Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Steph Paton

@stephpaton.bsky.social

2.2K followers 520 following 500 posts

Glasgow left journo writing about politics, LGBTQ+ liberation and environmentalism. Columnist for @ScotNational. They/Them 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · Nov 21

If we're doing reintroductions: Hello! My name is Steph, formerly @stephenpaton134 on Twitter.

I'm a Scottish journalist and filmmaker. They/them on the streets, also in the sheets.

I write about politics from the Left, LGBTQ+ liberation, environmentalism and the state of British foreign policy.

7 1 31

Reposted by Steph Paton

Natacha @natacha.bsky.social · 1d

Wes Streeting extended the puberty-blocker ban on 6 November 2024.

Leia died by suicide on 11 November 2024.

17-year-old trans girl's suicide over NHS wait times was preventable says coroner

A 17-year-old trans girl's death by suicide over NHS wait times could have been prevented with swift intervention, a coroner has ruled.

www.thepinknews.com

8 350 890

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 1d

Just a top MAGA influencer talking about the threat of anti-fascism dating all the way back to the Weimar Republic. Which if you know your history...
vm.tiktok.com/ZNdnQ5nrC/

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 3d

When policies and actions require no justification, anything can be justified. My latest for @scotnational.bsky.social.
www.thenational.scot/politics/255...

Steph Paton: Lying politicians have made a post-truth world the new reality

IT’S funny to think that the term “post-truth” first came to prominence back in 2016 during Donald Trump’s first presidency. Nearly 10 years…

www.thenational.scot

1 3

Reposted by Steph Paton

Madeleine Moore @matheleine.bsky.social · 4d

“Evidence‐based medicine has three pillars: (i) appraisal of research evidence, (ii) real‐world clinical expertise, and (iii) individual patient values and preferences. The Review's failures across all three are evident.”

Oh dear, Cass.

www.mja.com.au/journal/2025...

Cass Review does not guide care for trans young people

Good medicine is guided by the values of the patient, not those of a clinician, politician or commentator. The Cass Review, lacking expertise and compromised by implicit stigma and misinformation, doe...

www.mja.com.au

2 53 110

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 6d

I've said before that Scotland does not have a functioning healthcare system for trans people - now the wait for an appointment in Glasgow is over 200 years.

QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com · 6d

🆕️🚨 After painstaking research, dozens of FOIs and months of analysis we release the Gender Clinic Files which reveal waiting times for every GIC in the country.

They lay bare, how far off the mark the Health Secretary's estimation of the average wait is 👇

www.wearequeeraf.com/gender-clini...

Some people in Scotland will never get gender clinic appointment on 224-year waitlist

Revealed waiting times of all GICs in UK: Most Trans+ people in the UK will wait more than a third of their adult life to get an appointment, and some will never receive care

www.wearequeeraf.com

13 33

Reposted by Steph Paton

The National @scotnational.bsky.social · 9d

BREAKING: Israel has intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla.

Around 500 activists from 44 different countries – including Scotland – were sailing to Gaza to deliver aid.

More to follow.

3 31 44

Reposted by Steph Paton

Jolyon Maugham KC @goodlawproject.org · 10d

Owen Jones has been banned from 'Labour' Party conference - but Maya Forstater is welcome.

And they wonder why progressive voters are deserting them in droves.

76 350 1.2K

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 9d

'Treading cautiously' is an odd way to describe the Labour government's intentional hostility toward trans people, no?

1 1

Reposted by Steph Paton

Jack Mirkinson @jackmirkinson.bsky.social · 16d

Wrote for @thenation.com about the complicity of some liberal politicians and pundits in the conservative campaign to exterminate trans people www.thenation.com/article/poli...

The Right Wants to Exterminate Trans People. Liberals Are Helping.

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative movement has accelerated its war against trans people. And too many centrist Democrats have kept up their trans bashing.

www.thenation.com

13 450 1.1K

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

😅

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

There is a fight within Your Party to ensure that it lives up to the grassroots promise that it was founded on – and I think it would do the Westminster bubble well to remember that this movement does not belong to them.
www.thenational.scot/politics/254...

The death of Jeremy Corbyn's Your Party may prove greatly exaggerated

THE launch of the left-wing alternative Your Party has been, let’s say, a little rocky ...

www.thenational.scot

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

What are you willing to bet that Keir Starmer's "progressive fightback" won't include supporting the rights of trans people?

