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#DifficultTruths

The Tavistock

The noise

The public debate around the work of the Tavistock is getting louder. Kiera Bell wins a landmark ruling at the High Court which halts all new referrals for puberty blockers for under 18s on the NHS in England and Wales. She was prescribed puberty blockers at 16 but later decided she wants to de-transition. The Tavistock appeals and the ruling is overturned. But for many people the narrative of the Gender Identity Development Service is now set in stone

thinkin

Limits in comedy: how far is too far?

This is a newsroom ThinkIn. In-person and digital-only tickets are available.When it comes to comedy, is anything off limits? Jimmy Carr was recently criticised for a joke about the Holocaust which appeared in one of his Netflix shows. The show was available for some months before the controversy kicked off on social media, which might indicate that many of us don’t have a problem with “offensive” comedy until somebody else does. Does it make a difference who tells the joke? Is it possible to tell the difference between performative outrage and genuine offence? Comedians are just doing their job, and it’s down to individuals to choose where they get their laughs. But how do we know when a joke goes too far? editor and invited experts Matthew d’AnconaEditor Grainne MaguireStand-up Comedian and Writer Nathan D’Arcy RobertsAward-winning Writer and Comedian Susie AlegreHuman Rights Barrister and Author of ‘Freedom to Think: the Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds’ Susie McCabeAward-winning Standup Comedian

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Unspiked: what did we learn from the “epidemic” that never was?

This is a digital-only ThinkIn.Earlier this year, a Tortoise investigation found that last autumn’s “needle spiking epidemic” almost certainly didn’t happen – at least not in the way it was reported to have done. But that’s not the end of this story. Our research unearthed as many questions as it did answers. Why is there no crime code for drink spiking? If we don’t know how big the problem is, what steps can we take to fix it? Why do police toxicology reports take anywhere between three months to a year to come back?  What does the “spiking epidemic” phenomenon of last autumn tell us about women’s trust in the police, and trust between women and men more generally? Might believing alleged victims without scrutiny do more harm than good in the long run? This ThinkIn is part of Tortoise Investigates: Police and Misogyny. A year-long collaboration between Tortoise reporters and members, this project seeks to explore the way police culture consistently permits the failure to prosecute, and sometimes even to investigate, sexual and violent crime against women and girls.If you have an experience to share that would help our investigation, on or off the record, please contact liz@tortoisemedia.com. editor and invited experts Liz MoseleyEditor Patricia ClarkeTortoise Data Journalist and Reporter Vickie BurginScience Director, Forensic Capability Network

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Assisted dying: is the Bill safe?

This is a digital-only ThinkIn.The question of whether to allow someone to end their life the way they choose was, for a long time, a hypothetical one. Here in the UK, it has now become very real, as the Assisted Dying Bill just had its second reading in the House of Lords. Those in favour argue movingly that a change in the law is a progressive and compassionate step. Those against say that the risks of abuse are just too high. Is it possible to design legislation that reduces that risk enough as to be deemed safe? Is the medical establishment ready for the change should it come?  editor and invited experts James HardingCo-founder and Editor Baroness MeacherBritish life peer, former social worker, and sponsor of the Assisted Dying Bill Dr Catherine Forestphysician and medical director, California Fiona PattenMP for the Northern Metropolitan Region and Leader of the Reason Party, Australia Paul ButlerBishop of Durham Trevor MooreChair, My Death My Decision Campaign Zoe Marley-HyattCampaigner

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Trans kids: what has been happening inside the Tavistock?

