‘Amnesty Is Fighting AGAINST Women’s Refuges!’ ｜ J.K. Rowling Charity Row

Good morning, Ian. I don't think anything offends you, does it really? We've all got better things to do. Indeed, yeah, nothing offends me. Nothing at all. But lots of things do anger you. And I noticed in your column this morning, and I think we should talk about this, the story of J.K. Rowling's charity. Tell us more. Yeah, well, this was Amnesty International, which, you know, when I was growing up, this was a saintly organisation which used to campaign against torture, taking on the world's dictatorships and military juntas and so on. But it now seems to have been reduced to sort of fighting against women's refuges because last month, it published a list of 117 organisations which it accused of being part of what it called the anti-rights movement. And one of them was a rape crisis centre or sexual violence centre run by, set up by J.K. Rowling in Edinburgh. Yeah. And, of course, it's on this list. The reason it's on this list is because it won't accept trans women, won't accept men claiming to be women, to use its services. And, you know, under Amnesty International's view, this is, you know, gender-critical beliefs, as they're called, are anti-rights. They're a threat to human rights. So, anyway, J.K. Rowling pushed back against this and sort of threatened Amnesty with legal action. Not just that. She offered some help with legal fees to other organisations which found themselves on Amnesty's list. And, well, Amnesty then sort of rapidly backtracked and withdrew its report, saying it was all a terrible mistake. It didn't actually mean to publish it before it had been through its internal process. So that's what's going on. It's interesting that you mentioned John Cleese in that article as well, because it wasn't lost on me either, of course. Back in the 80s, Monty Python did a whole... They called it The Secret Policeman's Ball. It was an annual comedy show to raise money for Amnesty International. And it was widely received, because most people thought the charity is clearly quite a good thing. And I share your view of the image of Amnesty growing up. You know, it was there as this sort of totemic beacon to help desperate situations, address those living under despotic regimes and all sorts of other things. So, you know, good work and house points all round for the Amnesty boys. Monty Python jumped in on that and said, let's raise some money for it. They raised absolute bucketloads of cash for this charity. More recently, John Cleese has said, I renounce the mob that have taken over Amnesty. And this comes as, for those of us that follow this kind of stuff, the gradual sort of mission creep from certain interested parties who found their way often into governments, which is perhaps slightly more alarming, but certainly into sort of big, once respectable, not even particularly controversial charities, find themselves being run by a cohort of almost Marxist-minded ideologues who have very different ideas from the original basis of Amnesty International. Yes, and it's not just John Cleese either who's turned her back on Amnesty. The granddaughter of one of the co-founders, Sean McBride, was founded in Amnesty in 1961. She has come out against the organisation and said her grandfather would be appalled by the sort of things it's now doing, you know, both on gender-critical beliefs, but it's also sort of gone to war against pro-life campaigners. You know, in its mind, sort of any restriction on the right to abortion is, you know, means you have some kind of anti-human rights. That's always a very bizarre one, that, isn't it? Because whilst I would be, you know, I'm a bloke, so it always puts us in a slightly different position to women on that specific issue, but it doesn't mean simultaneously we have no right to comment and our view could be underpinned by spiritual or religious intentions, etc. So, yes, men can have a view on it, but the idea that it's controversial or somehow extreme to be against termination, sometimes entirely and other times with certain criteria, usually based on time, the idea that that is a controversial position and almost an evil one is bizarre. Yes, yes, Amnesty is sort of asserting that to be a pro-life campaigner puts you beyond the pale, but, you know, to put this into context, one quarter of the UK population believe that the 24-week limit on abortion we currently have in Britain is too high and it should be reduced perhaps to around 12 weeks, which is more common in other countries. Now, you can agree with that or you can disagree with that, but what Amnesty is trying to assert is that that is some kind of unacceptable view to hold. It makes you anti-human rights, whereas I think a lot of pro-life campaigners would say, look, hang on, we are respecting the human rights of the