I was invited to speak about my favourite topic – women’s sport. I’d like it if I never had to say anything on this subject ever again but that won’t happen because of a combination of Government inaction, Sports Councils’ blind adherence to the Cult of Woo and sports’ governing bodies being run by probably the most incompetent people on the planet (and that’s putting it politely). To a background of lusty insults from the rent-a-mob anti-women activists I told the assembled company outside The Senedd, that numerous sports in Wales still allowed males into the female category – including some of our most popular sports. How have we arrived at a situation where grown men can self-identify as a female footballer and be picked for teams that include teenage girls? And believe me, if these men have the balls to larp into sports, they’ll definitely be using the changing room ‘that most aligns with their gender (sic)’ – and that won’t be the male changing rooms. I’ve met a lot of sports’ NGB CEOs, Chairmen, DEI officers and with a few exceptions they generally fall into two camps: fully signed-up to the ‘be kind to the menz’ fraternity or plain clueless. They’re in the ‘nice work if you can get it but please don’t make me do any actual work’ category. From their plush offices they plan their next round of glad-handing the dignitaries and securing free tickets for fixtures – the more international the better because then you can claim generous expenses paid by… the taxpayer generally – but when a truly difficult issue crosses their desk, they’ll hand it down the food-chain for action, which results in no action at all. That’s been the case with women’s sport. Usually filed in the ‘too difficult’ pile.The speech that no one could hear… by Rowing Geek Drowned out by TRAs at the 199 Days Action, here are some highlights from my speech...Read on Substack

Naturally, the town now capitalizes on its reputation for having had "Witches"... Some researchers argue that this southern Italian town, a little more than two hours by train from Rome, became known for its witches because of its unique political position. But to understand the root of the myth, we have to go back to 1428. The hunting and persecution of so-called witches was a practice that began to take root in Italy in the late 1300s, supervised and carried out in many ways by the Catholic Church. By 1542, Pope Paul III had created the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which tasked the church with criminalizing those who would speak against the faith. It was an amorphous crime, because any misfortune to befall a person or town could be attributed to a witch—around 80 percent of the people charged with witchcraft in early-modern Europe were women. Academics estimate that 22,000 to 33,000 witchcraft trials took place in Italy, with very few of these ending in capital punishment. Witch hunting appeared to largely come to an end by the 18th century. The first reference to Benevento as a place where witches gather dates to 1428. It comes from the transcriptions of the trial of Matteuccia di Francesco, a 40-year-old woman who was eventually sentenced to death and burned at the stake for witchcraft by the Franciscan Bernardino of Siena in the Umbrian town of Todi. “From that moment on, the inquisitors try to make the witches confess that they went to Benevento, because it becomes a sort of indictment,” says Paola Caruso, who has published books on the folklore of Benevento. “If they went to Benevento, then that means they’re witches.” The targets of this abuse were generally local women known as healers, “almost women of science,” Scarinzi says, or practitioners of what would today be called herbal medicine. These were women who knew the medicinal value of herbs like St. John’s wort, lavender and dandelion, gleaned from information passed down to them through generations. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-this-italian-town-came-to-be-known-as-the-city-of-witches-180987599/