3 1 16

Reposted by Steph Paton

Ian Rennie @theangelremiel.bsky.social · 17d

This would carry more weight if you hadn't spent the last year cheerleading for the Cass Report

The i Paper @theipaper.com · 17d

The Health Secretary has warned the public: “Don’t pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine... I trust doctors over President Trump, frankly, on this”

Read more: trib.al/9OQRFHw

1 140 930

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

Having relentlessly supported "decline and division" in the UK, Labour will now lead the fightback against “decline and division” in the UK.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Keir Starmer to launch progressive fightback against ‘decline and division’ fuelled by far right

Prime minister expected to warn UK is ‘at a crossroads’ as he sets out plan to counter Nigel Farage and Reform

www.theguardian.com

2 1 24

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

Call them whatever you want. There's thousands of folk building groups and networks across the UK for a leftwing vehicle. This isn't just a handful of MPs.

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

I think this is where we disagree. The boys club are jockying for power. I don't think they have it yet, and that means the membership can still shape the whole thing.

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

Like I say, there's a wee bubble in Westminster around Corbyn that just doesn't care. But as I argue in my column, folk seem ready to ditch Corbyn if he keeps fucking it for everyone else.

3 1

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

I don't think anyone is in control of it yet really. And there's a lot working towards a proper democratic structure - without which the whole thing will probably collapse.

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

I mean, I also have concerns that like every other party, folk will speak well until it comes time to actually take action. But I remain cautiously optimistic, based on what I've seen so far.

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

All of which has come from a top down inclusion of a bigot in Westminster - and failures to speak up about it. The grassroots, on the other hand, has been pretty clear that transphobia doesn't have a place in the party.

2 2

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 17d

The launch of the left-wing alternative Your Party has been, let’s say, a little rocky - but I suspect that all declarations of the death of Your Party may be greatly exaggerated.
www.thenational.scot/politics/254...

The death of Jeremy Corbyn's Your Party may prove greatly exaggerated

THE launch of the left-wing alternative Your Party has been, let’s say, a little rocky ...

www.thenational.scot

3 1 5

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 18d

🎯

Helen @helenm40.bsky.social · 18d

You literally censored Judith Butler for accurately describing the 'gender critical' movement as part of fascism.

And now prominent GC activists are hanging out with neo-Nazis (Minshull), calling people who cared about Flloyd "very weird" (Freeman) and saying that "ethnicity matters"(Stock).

Steph Paton @stephpaton.bsky.social · 18d

There's something about transphobia that makes some folk proud to look this stupid in public.

The National @scotnational.bsky.social · 18d

A Tory MSP is accused of wasting taxpayer cash after asking officials if any Holyrood staff have 'more than one gender'

👉 www.thenational.scot/news/2...

1 5 15

Reposted by Steph Paton

The National @scotnational.bsky.social · 22d

The National's front page today asks a big question: Is it a crime to share a picture of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump? 👇

The National dedicates front page to Trump and Epstein after protest arrests

www.thenational.scot

5 45 73

Reposted by Steph Paton

Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 23d

No words.

The lives of those living in Gaza are deemed less important than maintaining relations with Israel and, by proxy, the US. At the personal level, on Labour's doorsteps, this approach plays out in the most callous of ways. Dalloul al-Neder is a Palestinian refugee from Gaza, who was a constituent of the former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.
He got to know her, meeting several times: she visited his takeaway shop in 2019 and posed for pictures, declaring "Palestine must be free". She took him on a tour of parliament.

PHOTO: Dalloul al-Neder, who lives in Manchester, with an image of his late mother - he has lost several family members in Gaza bombings.
Photograph: Sean Hansford/MEN Media

Within weeks of the genocide beginning, in October 2023, his mother, brother, sister-in-law and two young nieces were killed by an Israeli airstrike. Desperate to evacuate his wife and four-month-old daughter - who had been buried under rubble three times by Israeli attacks - he emailed Rayner twice to seek help evacuating his family. He says received no response.

In January 2024, he attended a Labour fundraiser in Stockport addressed by Rayner and her colleague, Jonathan Reynolds, and got to his feet, clutching pictures of his dead mother, begging her to support a ceasefire, emotionally declaring "I lost my family in Gaza". The whole tawdry episode is on camera: he was aggressively ejected from the meeting and on to the street. Rayner did nothing, except to say "thank you, you've made your point". She then unfollowed him on social media. Days later, she was interviewed by Sky News' Beth Rigby, who framed the incident as an example of the threats politicians face, linking it to the murder of the MPs Jo Cox and David Amess.
Since then, so many of Neder's relatives have been slaughtered by the Israeli state that their names take up three pages of a notebook.

11 450 800