind Franklin deserves to be remembered not simply for the recognition she did not receive, but for the exceptional science she actually produced. And on this day in 1951, that science was carbon.

120 years ago today, a confrontation at the House of Commons highlighted a growing division within Britain's campaign for women's voting rights. On 23 October 1906, members of the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) attempted to force their way into parliamentary areas at Westminster. Police intervened, and ten women were arrested. The protest was part of an increasingly confrontational campaign associated with Emmeline Pankhurst and the WSPU. Among those associated with the demonstration and subsequent imprisonment were Adela Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Mary Gawthorpe and Anne Cobden-Sanderson. The women who appeared before the magistrates refused the conditions imposed upon them to secure their release. They were imprisoned. The episode provoked further protest and helped attract attention to the suffrage campaign. Women had been campaigning for parliamentary representation since the nineteenth century. Long before the WSPU was established in 1903, campaigners had organised petitions, lobbied MPs, formed political societies and pursued legislative reform. Among the most influential was Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who led the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). The suffragists believed that lasting reform required building parliamentary and public support through constitutional means. The suffragettes took a different approach. Frustrated with the lack of progress, they embraced increasingly militant tactics. At first, these involved disruption and civil disobedience. In later years, elements of the movement engaged in window-smashing, arson, attacks on post boxes and other forms of sabotage. Their activities undoubtedly attracted publicity. Meanwhile, the suffragists continued the painstaking work of winning political support. By the outbreak of the First World War, more than fifty women's suffrage societies were operating across Britain. The war itself transformed the political landscape. Women's contribution to wartime industry, public services and national life challenged longstanding assumptions about their capabilities and citizenship. Parliamentary negotiations, electoral reform and decades of campaigning culminated in the Representation of the People Act 1918. That Act enfranchised some women aged 30 and over who met the relevant qualifications. It was not equal voting rights. Those arrived in 1928, when women gained the parliamentary franchise on the same terms as men. So, when we remember 23 October 1906, we should remember more than arrests and confrontations. We should remember the constitutional campaigners whose work receives far less attention than the dramatic exploits of the suffragettes. We should remember that women campaigning for the same objective did not necessarily agree about the methods. And we should distinguish between making headlines and achieving legislative change. The history of women's suffrage belongs to far more women than the Pankhursts.