Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Note: One or 2 of the items below have been borrowed from Lenox Napier's Business Over Tapas. But none today from The Local . . .
Spain
- Something else that's going in the wrong direction in Spain.
- Corruption here in Galicia: The telling statistic is that, in the last 10 years, only 7% of the many trials have resulted in a sentence.
- Talking about Galicia . . . A special treat for you, if you can read Spanish . . . Satirical cartoons from El Jueves on the region and its people, kindly sent to me by a(non-Galician) friend who knows the place very well:-
- On a wider front, El País has reported that: The law that regulates the activity of ‘high office’ says that its exercise should be based on "transparency and responsibility", but 100 people in high positions are known to have refused to disclose their assets between 2015 and 2018. Draw. your own conclusions. Perhaps the Hacienda will investigate them under the Model 720 law. And perhaps not.
- As police forces prepare for the government’s ambitious recruitment drive, they have identified a formidable new challenge: hiring millennials. The Home Office has been told that rookies have been “wrapped in cotton wool”, are routinely shocked that police are expected to work nights and weekends and “do not like confrontation”.
- School counsellors and mental health service providers are bowing to pressures from ‘highly politicised’ transgender groups to affirm children’s beliefs that they were born the wrong sex, a leading expert has warned. Marcus Evans, a psychotherapist and ex-governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said many experts were living in fear of being labelled transphobic, which was having an impact on their objectivity. See the full article below. I have a particular interest in this in that one of my daughters, at 15, decided she was a man in a woman's body. This turned out to be a temporary concern - born of what the psychiatrist said was a normal teenage identity crisis. She is now married with 2 kids. I dread to think what would happen these days.
- This is the president of the USA, who is clearly more concerned with one perceived injustice in Sweden than in the appalling shootings that take place in his own country. Of which there was yet another one yesterday:-
- Give A$AP Rocky his FREEDOM. We do so much for Sweden but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. Sweden should focus on its real crime problem! #FreeRocky
- Very disappointed in Prime Minister Stefan Löfven for being unable to act. Sweden has let our African American Community down in the United States. I watched the tapes of A$AP Rocky, and he was being followed and harassed by troublemakers. Treat Americans fairly! #FreeRocky
Spanish
- It sometimes happens that I understand every Spanish word in a phrase/sentence and, of course, any English word thrown into it but I don't understand the sense of the phrase/sentence as a whole. As with Los breaks del segmento del mercado de coches . . . In this case the dictionary of the Royal Academy provides the answer, giving these definitions for the Spanglish word un break:-
2. Vagón de tren que se reservaba para personalidades.
3. Automóvil provisto de un amplio espacio trasero para aumentar su capacidad de carga.
So, it means what the Americans call a station wagon and which is/was been called a shooting brake or estate car by Brits.
- A real Spanish word foxed me yesterday - Hampón. This means 'thug' /'gangster' and is related to Hampa - a gang of such. I wonder what the derivation is. Possibly from French, says the Academy.
Finally
- There was a strange procession in Pontevedra last week. Silent and composed of c. 20 women and 2 men, all dressed in black and wearing white plastic masks decorated with flower motifs. At the head of the group was a women - in a long white dress, I think - carrying a bunch of flowers. Anyone got any idea? I doubt it was a tribute to Hamlet's Ophelia, pictured here.
ARTICLE
Politicised trans groups put children at risk, says expert. Counsellors and other mental health providers fear being labelled transphobic: Jamie Doward
School counsellors and mental health service providers are bowing to pressures from ‘highly politicised’ transgender groups to affirm children’s beliefs that they were born the wrong sex, a leading expert has warned.
Marcus Evans, a psychotherapist and ex-governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, whose Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) is the only NHS clinic to provide gender counselling and transitioning, said many experts were living in fear of being labelled transphobic, which was having an impact on their objectivity.
“I believe the trans political agenda has encroached on the clinical environment surrounding and within the Gender Identity Development Service,” Evans told the Observer. “Young people need an independent clinical service that has the long-term interests of the patient at heart. To some extent, this requires a capacity to stand up to pressure coming from various sources: from the young person, their family, peer groups, online and social networking pressures and from highly politicised pro-trans groups.”
The number of children referred annually to GIDS has risen from 468 in 2013 to 2,519 in 2018. Some claim social media is a factor in the increase.In a hard-hitting paper, presented at a conference earlier this year and shared with the Observer, Evans quoted the experience of “Dagny”, a woman who identified as a trans man in her teens, has now detransitioned and says she was influenced by views expressed on the social network, Tumblr.
“One of these unhealthy beliefs I held was the belief that if you have gender dysphoria, you must transition,” Dagny has said. “And anyone that appeared to stand in my way was a transphobe – an alt-right bigot.”
Evans resigned as a governor of the trust in February in protest at its response to criticism from a former member of its council of governors, David Bell, who had raised concerns from 10 members of staff.
“They reported inadequate assessments, patients pushed through for early medical interventions and an inability to stand up to pressure from trans lobbies,” Evans said.
A review of Bell’s concerns by the trust did not “identify any immediate issues in relation to patient safety or failings in the overall approach … in responding to the needs of young people.”
Evans said that since his resignation he had become concerned that the debate around transitioning had been shut down by a vocal minority. “The mind that is free to think or ask difficult questions is treated as a real threat; TV producers and journalists continually report that while people are willing to speak in confidence to them about their reservations about treatment in these areas, they shy away from being named, for fear of being accused of being bigoted and transphobic and sometimes either disciplined or even sacked for speaking their mind.”
Since his high-profile resignation, Evans’s concerns have broadened as parents approach him for advice about their children.
“They confirm that a gender-affirmative approach is being adopted by many school counsellors and CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services),” Evans notes.
“These parents all expressed alarm that, after their children suddenly announced they believed they were the wrong sex, practitioners were immediately endorsing the belief that this was the cause of the child’s distress, rather than offering time to explore perhaps long-standing psychological/developmental issues.”
With waiting times for a consultation taking up to two years, some critics accuse the Tavistock of being too slow to meet demand for its services.
But others accuse it of fast-tracking children on to hormone blockers, a pathway to transitioning, a claim the trust rejects. It said that fewer than half of patients who present to it go on to its endocrine (hormone) clinics. Yesterday, the Times reported that the Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health has asked its ethics and law advisory committee to look at the ethics surrounding the rapid increase in the use of blockers to treat under 16s who identify as transgender.
In April, it emerged that five clinicians had resigned over concerns that some children had been sent for life-changing medical intervention without a thorough assessment of their options.
Last week BBC Newsnight reported that the trust had data showing that children who took hormone blockers had reported an increase in thoughts of suicide and self-harm.
The trust said the data, involving 44 children, was too small to draw final conclusions. It said the data suggested the positive outcomes were likely to outweigh the negative .
The Newsnight expose followed an open letter posted online by a former clinician at the Leeds branch of GIDS, Dr Kirsty Entwistle, who warned that “traumatic early experiences”, which might be a factor in a young person’s desire to transition, were not being investigated by medical staff out of fear of being labelled transphobic.
In a statement the trust said: “GIDS is a thoughtful and safe service. It cares for young people at a vulnerable time in their lives. Our experience with this group of patients, which is a highly diverse group, indicates that the choice to do nothing is not neutral and may lead to significant harm.
“The service is thorough and systematic in its approach to exploring with the young people and families the best way of dealing with their distress and the implications of different choices.”
It added: “We believe the opinions described are misinformed and based on a limited view, both of the clinical work undertaken within the service and of the experience of young people seeking help from the Gender Identity Development Service.”
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