BRENDAN O’NEILL ON J.K. ROWLING ON FACEBOOK:

I disagree with JK Rowling on a lot. I have never read a single word of a Harry Potter book. But seriously, every institution in the UK could learn something from her refusal to capitulate to the fuming mob who have spent weeks abusing and insulting her and trying to get her cancelled simply because she believes there is such a thing as biological reality. In their tens of thousands people have lined up to denounce her, to call her “pure scum”, to tell her to shut the f**k up. Including the three actors who became famous on the back of the Harry Potter stories — the celeb equivalent of children denouncing their parents in Stalinist Russia. She knows there will be protests if she speaks in public again, she knows some millennials are burning her books, she knows she will be defamed and boycotted for years. And yet she is sticking to her guns. That is so unusual in these yellow-bellied times.

Imagine if every university, corporation, media channel, streaming service, local council and politician did likewise every time noisy agitators called on them to ban something or apologise for something or to sack people for wrongthink. Britain would be a very different, and far better, place.

True.