Best Of

@Steven_Swinford

Breaking:

Keir Starmer suggests he will sack Angela Rayner if the ethics watchdog advises that she has breached the ministerial code over her tax affairs

He tells
@ChrisMasonBBC
that he will 'act on whatever the report is that's put in front of me'

'What I'm saying is there's a clear procedure. I strengthened that procedure. It is now taking place. I am expecting a result pretty quickly. I do want it to be comprehensive, as you'd expect. And then of course I will act on whatever the report is that's put in front of me.'

Of course, whatever the lawyers and investigators say is the right answer. That’s how SKS ‘thinks’.

Eugh, nothing worse than establishing the facts, seeking expert impartial advice, and then acting on it in accordance with the rules. What an awful way to run the country.

Great to see @Cyclefree back. I hope things are going well for you.

But this is a polemic, not an argument. Today I am starting another trial about domestic violence. The accused, a man of course, has been in custody since March 2024 for this awaiting trial. It is simply false to say that violence against women is not taken seriously. I am taking it seriously. Today.

With great respect and despite your valiant efforts, this is not true.

There have been many many examples of trans activists threatening women with violence and the police have done fuck all about them. It is the contrast with how they have behaved in this case, which is striking, something utterly ignored by the Met Commissioner.

The Met promised after the Everard murder to take incidents of indecent exposure more seriously. Instead police action on this has gone down. Read the Femicide Census for the women murdered in 2022 - out a few days ago. The perpetrators have been caught and convicted. But in so many of the cases, there were lots of warnings which were ignored. If they hadn't been women would still be alive. The same lessons are ignored over and over again. The number of women killed stays the same year after year - one every 3 days on average, every year.

This does not speak to me of a society taking this seriously, frankly.

Surely the threat against women - as the Sarah Everard murder demonstrates - is men?

I don't understand why all of the focus goes onto a handful of edge cases so that little light is shone onto the vast majority of cases where the person abusing / raping / killing a woman is a cis man. Usually a white cis man. Same thing with this nonsense about wanting to persecute men with brown skin because they are all potential threats to women. With 40% of the organisers of one protest carrying convictions for assaulting women.

I am bored of the trans issue simply because extremists on both sides shriek abuse at each other. We all want to protect women - my wife is pretty strident on the topic. But the threat to her or to my 14 year old daughter isn't a trans woman, it's a man.

Edge cases, eh!

Well, let's see: the reason this matters is because the spread of this ideology has led to a KC in a Scottish employment tribunal argue that employers have a legal duty to force women to get undressed in front of men - physically intact heterosexual married men who claim to be women - regardless of their own wishes and how uncomfortable they feel. She argues that employers have a duty to force women to endure a criminal offence - voyeurism or indecent exposure because to object is "bigotry". This employer, BTW, is the NHS in Scotland and the case is the Sandie Peggie case.

And if this reasoning is adopted then women will not be able to say no to this.

What this is about and what you and others refuse to get is that this is about whether a woman's No means No. It's about respecting women and their wishes and understanding that a man's demands do not override her consent. It's about understanding that a woman is entitled to have boundaries and have those respected as of right. It's about understanding that a woman because she is a woman has rights and they are not to be ignored because of a man's feelings. It's about understanding that a woman is a material reality based on sex - not on feelings or costumes or identification - and that if you don't understand or respect those basic facts and that being of the female sex underlies every aspect of a female's life from birth to death: her life, her opportunities, her health, whether she is listened to or valued, her jobs, her safety, her position in society, everything then you are part of the problems and obstacles which so often make life much harder for women than it ought to be.

Women's rights matter. If men can call themselves women, women no longer have any rights as women. The oppression women face because of our sex and largely perpetrated by men and for the benefit of men cannot be dealt with if women are classified as some sort of fuzzy 'anyone can join in if they feel like it' group.

https://x.com/jeremyclarkson/status/1963567179506258418

“I’m puzzled. Labourites tell us that Angela Rayner was only trying to look after her child which they quite rightly say is understandable.
But when a farmer tries to look after his children, they say he’s a tax dodger.”

When a farmer tries to look after his children, what they actually say is he should be treated more like anyone else with an asset to pass on, rather than as a special case.

ETA: There's debate, as we've often had on here, about whether farmers should be a special case, but I don't think anyone in Labour is accusing them of tax dodging. People who bought farmland as an inheritance tax dodge, maybe, but not actual long term farmers.

Clarkson's on the record that he bought his farm to avoid IHT.
People buying farms to avoid IHT are a reason why actual farmers can't afford land for farming.

Creating tax cutouts causes unintended/undesirable consequences.

I think Reform will win the next GE.

I'm actually suprised that the forced choice 'Lab or Reform' question is already as close as 43:37. Plenty for Reform to play for and the trajectory is still titing in their favour.

There is the 18% Conservative vote to squeeze further (it saddens me but they are done.) After November's budget and maybe another couple like it, with Labour's manifesto pledges on Taxes in tatters, the 52% who delivered Brexit (allowing for electoral churn ofcourse) will, broadly speaking, deliver for Reform.

I do think it is incredibly plausible the Tory vote will be squeezed further. Although I do appreciate that Reform and Tory voters are not in lockstep, there is a “back the winner” effect I could see come into play if the polls stay as they are.

I may be the last conservative standing but they will not get my vote under any circumstances