unborn child as well as the human rights of the mother, and those are two things which have to be balanced. Yes, the very antitheses of being anti-human rights, some might not unreasonably argue. This is the kind of thing I would like to see the Prime Minister having a Cobra meeting about, frankly, but, of course, he's not going to do that because he's got a different kind of Cobra meeting today, and the reason I raise this with you, Ross, is because you write a lot on climate issues. I would imagine this is where Andy Burnham is coming from on this, so they're not having a Cobra meeting on Amnesty or the Channel migrants in their incredibly large increasing numbers or early release of very dangerous prisoners. They're having one on the weather today. Yes, yes, I think we've got a sort of one-day heatwave coming up tomorrow with temperatures of 35 Celsius predicted. I mean, in the context of summer, that's not particularly extreme. We've lived through higher temperatures, so I don't know why we need quite a Cobra meeting to deal with that. I'm not quite sure. Obviously, we are in a very, very dry, hot summer, and the drought is not unprecedented, but it's unusual. But what's interesting, it's actually against the general climatic trend towards slightly wetter summers, and we have people jumping up and saying, oh, this is a vision of the climate change-induced future. Well, actually, the longer-term trend is towards slightly wetter summers, both in terms of the amount of rain and the frequency of rain. So I think that's a context which deserves to be taken into account. Spot on. Ross, thank you for your time, as ever. Ross Clarke, columnist of The Sun. You can read his column this morning, page 10. There it is. Attacking JK makes Amnesty just as bad as the rotten regimes it used to fight, and that's bang on. Who's running these organisations? Back to more domestic matters. Brian is in Hertfordshire. Brian, how are you doing? Morning. Not too bad, thank you very much. Good. What have you got for us? Just the outstanding calculations of the Andy Burnham thing. He told us that he saved us a load of money and closed down and got rid of people out of hotels, but he didn't tell us where he's putting them. No. That was the first point. They just appear. He supposedly saved us £50 million, but he doesn't know where... I think they're all going to Hertfordshire, Brian. And then the other one is, we're getting things down, but we've got 160 hotels. Even if you average 50 people in there, that's 8,000 people times 20,000. That's millions upon millions that we're spending on looking after these migrants for no other reason. Well, the numbers are... Most of us can't recognise these kind of numbers. They're absolutely horrendous. And, of course, Mr Burnham's idea is to spread the joy. Let's make sure every part of the country has these HMOs. And that's his way to do it. It's beyond the belief system of most human beings, but that's how these people rumble. Brian, thank you. I've got to move just to get more comment on. Alan is in North Yorkshire. Morning, Alan. How are you doing? All right, Governor. It's the old fella here. It is indeed. You always sound about 33 when we speak, so you're doing all right. Oh, please. If only. I ain't even got me teeth in. We can do it. It's not against Ofcom rules to broadcast without your teeth. Listen, Governor, I don't know if any of our politicians can read, but if they could read, then they would read that between 56 and 48 million years ago, there was a massive amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. And I don't think there were too many cars about in them days or air conditioning units. It was a result of volcanic action, and it lasted for millions and millions and millions of years. And then about 34 million years ago, the Ice Age came. We used to have palm trees growing as far north as the Arctic Circle. It's not rocket science. You've only got to just read some books. Climate change isn't going to happen in our lifetime or in 20, 30, 40, 50 generations' lifetimes. It takes millions, tens of millions of years for climate to change. And I'll tell you, charging us an extra 60 quid for a long-haul flight or whatever, they could charge 20 million quid for a gallon of petrol. It's not going to change. It's all bunkum, it's a load of nonsense, and we need to be told the truth. And the truth is that climate change has been happening and will continue to happen for as long as the Earth is here, until the sun devours us in billions of years' time. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm quite enjoying the sunshine at the moment. I know it's a bit hot in places, but it's quite nice. Bit unusual, isn't it? Listen, Alan, have a great day. Enjoy the weather. Alan in North Yorkshire. Quarter to nine, more from you on the way. This is talk.