We saw our very first aurora last night and in Aberdeen too. Cities aren’t usually good places to see it because of the light pollution. My photo of it is a bit pathetic but I was still pretty chuffed to finally get to see it.
I dragged everyone out of the house at 9:30pm and we drove to Torry battery which I think is one of the better places to see it in Aberdeen. The kids were underwhelmed, especially Elizabeth. I could have stayed there for ages watching it change but we left just after 10pm. At least now we know where to go if there’s promise of activity.
Yesterday World Athletics banned transgender women from competing in the female category in world sporting competitions. This is not a ban on transgender people competing in sport as some media commentators would have you believe. It just means they have to compete in the category that matches their sex: transgender women compete with males and transgender men compete with females.
I wonder whether now Australian politicians will accuse World Athletics of being Nazis after this announcement since that’s exactly what they accused women campaigning for same-sex sport of this week. Or perhaps the Nazi label only applies to left-wing middle-aged women? I don’t envy the backlash World Athletics will get but I think they made the right decision. Let’s hope swimming and cycling will follow.
rachel.blog 
Swimming introduced a ban in June. Ian Thorpe came out against it with such gobbledegook it’s quite extraordinary.
Oh that’s good about swimming. I somehow missed that. Disappointing to hear about Ian Thorpe. It doesn’t affect him so of course he’d say that.
The aurora looks beautiful.
Very pleased to hear the decision from World Athletics. More and more men are beginning to compete in women’s competitions, and if it’s not put a stop to, soon the women’s podiums will only have men on them. I’ve already seen one first, second, and third in a women’s event all being biological men.
Gosh Katrina I am still in shock with the footage coming out of Auckland. But even more disturbing is the men gloating about the violence and intimidation of women. What has happened to society? I thought we had made progress with women’s rights.
It’s appalling what happened there! I was going to go to the Wellington ‘Let Women Speak’ rally, but that was forcibly cancelled after what went down in Auckland at the rally there. The media, politicians, and ‘rainbow’ activists and organisations had been whipping up agitation all week with lies and distortions about Kellie-Jay Keen, and that was the result. We always expected that the rally would be rambunctious and noisy, but didn’t expect that level of violence. The women who were marshalls at the Let Women Speak rally were absolute sheroes in the face of a mob that was increasingly winding itself up and not far away from doing serious harm, and helped to get Kellie-Jay Keen out of there safely. There’s a lot of people globally who are aghast at what they’ve seen, and although the media here are trying to downplay it, there may well still be a reckoning.