You can now read the full article as the post has been edited to include the full text. And while the idea of asking about and providing additional support for other mental health issues and the needs of neurodivergent people isn’t inherently bad, the article includes a number of concerning factors and an obvious pattern:

A) the service admits that wait times are extremely long, especially for mental health support but don’t put forward anything to address this, essentially an admission that most people will likely not actually receive said additional support.

B) which raises the question of what exactly the function/benefit of formally linking neurodivergency or mental health issues (which to be clear I don’t treat as the same, but the article basically does) to gender dysphoria is, if not for actually giving additional support?

C) The article and the quotes from some of the groups supporting this change make it much clearer. They want gender dysphoria to be treated as a symptom of mental illness rather than the reality that the cause and effect are predominantly the other way around. They also openly state that they want to pin the reasons for gender dysphoria or general ‘transness’ on varied reactionary culture war scapegoats like teachers and the internet. In other words, they want to eliminate the care and recognition of gender dysphoria by dismissing it as ‘mental illness’ and use that to enforce far-right bigotry and witch hunts against those deemed not actively transphobic enough (public institutions, parents, trans people being openly so in public or online).

D) This is particularly worrying within a country where a minority of the population but the overwhelming reactionary majority of media and the government are reinstitutionalising transphobia following a successful campaign waged and funded with and by the American far-right. As Dirt Owl pointed out below, this comes as yet another example of the UK following US far-right policy. And when the US is building lists of neurodivergent people, transpeople across the world are increasingly under attack, and both the UK and many European governments are moving rapidly towards or fully embracing the far-right and even open fascism, it’s not unreasonable to be concerned that even if it’s not a deliberate strategy by the government to ‘round up’ trans people, they’re creating the perfect material conditions for them or others to do so in the future, with no other apparent upside.

Unretiring my most used reply…

Grim.

MinMaximalism

Problem: People saying thank you to our chatbots on paid plans is losing us too much money.

Solution: Let’s take over a browser used by 65% of the world, stuff it full of AI features, and serve it for free! Cha-ching!

Because it’s a stock price grift and forking a browser doesn’t juice the line like announcing you might buy the browser used by 65% of the world at sell-off prices due to a monopoly ruling. They won’t buy it. And even if they did all that would happen is that it would immeadiately hemorrage users to its competitors because people use Chrome because it’s a Google default, not some weird increasingly broken AI niche thing that the company can’t even afford to run.

I was thinking more… …the oft self-identified ‘West’ by ghouls.

Oh look, the US is adopting our fascist policies instead of the other way around for once. How novel!

Pretty much the entire ‘west’ does now.

I literally cannot talk about what I think of this government anymore. And this is just the latest in their attempt to complete the bingo card of having every most despicable, self-defeating, and pointlessly cruel policy possible.

Supremely jealous. If you have pictures feel free to share them.

Works for Bellingcat. They’re an OSINT (open source intelligence) org who receive most of their funding from US/UK governments and NED (National Endowment for Democracy - US propaganda arm & CIA cutout).

Full of intelligence assets & aggressively manufacture consent (and sometimes faked ‘evidence’) in support of US foreign policy and to go after state enemies.