In an age where the police have powers to force telecommunications companies to hand over data and install interception equipment in their networks… where we spend vast amounts of money maintaining listening posts… on an operation where apparently even MI5 were involved…

Just how did the police crack the various BlackBerry Messenger groups used to coordinate the riots?

According to The Times: (£)

Scotland Yard said yesterday that it had picked up conversations on the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) system after confiscating phones from arrested troublemakers. Police were then able to access the instant messaging network and respond to the more credible threats being circulated

Modern policing at it’s best. The best encryption available isn’t going to help if you have your collar felt by the old bill and they simply read what’s on your phone!

Well, the Tories seemed to be doing OK on equality. At least, they hadn’t managed to completely screw anything up so far this parliament. (Or if they did, then LibDem ministers stopped them – but it is annoying that even the party faithful do not really know what battles are being fought in the corridors of power)

Enter Mr. Cameron, stage right. Far right. Yesterday’s speech on the riots (Conservative Home link – there be Tories here!) seems calculated to annoy minorities. And women.

These riots were not about race: the perpetrators and the victims were white, black and Asian.

OK, off to a good start…

No, this was about behaviour, people showing indifference to right and wrong, people with a twisted moral code, people with a complete absence of self-restraint.

But politicians shying away from speaking the truth about behaviour, about morality, this has actually helped to cause the social problems we see around us.

We have been too unwilling for too long to talk about what is right and what is wrong.

Yay! He’s going to condemn gangs! And criminals! And people who aren’t very nice!

We have too often avoided saying what needs to be said – about everything from marriage to welfare to common courtesy.

Uh, marriage? Hang on, this is starting to sound a little bit like the old Tories.

So you can’t say that marriage and commitment are good things – for fear of alienating single mothers.

Oh dear. Blame single mothers. It’s all their fault. (Not sure why it’s single mothers and not single parents… oh, right, he’s a bloke. Easier to blame women. Sorry, I forgot.) Just to emphasise the point, one of the problems is “Children without fathers.

Bang goes any chance of a vote from Lesbian couples. Or two bisexual women in a relationship. Or any woman who is bi and has ever been in a same-sex relationship. And transwomen. On this basis, if you’re a transwoman with kids you’ve condemned them to being rioters. (Quite when my kids are supposed to fit in rioting in between seemingly constant trips to the cinema to see the latest instalment in the Harry Potter franchise is beyond me. Perhaps they could schedule some quick looting in for a Friday night when they’re not busy and I can drive them there?)

In fact, women in general. Cameron thinks women must be bad parents, because it’s the lack of a father that turns kids to crime.

And one last group he may have inadvertently managed to alienate: The military. Over ten thousand troops currently serving abroad, the majority being blokes. How many have families?

Just in case you hadn’t quite picked up on the axis of evil that is any family that doesn’t fit the mummy-daddy-2.4-children ideal, he drives the point home:

I don’t doubt that many of the rioters out last week have no father at home. Perhaps they come from one of the neighbourhoods where it’s standard for children to have a mum and not a dad, where it’s normal for young men to grow up without a male role model, looking to the streets for their father figures, filled up with rage and anger.

Have we seen any evidence that kids of single mothers have been disproportionately involved in the rioting? Of course not, the Conservatives are far too experienced at playing the “back-to-basics” game to let evidence get in the way.

So: from here on I want a family test applied to all domestic policy.

If it hurts families, if it undermines commitment, if it tramples over the values that keeps people together, or stops families from being together, then we shouldn’t do it.

That’s all LGBT equality policy out the window, then.

And we will be using our current chairmanship of the Council of Europe to seek agreement to important operational changes to the European Convention on Human Rights.

But this is all frustratingly slow.

The truth is, the interpretation of human rights legislation has exerted a chilling effect on public sector organisations, leading them to act in ways that fly in the face of common sense, offend our sense of right and wrong, and undermine responsibility.

Ah, human rights legislation is bad news. Another reliable right-wing fallback. Someone has been reading the Daily Mail too much, I fear. Not a good trait in a Prime Minister.

Foreign news stories that feature Trans issues can get confusing. There are often mistranslations and missed cultural nuances involved and this story from Cuba (BBC Link) is a good example. The headline when originally posted was “Cuba set for first ‘gay wedding’“. Which was rather incorrect and problematic, as the updated headline now illustrates: “Cuba gay man and transgender woman marry“.

For clarification: She’s a post-op transwoman. So it’s actually a straight marriage.

So, where did the “gay” come from? It’s not clear. Appropriation by the local LG community? If so, and the translations are accurate, the groom at least seems to be part of it:

This is the first wedding between a transsexual woman and a gay man,” Mr Estrada, 31, said.

“We celebrate it at the top of our voices and affirm that this is a step forward for the gay community in Cuba.”

But there is some confusion on the matter even in Cuba:

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, who acted as a godmother at the ceremony, said that while the marriage was not technically a gay wedding “it is the closest we have come”.

I don’t know if there’s possible mistranslation from the Spanish going on here – do the Cubans have a word for “bisexual”? Or are transwomen just viewed as “gay men” over there? Either way, the original “gay wedding” headline certainly did not read well in this country.

There’s a little – not much, but a little – more news on the Always advert I wrote about yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon, Procter and Gamble put out a statement saying this is a spoof advert, while the production company have claimed it was an “internal use” advert that was never released. (I.e. not a spoof)

Neither of these statements quite ties up with the fact that the advert appears on the film company’s web site. (Under commercials, left hand column, third film down) The accompanying “about” box states that it caused “stream of controversy” when released and that it was later “pulled”. The film has also been found, dated 2009, on the Vimeo video-sharing web site where it was uploaded by the film company apparently as part of an historical archive of their work.

It’s surfaced this week after appearing this week on the Ads Of The World web site and it’s reasonable to assume that whoever has been handling this at P&G has no knowledge or memory of the advert, hence it being described (Inaccurately, but woth honest intent) as a “spoof”. The guy listed as being the creative director on the video left the company concerned in 2007, but the “have a happy period” campaign seems to have started in 2005, which gives us a pretty good idea of the possible date ranges involved.

In conclusion, it looks like it’s an older advert, somewhere between four to six years old, that may have been released briefly before being pulled.

Update: Please see this blog post for more information. This appears to be an older advert that was pulled and is not recent.

Via @PMS_warrior and @thefworduk, I ran across this advert for Always this morning. After a while doing Trans campaigning, even at a low level, I’ve grown pretty immune to many things and I’m usually just mildly offended by transphobia in the media. I get more annoyed at the way media can make transphobia seem “acceptable” and the perpetuation of oppression that such things generate.

But this advert… wow. It has to be the most offensive piece of media I’ve run across in a long time. And it’s supposed to be an advert?!

For those wanting to complain, the company concerned are Procter & Gamble. They are on Twitter as @ProcterGamble

(Warning: Some may find the video triggery)

Edited to emphasise the above warning: I’m pretty thick skinned, and I still find this ad highly offensive and deeply troubling. Others have been reduced to tears by it and have been unable to watch it to the end. Even if you are not Trans, you may find this upsetting if you are infertile or have similar difficulties.