This is insidious behaviour. It also looks like a fishing expedition. Their "client" seems like they are desperate to find someone who has had a bad experience with "gender affirming treatment" so they can "support" them to take legal action. What they will actually do is tout them in front of politicians and media and exploit them for their own grubby little gains. If that person or people are out there, I fear for them.
I was sitting with my colleague ( a GP) when they received this letter - it was distressing for them, as someone who works so hard to provide high quality, evidence based, compassionate medical care to ALL their patients, especially vulnerable young people. The letter was designed to frighten and disarm (and it did exactly that initially) clinicians doing their best for people in an ever fraught health system.
Luckily I think the public reporting ( thanks David!) has helped practitioners feel less individually targeted and see these letters for what they are - a baseless, desperate, bullying chain letter by a bunch of bigots.
Thanks for saying, Vanessa. I hope reading through the comments has been helpful, too. Just basically a shitty spam email full of the junk you'd expect in a spam letter.
This is insidious behaviour. It also looks like a fishing expedition. Their "client" seems like they are desperate to find someone who has had a bad experience with "gender affirming treatment" so they can "support" them to take legal action. What they will actually do is tout them in front of politicians and media and exploit them for their own grubby little gains. If that person or people are out there, I fear for them.
A friend shared this about Franks: "When I worked at a government department in the early 2000s, maybe a quarter of my job was replying to Parliamentary Questions from this guy -- that's how many he sent.
MPs don't always understand law perfectly and that's understandable. But he, despite being a lawyer, rarely asked a question that made legal sense. We always had a good laugh at the questions because he'd basically copy-pasted concepts from US talk shows and (fictional) TV serials, and assumed they applied in New Zealand. Most of my replies were essentially, "This is not a thing."
It's amazing people like this can get law degrees and keep their bar registration."
I wonder how many taxpayer dollars have been wasted answering ridiculous OIAs from Franks and the Taxpayer's union. We should send them a bill. I wish we could repeatedly send something stupid that he'd have to respond to but it would probably just add to the workload of admin staff.
More rights being stripped and lives erased- Pentagon ordering transgender troops to be separated from the military. Assuming this is a clarification of their position but apparently goes even further.
This is insidious behaviour. It also looks like a fishing expedition. Their "client" seems like they are desperate to find someone who has had a bad experience with "gender affirming treatment" so they can "support" them to take legal action. What they will actually do is tout them in front of politicians and media and exploit them for their own grubby little gains. If that person or people are out there, I fear for them.
I was sitting with my colleague ( a GP) when they received this letter - it was distressing for them, as someone who works so hard to provide high quality, evidence based, compassionate medical care to ALL their patients, especially vulnerable young people. The letter was designed to frighten and disarm (and it did exactly that initially) clinicians doing their best for people in an ever fraught health system.
Luckily I think the public reporting ( thanks David!) has helped practitioners feel less individually targeted and see these letters for what they are - a baseless, desperate, bullying chain letter by a bunch of bigots.
Thanks for saying, Vanessa. I hope reading through the comments has been helpful, too. Just basically a shitty spam email full of the junk you'd expect in a spam letter.
This is insidious behaviour. It also looks like a fishing expedition. Their "client" seems like they are desperate to find someone who has had a bad experience with "gender affirming treatment" so they can "support" them to take legal action. What they will actually do is tout them in front of politicians and media and exploit them for their own grubby little gains. If that person or people are out there, I fear for them.
A friend shared this about Franks: "When I worked at a government department in the early 2000s, maybe a quarter of my job was replying to Parliamentary Questions from this guy -- that's how many he sent.
MPs don't always understand law perfectly and that's understandable. But he, despite being a lawyer, rarely asked a question that made legal sense. We always had a good laugh at the questions because he'd basically copy-pasted concepts from US talk shows and (fictional) TV serials, and assumed they applied in New Zealand. Most of my replies were essentially, "This is not a thing."
It's amazing people like this can get law degrees and keep their bar registration."
I wonder how many taxpayer dollars have been wasted answering ridiculous OIAs from Franks and the Taxpayer's union. We should send them a bill. I wish we could repeatedly send something stupid that he'd have to respond to but it would probably just add to the workload of admin staff.
Thanks for sharing this. The more I hear about him, the more insufferable he sounds.
Wtf is wrong with people
Driven by hatred. And they're scared. And stupid.
More rights being stripped and lives erased- Pentagon ordering transgender troops to be separated from the military. Assuming this is a clarification of their position but apparently goes even further.
Policy memo link:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.276845/gov.uscourts.dcd.276845.63.1.pdf
Yeah okay, I can see why they are scared. This is terrifying! It's based on very little, but it's not innocuous!