Between 2000 and 2014, 736 people who ran local branches of the Post Office were wrongly convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud.  The scandal was caused by errors in an accounting system which the Post Office installed in its smaller branches. It was called Horizon and it wrongly claimed there were cash shortfalls of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of pounds. Hundreds of subpostmasters – managers of the local branches – were accused of stealing and were hounded for the missing money. Some spent their life savings or re-mortgaged their homes in an attempt to plug the gap and many went bankrupt.  The Post Office knew there were problems with Horizon, but still decided to prosecute them. Many ended up in jail, most were shunned by their communities, and some even took their own lives.  Seema Misra was pregnant with her second child when she was jailed in 2010… “I was so scared. I was so scared. For me, it’s just like Post Office authority is like a Mafia. I never thought I’m going to come out alive from there. I swear to God, if I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have killed myself, that’s for sure. Being in the prison for the crime I never committed.” When a series of reports into the Horizon IT system revealed serious defects, people who had been prosecuted began fighting to clear their names. In 2019, after various court cases were brought against the Post Office, it agreed to pay £58 million in compensation to the hundreds of sub-postmasters that were wrongly convicted.  There was widespread outrage and a public inquiry into the scandal began in 2020, but it has not been a straightforward process.  There has been a lack of cooperation from current Post Office management and a recent discovery that those working for the Post Office at the time of the convictions used racist language to categorise workers.  The Post Office says it has paid over £110 million in compensation to those it wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting. But hundreds of victims have still not received a penny and hundreds more had to pay tax on the money they were awarded. The Post Office is entirely owned by the UK government. It has admitted that the company doesn’t have the money to cover all the claims from sub-postmasters, which means taxpayers will have to cover the shortfall.  The Inquiry is set to go on until early 2024. Those affected may never fully recover from what happened to them, but one day they might get the compensation they deserve. This episode was written and mixed by Rebecca Moore.

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Gender stereotyping: can we stop damaging our kids?

Gender stereotyping: can we stop damaging our kids? From the age of six, children associate being clever with being a boy and being nice with being a girl. More than half of adults believe gender stereotyping they faced in childhood constrained their career choices and 44% say it harmed their personal relationships in later life. It’s one thing to swerve the pink dollies and blue superheroes, but it’s incredibly difficult to avoid reinforcing toxic stereotypes as parents when they were such a big part of our own reality as kids. What can we do, in our schools and homes, to raise a generation of kids who don’t self-censor based on gender? Our special guests include: Dr Javid Abdelmoneim, physician and television presenter, No More Boys and Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free? Ella Smilie, head of policy & campaigns at the Fawcett Society and leading researcher on the report Depictions, Perceptions and Harm: A report on gender stereotypes in advertising.  Victoria Richards, writer, journalist & editor.  Gina Rippon, author, The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain. Chair: Liz Moseley  What is a Tortoise ThinkIn? A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise. Drinks from 6.00pm, starts promptly at 6.30pm. If you are late to a ThinkIn you can ‘SlinkIn’! If you would like to contribute to this ThinkIn, let us know by emailing thinkin@tortoisemedia.com We film our Thinkins so we can watch them back, edit the best bits and share them with members who weren’t there in person. Members can find their ThinkIn booking code in My Tortoise, under My Membership.

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Tortoise Festival of ThinkIns – Things that cannot be said

Things that cannot be said. Imagine a world where being funny depended on picking on people less powerful than you: women; people from ethnic minorities; gay people; people with disabilities. The truth is, you don’t have to imagine – you can just watch mainstream comedy from not very long ago. There is a better way and, gradually, we’ve been finding it. On the other hand, imagine a world where we’ve become so prickly that we just can’t rub along with each other any more. Some people think that’s where we live now. How do we pick a path between what shouldn’t be said and what cannot be said? Our special guests for this ThinkIn included: Jayde Adams, comedian, writer and actress. Scarlett Curtis, writer, journalist, blogger, and curator of Feminists Don’t Wear Pink & Other Lies. Michelle De Swarte, comedian and TV presenter.  Lynn Enright, journalist and author of Vagina: A Re-Education. Libby Purves, journalist and broadcaster. The Readout  The ThinkIn began with a Ricky Gervais quote and a nod to Voltaire: “If you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things you find ‘grossly offensive’ then you don’t believe in free speech”. How does that apply to comedy and where should the limits – if any – lie? There were fascinating and surprising points of view: Political correctness as power-play: PC language sees itself as offering protection to the vulnerable but there are other theories out there. What if, instead, it has come to be appropriated by precisely those people in power who don’t need protection, and used to silence minority voices? A plea for the return of “good, old-fashioned despising”. Unfashionable, but that’s the point: if we find something despicable, let’s say so. Moderation in all things may sound healthy but what does it do for the blood pressure? And, as so many negative terms have been reclaimed and put to good use, a call for ‘snowflakes’ to be rescued from people who only use it perjoratively: why not allow a greater admission of vulnerability in society – a willingness to say “ouch, that hurts”?  Lessons of the 2015 attacks on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. In the light of recent controversies about satirical cartoons (from the end of daily political cartoons for the global edition of the New York Times to the sacking of a Canadian cartoonist, Michael de Adder), how do we understand the power, potency and potential danger, of such satire in today’s world? What next? Political correctness-watch. The term has been so bandied-around and used so loosely that it’s lost its meaning. Has it been captured? Is satire on the run?

