Best Of

One day into the World Cup, FIFA is doing “actually, the stadiums ARE full” posts stating that there are “ticketed fans… standing in concourses rather than staying in their assigned seats”

https://bsky.app/profile/rodger.bsky.social/post/3mo4o2wcf622m

Three matches in and the first two big matches...two of the three host nations. Full stadiums is hardly surprising at this stage and tonights was only a 40k capacity.

Peter.

yeah, the point is the stadiums are not full. FIFA are claiming the empty seats belong to people who definitely bought the tickets and are definitely at the stadiums, you just can't see them on TV

I recall the same story from the opening days of London 2012, which they had to act quickly to resolve?

Lots of unused corporate seats.

To be fair, some pretty decent football matches. The World Cup is bloated, overhyped, far too costly and corrupt to the core, but like the Premier League it actually produces decent spectacle on the pitch.

Not sure if it’s been posted yet but Opinium have a new Makerfield poll which came out last night.

Labour 46
Reform 41
Restore 7

The fieldwork dates haven’t been published yet .

It's looking like a GOTV by-election. Who will turn out to vote and who will be too knackered after watching the World Cup through the night? Polling shows a clear sex division but only the worst type of misogynist will predict Reform's men will be tired and emotional while Burnham's women will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

England play Croatia on Wednesday night (9pm kick-off). Will Jordan Pickford's tummy decide the next Prime Minister?

Then into the early hours of Thursday morning, Ghana vs Panama (midnight) and Uzbekistan vs Colombia (3am).

No 10 was braced for Reeves or Miliband to quit. Then Healey jumped ship
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-defence-strategy-john-healey-bsncps22n (£££)

Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.

No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.

Remember what happened to gilts rates when it looked like Reeves might to resign for personal reasons? Someone like Reeves is essential to the operation.

The markets just about trust her to thread the impossible needle of our fiscal situation, given that there aren't any politically-acceptable tax rises or spending cuts available. (Not at the level.where you specify 'real people like X are going to have their welfare cut by Y and that will save Z').

And whilst it would be great to have the sort of teacher-politician who can explain some home truths to the nation, everyone who has ever taught has had a class who are in no mood to learn, however good the teaching on offer.

From @williamglenn -

"There's an emerging consensus that equality laws are illiberal and counter-productive. It doesn't make any sense for the Tories to swim against the tide just because the Cameron government was responsible for a lot of it."

What a load of utter nonsense.

The Equality Act is a consolidating statute consolidating anti-discrimination provisions dating back to the 1960's and 1970's. It was also passed by a Labour government not Cameron.

There is certainly a campaign by various different groups of idiots to remove certain sex-based rights and anti-discrimination measures, which will also impact gay people and religious people, and to put such groups back in the position they were in in the 1960's and 1970's. That would certainly be extremely illiberal and it is a great pity that the Tories are falling for this nonsense, just as some of the dimmer Labour MPs, much of the Lib Dems and the Greens have done.

Unlike US feminism, from memory British feminism started becoming discontented with equality around 2010, noting that sometimes it led to outcomes that were not good for women, or at least worse than the status quo ante. This escalated until around 2021 when Julie Bindel published "Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation", which provided (restated?) a theoretical justification for pursuing goals that were inequitable and inegalitarian but were better for women. Thus fortified, British feminists were free to pursue goals that focussed exclusively on the benefit to women, even if they led to inequality

This is illustrated by your phrase "sex-based rights" and other phrases like"fairness" and the gender-critical networks preceded by "SEEN" - an acronym meaning "Sex Equality And Equity Network" - pay homage to that.

You may recall that I've mentioned Robert Reilly before, and his work on tracking wars of ideas. One technique is to track the popularity of shibboleths and cant phrases over time. I think that the rise of fairness-based phrases and the fall of equality-based phrases demonstrates that @williamglenn is onto something, albeit not something I like.

I do not remember the people you have mentioned nor have I read the books you cite.

I am not making any sort of theoretical argument about what feminism is or should be as a theory.

My position is a simple one. Women are routinely discriminated against and/or oppressed and/or face sexual violence because of their sex. Their sex. Not gender. Not anything else. Their sex. That is why we need measures such as laws to counter this. Those laws need to be based on reality and that reality revolves around sex. So women need rights based on their sex to counter this.

The attacks we are seeing now are seeking to deny this reality. If they gain traction and are acted on, then women will continue to be discriminated against etc because of their sex but will lose the ability to articulate this or take effective action against it. You cannot deal with a problem you refuse to name or deny exists. This suits many of the male sex and many politicians, businesses and others who, for a variety of reasons and from different perspectives, resent having to take action to help women live full lives in our society.

As for women so for minority groups. The same motivation which sees women's rights as some sort of optional extra which can be discarded the moment someone else demands something will be applied to minority groups.

I have seen huge changes in the position of women in my lifetime. Changes for the better. But what I am now seeing is an attempt to reverse those changes, attempts which have a worryingly high level of support among politicians who should both know better and who claim to be "progressive". They are nothing of the kind but display a worrying level of ignorance and malice. I also see - and this forum is no exception - a refusal to understand or accept this and some particularly stupid and disingenuous attempts to justify it.

Virginia Woolf's words are very apt here: " Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes."

Discussions here and elsewhere remind me of this more and more. There is a very definite whiff of "women: know your place" going on. Kingston's Lib Dem Council recently illustrated this with its advice about why cycling was good for women. It would allow them to carry out their domestic responsibilities while also looking nice. Welcome to the 1950's, Ladies, courtesy of the Liberal (sic) Democrats.

I had not seen that from Lib Dems in Kingston. It is worse than "advice"; it was part of an official Equalities Impact Assessment attached to a proposal to expand the Borough's provision of dockless e-assisted cycles. They hold 44 from 48 seats.

They have been firmly roasted.

eg https://road.cc/news/kingston-council-sexist-equality-assessment

Their response. Apparently it was a direct quote from an academic paper, which does not excuse them totally failing to think about it.

https://www.kingston.gov.uk/your-council/statements/equalities-impact-assessment-content-error

There is some satire:

It’s true, as soon as I started cycling again as an adult I found myself yelling “alright darlin’!” at every young woman I passed. I also started smoking a pipe, falling asleep while reading a newspaper on Sundays and developed an uncontrollable urge to explain things to random strangers.

iIt is up there with newspapers nearly always publishing photos of "cyclists" in lycra wearing helmets.

Checking, the Assessment was written by a team of three, comprising two women and one man.

The quote is from a New Zealand academic paper about the potential benefits of e-bikes for women.

Insufficient thinking, methinks, by the officers / consultants, and Councillors not being on the ball if they checked it.

It doesn’t really compare to Reform’s plans to abolish the Equality Act and many Reform politicians’ desire to restrict abortion rights.

SpaceX shares up nearly 20% on the first day listed, and continuing to rise further in after-hours trading.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPCX/

4,500 SPCX employees became millionaires yesterday, and 400 who had been there since before they launched a rocket to orbit are all now worth $100m each!

The most employee millionaires since Microsoft? It will be interesting to see how many newly-minted SpaceX workers leave to start (almost said launch) their own start-ups or philanthropic trusts.

One can imagine that a few of the $100m+ club members might have some investment ideas in their heads. Watch for some interesting aerospace/defence startups in the next couple of years. There’s certainly not going to be a shortage of people pitching to them!