A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Well has it occurred to you yet that you don't think the labour membership is batshit crazy because they think like you. Whereas a lot of people maybe looking at you and thinking you are the batshit crazy they are referring to.....after all you once thought Corbyn was a great leader.
Explain how I am batshit, if you'd like to give an example of my views, please do.
I think I am a lot more in touch with the public than you, I said Labour would lead the polls for months and Starmer was a good leader, to much laughter here. Turns out I had more of an idea of what was going on than the "anti woke" brigade
I already gave one...you used to think Corbyn was a good leader....don't need to say more than that really as I have no reason to think you ability to see batshit crazy when its in front of you has improved
Was/is Corbyn a better leader than Johnson, undoubtedly yes. Was his foreign policy completely wrong, yes.
I wasn't criticizing you but Boris. But really even you can't believe it was appropriate to compare the Ukrainian war to the Brexit vote. That is disgusting as everyone else here has said.
I've given up trying to work out what Hyufd actually believes. I think if anything he's a Trot. 'My party right or wrong...I know one cannot be right against the Party.'
I am one of the youngest members here, wokeism is irrelevant to me and all my friends. Leon is chatting nonsense as usual
This would be a reasonable point - if you had any friends. As you clearly don't, it somewhat devalues the rest of your commentary here. Sorry
Leon you go on holiday by yourself
To get away from all my friends and family
That is actually true. lol
I can't imagine anyone wanting to spend more than 5 seconds with you, the comments you make about women in particular would get you slapped in my circle of friends. Deservedly so.
I think you go on holiday by yourself and spend your other time on here because you're alone. And that's very sad.
I wasn't criticizing you but Boris. But really even you can't believe it was appropriate to compare the Ukrainian war to the Brexit vote. That is disgusting as everyone else here has said.
Meh. It was a stupid comment. But hardly “disgusting” or worth the acres of ink that have been spilt on it
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Also a member. Batshit crazy? I should coco.
I hope the Tories do try and win the next GE from the culture war gutter. Against 'Sanity' Starmer it'll flop badly.
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
I don't think they were actually. It was 'clap for carers' no? That's a subtle difference. People were on the frontline in a pandemic exposing themselves to a high level of risk. Of course it became appropriated as being about the institution itself.
And most people have a fairly rational picture of the NHS - does its best on meagre resources by international standards, has long waiting times, generally decent when you get there, but makes mistakes. The attitude is not remotely like followers of a religion. It's only the hardcore types who, deep down, wish it didn't exist, who see a cultish worship going on. The realistic debate is simply between people who want to spend more and shorten waiting times, as we did in 2005-2010, and people who are OK with it as a default and will go private if they can and they have a serious problem.
So it was, re clap for carers, so you and Frank B are quite right. But, come to think of it, there was in parallel that slogan 'Save the NHS' thoiugh IIRC in the context of not letting it collapse through overloading with infected patients and staff. Even so, I'm sure the clapping and the caring got conflated in the public mind. And of course 'save the NHS' was and remains against a background of ongoing and threatened privatization.
Ukrainian journalist Yanina Sokolova published info on Russian medals marking occupation of cities Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, prepared for RU soldiers. Note the wording: “occupation” of Kyiv+Lviv, but “liberation” of Odesa: a Soviet tradition of pointing out enemy and allied cities.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
I do wish people would stop talking horseshit.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
If you were less narrowminded, incurious and intellectually middlebrow, you'd realise we are talking sense, and that, if you actually listened to us, Labour would benefit. This is a real issue and it is now getting real traction
It has generated more comments than any other story in the paper today, and they are still coming. And most of them are incensed and angry, and shouting at the Lefty Woke people. ie Labour. Most of them are women
Woke is finally emerging into the daylight of public awareness, via stories like this. There is much danger here for The UK Left, just see what is happening to the Dems in America
Does it cross your mind that it is not that @kinabalu is narrow-minded, incurious and intellectually middlebrow, but that you are a sucker for this crap. After all we can all see you over reacting to everything and being conned into numerous conspiracy theories.
I am one of the youngest members here, wokeism is irrelevant to me and all my friends. Leon is chatting nonsense as usual
This would be a reasonable point - if you had any friends. As you clearly don't, it somewhat devalues the rest of your commentary here. Sorry
Leon you go on holiday by yourself
To get away from all my friends and family
That is actually true. lol
Really? You used to say it was for work related reasons. All your best dildos were knapped while on holiday, apparently.
Both, to be honest.
It started mainly as work. I was sent abroad a lot - on my own - by the Knappers' Gazette. After doing that for many years - along with a few mad solo adventures, to escape situations - I discovered I actually enjoy the experience of travelling alone, and often prefer it to travelling with partners, family, friends (which I also enjoy but in different ways).
I've explained before why it is in some ways preferable. Being alone means you can do what you like, it also forces you to go out and meet local people and have local experiences you really would not - if you were in a couple dining together in the hotel every night.