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Is it fair to name someone accused of a sexual offence before they’re charged?

Justice must be seen to be done, so, as the law stands, people who have been arrested for an offence can be identified in public. But should all offences be treated as equal, or are some like sexual offences so damaging to the accused that to be arrested in connection with them, even if no charge ever follows, can do irreparable damage to a reputation? How does the law balance the rights of victims of sexual offences and the accused? Is it time to give anonymity for people accused of sexual offences until they are charged? What is a Tortoise ThinkIn? A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise. Drinks from 6.00pm, starts promptly at 6.30pm. If you are late to a ThinkIn you can ‘SlinkIn’! If you would like to contribute to this ThinkIn, let us know by emailing thinkin@tortoisemedia.com We film our Thinkins so we can watch them back, edit the best bits and share them with members who weren’t there in person. Members can find their ThinkIn booking code in My Tortoise, under My Membership.

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The News: Is it still ok to… listen to Michael Jackson?

Monday evenings in the Tortoise newsroom get lively. These discussions are the heart of our editorial planning for the weeks ahead. It’s when we discuss what’s happening right now in the world and ask you to help us filter what matters. Come and tell us what you think, what you know, and what you want us to do about it. Together, we’ll figure out how to get to grips with the world around us.   On Monday we’ll be asking whether, in light of allegations, is it still ok to… listen to Michael Jackson? Watch Woody Allen? Dance to R Kelly? Should we divorce the art from the alleged crimes? What is a Tortoise ThinkIn? A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise. Drinks from 5.30pm, starts promptly at 6pm. If you are late to a ThinkIn you can ‘SlinkIn’! If you would like to contribute to this ThinkIn, let us know by emailing thinkin@tortoisemedia.com We film our Thinkins so we can watch them back, edit the best bits and share them with members who weren’t there in person. Members can find their ThinkIn booking code in My Tortoise, under My Membership.

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The Question Of Gender: Who decides who we are?

Until recently, few of us would have seen gender as a civil rights issue. Many of us would have believed that gender is assigned at birth, and assumed that the number of people interested in gender rights would always put the issue in a different category from other great rights battles: women’s rights, black rights, gay rights, or disability rights. But the arguments have shifted with astonishing speed. Is it now time to say that gender is the civil rights issue of our time? What is a Tortoise ThinkIn?  A ThinkIn is not another panel discussion. It is a forum for civilised disagreement. Modelled on what we call a ‘leader conference’ in the UK (or an editorial board in the US), it is a place where everyone has a seat at the table. It’s where we get to hear what you think, drawn from your experience, energy and expertise. It’s where, together, we sift through what we know to come to a clear, concise point of view. It is the heart of what we do at Tortoise.  Don’t worry if you think you don’t know enough to comment – we all feel that way. So we prepare Tortoise Notes for every ThinkIn – an all you need to know guide to the subject we’re discussing. You’ll receive this ahead of the ThinkIn. And when the conversation is done, we don’t drift off. We’ll send you the Tortoise Readout – our point of view, informed by what we’ve heard.  Drinks from 17:30.