Best Of

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

There is a hard core of Tory loyalists who will never vote for a MAGA-loving, Putin-excusing, populist like Farage. And without him where would Reform be?
The Tory party will not die, and will revive at some point in the future. It may need a spasm of Reform electoral success first, but the electoral cycle will turn. And there will still be an ambitious group of people who will see the Conservatives as a route to a political career.

I genuinely do not expect Farage or Reform to win the next GE

Who does is a very different question

Sounds like you haven't lost hope of the Tories winning. Nice one. Party support is for life not just for Christmas.

Not in my case - I voted for Blair twice

Pity Starmer is no Blair

Blair twice, I know, but I sense you've stopped floating now. It's a pity there aren't more Cons like you. Too many are succumbing to Farage and Reform. Stop that, you stop them.

I am only one voice and simply reject everything Farage stands for

That is not to say I dont want the boats stopped, because the subject is so toxic to the fabric of our nation end the boat crossings and it removes the oxygen from the debate - and on a side issue allows my sons colleagues in the RNLI to end worry about a possible large loss of life in the channel

@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.

You argue very passionately Cyclefree and often I agree with what you say. Sometimes though I think back to my experience of being an outed gay boy at school and remember how I felt and was treated. I remember boys saying they didn't want to share a changing room with me because I might be looking at their junk. As if I was interested in every spotty thug just because I was gay. If I'd been running around with an erection trying to get off with them they might have had a point but of course I just wanted to get PE over and done with. I understand your points about women's rights and I don't disagree but I feel queasy about the view propounded by Linehan and co (which I fully accept may not be your views) that any trans woman in a female changing room is automatically committing a violent act.

My son is gay so through him I understand a little of what you must have felt.

A man who goes into a women's space is breaching boundaries. He should not be there. His presence is not physical violence but it may well be unsettling and scary - depending on his size, attitude, behaviour and also how a woman feels.

A woman faced with such a man has to make an instant calculation about the potential threat. It is automatic - just as it is when you hear a man following you in the streets late at night (man just going home like me or trouble?). It's not just the threat. Why is he here? To have a w**k? To mark his territory? To intimidate? What? Why should a woman using the loo have to go through this?

What if it's a changing room and he starts to look? Not physical violence. But voyeurism and deeply unsettling. I do not want to get undressed in front of any man other than my husband. Even in hospital male doctors and nurses give me privacy.

What if he gets undressed? Again not physical violence but unsettling and frightening. Indecent exposure is horrible for women. The presence of an unwanted male body in a situation of vulnerability is a form of assault even if the man never touches the woman. This is something which men simply do not get about indecent exposure.

I think there is a total lack of empathy for how women feel by men who claim to be women. If they really had a female sensibility they would try and understand how and why their presence is unsettling and can be very frightening. Instead, far too often, far too many of them behave exactly like the sort of men who most women will classify as "creeps".

There is a reason why we have boundaries. Men - of whatever type - should respect those of women. Just as I, a woman, would not walk into a man's changing room or loo even though I would be no threat. It is a matter of respect. And of course a trans-identified man who does not wish to share a space with fellow men should have his own private space. But I note that when these are offered, they are rejected. They want to be in women's spaces regardless of women's say-so and this is an aggressive (and, frankly, very male) attitude to take.

So I'd use the phrase "aggressive and disrespectful" rather than violent.

The reverse side of the coin, to generalising about minority groups, because of the bad behaviour of some of their number, is denying that bad behaviour by some members of minority groups is a reality.

Hence, we ended up with police and social services turning a blind eye to teenagers being raped by grooming gangs, because they were mainly Pakistani, and Islington councillors, turning a blind eye to sex offenders working in their childrens' homes, because they were gay.

Whilst that is true, I think there are many in (say) the Muslim or black communities who have not exactly had a blind eye turned on them by the police. The Macpherson report is just a small part of it.

So we have some cases where the police and wider authorities turned a blind eye to certain crimes, and others where the police and wider authorities were actively racist regarding other crimes. Sometimes the same police.

I think that often it depends upon the degree of sympathy (or lack of sympathy), for the victims. I would say that there is an astonishing lack of official sympathy towards victims of sexual abuse, and prostitutes, from lower class backgrounds. And, all too often, child sexual abuse is treated as a peccadillo, rather than as a crime.

The police, for understandable psychological reasons, have a tendency to quickly categorise people into one of two groups. Either you are a decent person or you are a wrong 'un*.

Lower class victims of sexual abuse are often seen as troublemakers and the author of their own misfortune, and so the police classify them as wrong 'uns, and they aren't interested in helping.

There's the possibility that some may be troublemakers, the author of their own misfortune, and even wrong 'uns.

But still be victims of a serious crime, worthy of having justice.

It’s all over for the SNP again.

https://x.com/holyrooddaily/status/1963514230667104552?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

All over for Anas4FM as well it would appear.

https://x.com/electpoliticsuk/status/1963577139397038463?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

Mm, if the SLDs keep going at that rate we'll have RP as a MSP. Already better than the Scons. And in barking distance of Slab on the list. Will depend how many constituency MSPs of each party there are, obvs.

I'm running in Banffshire and Buchan Coast where we got 3% last time. Mind you, Reform have been tipped to take it and they got 0% last time, so...

I will be largely campaigning online. With a megaphone. The only way to get heard in todays politics.

Hint. Stop the boats could be misconstrued in Fraserburgh and Peterhead.