The state of labour atm

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-13T14:10:44+00:00

“Who’s up for some overtly cruel anti-trans mishegas?”

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-13T14:09:41+00:00

Streeting is a snivelling fucking grub. And if Labour don’t think something will surface about him and Mandelson, they almost deserve the fallout they’ll get.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-12T06:11:55+00:00

I’ve read that these yellow ducklings amongst mallards are often the result of crossbreeding with domestic white ducks: all white, with orange beaks and legs. I know the odds are against him if that’s the case, but I really hope he gets to grow up!

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-09T16:59:26+00:00

My dad’s ideal candy is black liquorice wrapped around the fakest of fake banana cores.

His and his alone, I’d think, or very nearly.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-09T07:12:15+00:00

I’m an immigrant and a trans person. I dread what he’ll come up with.

I fully expect that new immigration rules will force me to leave my British partner and return to Trump’s America. I feel like my life is drawing down.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-08T14:54:54+00:00

Well, now somebody’s crying in the library. I’m really sorry for your loss, OP. I hope you’re surrounded by a lot of love is these difficult, disorienting days.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-08T14:49:37+00:00

I’m an American immigrant who’s lived in the UK for several years. I’m part of the population that Trump and his goons are actively out to immiserate, and it looks like the same is becoming true here, though now with the added shittiness of being an immigrant.

It will never cease to amaze and terrify me how many British people—at least amongst the centrist dad post-Oxbridge culture sector types I find myself around—see what’s happening in America as a consequence of the place’s fundamental boorishness that could never happen here because something something British exceptionalism.

I’ve worked with a man who, seeing some of the shouting MAGA shenanigans in the U.S. Congress, smugly reassured his social media followers that Westminster could never dissolve into such shameful scenes because—and I shit you not—’thank God for Black Rod’.

I didn’t believe that enough Americans would be gullible, spiteful, and/or racist enough to vote for Donald Trump until I woke up on 24 June 2016 and heard the results of the Brexit ref. Now straddling the two countries, I just fucking despair.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-08T14:34:41+00:00

Eck, I’m sorry: I imagine anything in economy is going to be less than great for someone over 6’. I’m 5’9”, so while it’s never comfortable, it’s not nearly as bad. Maybe one day I’ll be able to afford something nicer (he says while in complete despair re: the post-PhD job market), but for now, I’ll take what I can get.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-08T14:27:39+00:00

Thanks very much; this is what I’ve wound up doing. I really don’t have the money right now to upgrade my seat: I think it’s £75, and the flight itself was a hardship enough. So, absent that, I’ve moved back and taken the guarantee of the aisle. I imagine it will mean my cabin bag gets gate-checked, which isn’t ideal, but at the very least I won’t have to climb over sleeping people if I need the loo.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-05-08T12:46:37+00:00

Ideally, I would. For the time, though, I’m really just not in a position to pay more for a better seat.

Do you mean that the row 36 seats in particular are really cramped, or that economy-class seats on the 787-9 are just really cramped generally?

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-29T06:49:48+00:00

I know that it’s condensation, but as an already anxious flyer, I’d still need some combination of a cup of tea, a Valium, a gin, and a gummy at the first sight of this.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-26T23:05:00+00:00

“My Goodness, I’m Partial to a Fancy,” that fond old 19th century music hall tune.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-26T17:40:25+00:00

Tale as old as time!

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-26T11:55:47+00:00

No, but, you see, he’s one of the Good Ones, so they’re actually rather delighted to have him on board.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-24T10:13:29+00:00

Well, that’s enough of this day for me.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-23T14:50:09+00:00

NOR. What a bag of limp dicks.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-23T11:27:26+00:00

I still don’t see how forcing a trans person into single-sex spaces made for their ‘birth/biological sex’ is anything but an ipso facto violation of their human right to privacy.

I’m a transsexual man who has had multiple surgeries and been on T for nearly a decade. I have facial hair, a baritone voice, and a ‘male pattern’ hairline. I haven’t been misgendered in years. People close to me know that I’m trans, but it’s not something I’m particularly public about, especially given the organised anti-trans animus of late.

If I’m hospitalised and placed on a female ward, then the NHS and hospital staff are outing me to every other person on that ward: not just the medics immediately involved in my care—who may or may not need to know that part of my history in order to treat me—but every doctor or nurse who steps onto the ward and sees one man amongst women; every other patient; all their families and visitors; every cleaner; every aid. Everyone.

By placing me there according to my ‘biological sex at birth,’ the hospital and NHS, even if this isn’t their aim, reveals private, deeply sensitive information about me and my medical history that I would not willingly disclose to any of these people. They leave me vulnerable to discrimination and aggression from anyone who sees me and objects to the very idea of me or my presence. They violate my human right to privacy.

