Sadly even this doesn’t help with some people.

I once had a conversation with a particularly tall cis woman who’d briefly been the target of transphobic abuse in a womens’ toilet. She somehow managed to blame this on the existence of trans people 🤷

I don’t think it’s fair to call someone dealing with mental health issues “an idiot” and I don’t think it’s fair to lay the blame on a grieving family.

In case you missed it, the article’s not about the government but about the Lib Dem party’s internal conference. The Lib Dems do indeed seem sympathetic but lack the power to change anything at the moment.

The Labour government, as you say, could change the legislation, so the fact that they haven’t says quite a lot about how sympathetic they really are (i.e. very little).

I’d trust what the NHS has to think about it over some random on lemmy

Agreed that you shouldn’t trust random Lemmy comments. But the NHS on this issue is very driven by politics, rather than actual evidence of what provides the best outcomes for people. Here’s a well referenced analysis from a few years ago. And for example, the Dutch Health Council has a very different position than the NHS - I mention that mostly to illustrate that any given national health organisation isn’t inherently right, but I do also believe the Dutch one follows the scientific evidence more closely.

So no, nobody should be excluded from this discussion.

I get where you’re coming from but I fear that by making a point about “regret”, you’ve (perhaps unwittingly) contributed to scaremongering in contradiction to the available evidence (which points to that being only a tiny fraction of trans people). I don’t think it’s unfair to ask you to check your facts before posting and/or acknowledge a correction.

… make a life altering and irreversible decision …

Not providing healthcare is also a life altering and irreversible decision. As others have commented here, the later in life treatment is started, the more irreversible dysphoric changes will happen to that person’s body in the meantime, with generally poorer mental health outcomes. In particular, puberty blockers’ function is to pause those irreversible changes, not to cause changes.

I’m glad we have the BBC and I follow its news, but it has its problems and deserves criticism on some fronts.

Not an exhaustive list by any means but it’s very prone to legitimising harmful attitudes by false equivalence, and it’s very TERFy/transphobic.

Your take doesn’t really fit with the timeline described in the article. If the police hadn’t screwed up, it would have come out before he became MP (and presumably he wouldn’t have).

Here’s the initial statement from the RAIB https://www.gov.uk/government/news/collision-between-two-passenger-trains-near-elstow - pirc_lover had it about right

One train developed a fault which caused it to stop. The second one, as seen on its dashcam, drove through a red signal (which it should have stopped at) and into the back of the first. They are still investigating why the second one didn’t stop at the signal and whether that might include brake failure, safety system failure, driver error, and/or any other factors.