Thought For The Day: Nick Partridge

"Many people in the gay community thought the 'gay plague' would be used to roll back the small legal advances that we had made towards equality. Actually, the reverse happened. The community's compassionate response to seeing death and dying painted a much richer picture of the lives of lesbians and gay men. It provided the platform for the extraordinary advances to equality that we have seen in the past 15 years."

Nick Partridge, the outgoing head of Terrence Higgins Trust, is profiled in The Guardian.

PS It's often seen as a no-brainer for well-meaning gayers to raise money for the THT, but, with an income of around £20million a year, there may be many other groups far more in need of your money.

FT Weekend: Bona Lattie

This week's obligatory gay feature in FT Weekend is an interview with Nick Partridge, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust.
I think the main point is to shake the proverbial bucket in front of the FT's wealthy readership, and more specifically to plug the THT's 30th Anniversary Auction at Christie's on March 21st.
So Nick does talk about the trust's origins and early days - “Every year between 1985 and 1997, at least one of our trustees would get sick and die – and then so would our volunteers...” - and current work.
They also "skirt around" criticism of the effectiveness of their HIV prevention work with gay men. 
But it's a rather strange piece as it's an At Home With... feature, and so keeps suddenly turning into a guided tour of Partridge's - admittedly lovely-looking - house in "up-and-coming" Peckham.
From what I know, Nick Partridge has always seemed like one of the good guys, and this may have been the only way of getting a significant and sizable plug in what's basically a high-end lifestyle magazine, but this did seem rather "odd", to say the least.

Young Gay Men & HIV: A Youthful 38

Yesterday's Guardian ran a feature 'Young Gay Men Fueling HIV Epidemic, Study Warns', written by Sarah Boseley, the health editor.
"The HIV epidemic in Europe, including the UK, is being fuelled by the risky behaviour of young gay men, according to research published today.
"Public messages and campaigns about the dangers of unsafe sex do not appear to be getting through to men who have sex with men, the researchers say – particularly the young ones."
Young gay men today, eh? They don't know they're born!
The Guardian piece was syndicated to the US blog Queerty who ran the story with the photograph above, and a new title; 'Young White Gay Men Fueling HIV's Spread In Europe, Thanks to Bareback Sex'.
Cue more wailing and gnashing of teeth at our irresponsible gay youth.
The Terrence Higgins Trust's Nick Partridge wrote to The Guardian's letters page to point out their piece had a distinctly wonky take on the reasearch and its findings:
"Many gay men in their 30s would be delighted to be called young (Young gay men ignoring safe sex, HIV study warns, 7 September). The youngest man in the study was 32, and the average age was 38. While young gay men are of course at risk, the majority of gay men with HIV are actually infected in their 30s and 40s."