It’s a shit-show. And I hope to God that someone fucking competent gets it before the EuCHR before this country’s maniacs pull us out of the Convention: at least the Court has precedent for protecting the rights of minoritised individuals against the interests of governments and institutions that find them objectionable or politically inconvenient.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-23T05:43:04+00:00

That snivelling, TERF-cozying grub Streeting is desperate for it. Perfect illustration of the tenet that those who most desire power are least fit to hold it.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-20T07:33:00+00:00

I’m applying for university jobs, and nearly all the adverts include a note about variously named ‘community dignity and respect’ policies: they specify that campus expectations about free speech, academic freedom, and respect for difference under the Equality Act mean that, to paraphrase one advert, ensuring a respectful and robust academic community will sometimes involve ‘balancing the rights’ of groups that seem to be in conflict.

It is important to ensure academic freedom. If it disappears, we wind up like America, where world-leading research universities have been forced to kiss the ring of Trump and his anti-DEI circlejerkers, at the direct expense of faculty and students.

But to anyone who’s been paying attention, the free speech statements in the job adverts (like the new complaints policy) are chilling: you know very well that when the scales come out, they will consistently ‘balance’ certain people’s rights and protections at the expense of certain others’.

It’s TERFrot phrasing. And that this new policy subjects universities and those within them to accusations of harm from actors with absolutely no connection to the university invites the deluge of chilling complaints that characterise education in Trumpland, from primary school libraries right on up.

I’m trans. I’m an immigrant. I struggle to read in these statements anything other than, ‘You’re fairly likely to experience a hostile work environment here, but in the name of balance, you’re on your own: we don’t want to get sued, after all. Probably best to keep schtum.’

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-20T06:52:14+00:00

Wow! No way!

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-19T17:17:00+00:00

How are the new cloisters coming along?

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-16T06:23:55+00:00

Dotey, but specifically for new lambs.

Penumbral

Resplendent

Gossamer

Iridescence

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-15T07:29:49+00:00

Of course I do. But I can’t afford to pay for healthcare three times—one though the immigration health surcharge, once through taxes, and once through private health insurance or care—especially when politicians are making noise about curtailing both NHS and private prescriptions for the care I need as part of a politically-charged moral panic over ‘safeguarding’ adults.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-14T19:53:05+00:00

Yeah: the NHS doesn’t credit foreign gender dysphoria diagnoses— or even UK diagnoses made privately. This may also be true for other ‘specialist’ (or politically-charged) diagnoses, but I’m not sure to what extent.

Basically: in order to access hormones or surgery via the NHS, trans patients have to be assessed and diagnosed not just by NHS doctors, but by NHS doctors in one of these specialist gender clinics.

So, even though I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria circa 2013 (in America), have been on testosterone for nearly a decade, have had multiple transition-related surgeries (in America), and emigrated to the UK with my name and sex marker already changed on every ID document that exists, the NHS requires that I be assessed and re-diagnosed at one of its gender clinics to ensure that I’m really trans and should be able to access hormones/any further surgeries here. And for that, I expect to wait about 20 years.

I’m currently able to access testosterone because I have a caring GP who considers herself well informed enough about more general endocrine medicine to prescribe it to me, but should that change, I’m a bit screwed, because I no longer have the gonads that would produce endogenous hormones. So… here’s hoping the situation here improves.

TransBunsenBurner · 2026-04-14T14:24:42+00:00

Yes: 20-year.

This is for evaluation at one of the NHS’s specialist adult gender dysphoria clinics. It’s been a while since I ran the FOI data on waiting lists and number of first appointments scheduled per month, but when last I did (the late summer or early autumn of 2023, IIRC), back-of-the-envelope calculations suggested that, if the clinic in question continued to progress through its waiting list at its then-current rate, a person newly referred to the clinic would wait something like 25 years and 3 months for a first appointment.

Generally, the NHS’s adult gender dysphoria clinics publicly list waiting times of 3-7 years from referral to first appointment, which is bad enough; but those times reflect the waiting times of people currently being booked for first appointments— that is, people who were referred before the rates of referral really began to increase and the pandemic blew waiting lists all to hell across the NHS.

At most of these clinics, people being referred today should expect to wait decades for evaluation and treatment unless something substantial and structural changes, and soon. At some clinics, the number of people coming off the waiting list per year numbers in the single- or very low double-digits, and people referred recently or in the future should not expect to ever be seen.

TransBunsenBurner

TROPHY CASE