The majority of my most intense and rewarding travel experiences have been on solo trips
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
Except that self declaration is a legitimate reason to discriminate even with gender self ID under the 2010 Equality act, much as @DavidL suggested earlier, provided there is a sound reason
"145. The Equality Act contains a number of limited circumstances, also known as exceptions, where discrimination against someone with a protected characteristic is permitted; this includes exceptions for gender reassignment. These exceptions include sport, single-sex and separate-sex services, genuine occupational requirements, marriage and insurance.237
146. When the Government first launched its consultation into the reform of the GRA, it stated that it did “not intend to make any amendments to the existing exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 associated with the ‘gender reassignment’ protected characteristic’”.238"
Ukrainian journalist Yanina Sokolova published info on Russian medals marking occupation of cities Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, prepared for RU soldiers. Note the wording: “occupation” of Kyiv+Lviv, but “liberation” of Odesa: a Soviet tradition of pointing out enemy and allied cities.
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Was that what stopped batshit Corbyn from ever becoming the leader of the p...... oh wait!
Membership is a moveable feast - people join and leave as the party changes. I'd say there is a core of about 70% of the membership who simply prefer it to the Tories and are loyal no matter what (that's me, basically). Of the other 30%, about 20% joined with a view to helping Starmer get elected and have stayed on, and a somewhat larger number previously joined to help get Corbyn elected and have now mostly dropped out. The net result is that now only about 10% of the party is far left. That's why you're not seeing much insurgency going on from Momentum, McDonnell, Abbot, etc. - they hope for better days, of course, but they recognise the reality. One can always find the odd batshit type posting on Twitter, but most have lapsed.
Personally I'm more concerned that the party has lost its idealistic edge and is now mostly about winning. But I can see why that is, after 12 years of Conservative government and our view of it as, shall we say, suboptimal.
As for the woke stuff, it's a dry stick that the Tories keep rubbing in the hope that it'll catch fire. I don't care about any of that stuff, and no members that I know ever mention it. We adapt with the rest of society as the language changes, but that's pretty much it.
The height of Leon's commentary is to go out by himself and comment here about the girls half of his age he sees and what "nice legs" they have.
Sean’s psychology is fascinating. He’s taught me a lot about a small subset of other men, who I rarely encounter in real life, with his unrepressed PB postings.
I wasn't criticizing you but Boris. But really even you can't believe it was appropriate to compare the Ukrainian war to the Brexit vote. That is disgusting as everyone else here has said.
Meh. It was a stupid comment. But hardly “disgusting” or worth the acres of ink that have been spilt on it
Of course he’s getting lots more publicity for his speech for his crass metaphor than he would have done otherwise…..bus, anyone?
I am one of the youngest members here, wokeism is irrelevant to me and all my friends. Leon is chatting nonsense as usual
This would be a reasonable point - if you had any friends. As you clearly don't, it somewhat devalues the rest of your commentary here. Sorry
Leon you go on holiday by yourself
To get away from all my friends and family
That is actually true. lol
I can't imagine anyone wanting to spend more than 5 seconds with you, the comments you make about women in particular would get you slapped in my circle of friends. Deservedly so.
I think you go on holiday by yourself and spend your other time on here because you're alone. And that's very sad.
Well, if you really want to get personal - which you clearly do - I am not the one having therapy for my significant mental health issues. Unlike you
If that sounds mean, perhaps desist from getting personal? Up to you, old boy
Ukrainian journalist Yanina Sokolova published info on Russian medals marking occupation of cities Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, prepared for RU soldiers. Note the wording: “occupation” of Kyiv+Lviv, but “liberation” of Odesa: a Soviet tradition of pointing out enemy and allied cities.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
Except that self declaration is a legitimate reason to discriminate even with gender self ID under the 2010 Equality act, much as @DavidL suggested earlier, provided there is a sound reason
"145. The Equality Act contains a number of limited circumstances, also known as exceptions, where discrimination against someone with a protected characteristic is permitted; this includes exceptions for gender reassignment. These exceptions include sport, single-sex and separate-sex services, genuine occupational requirements, marriage and insurance.237
146. When the Government first launched its consultation into the reform of the GRA, it stated that it did “not intend to make any amendments to the existing exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 associated with the ‘gender reassignment’ protected characteristic’”.238"
Whether the law says it is permissible to make these exceptions is irrelevant if prisons, sport and hospitals aren't making use of it to make exceptions and we have seen that often this is not the case.
I am one of the youngest members here, wokeism is irrelevant to me and all my friends. Leon is chatting nonsense as usual
This would be a reasonable point - if you had any friends. As you clearly don't, it somewhat devalues the rest of your commentary here. Sorry
Leon you go on holiday by yourself
To get away from all my friends and family
That is actually true. lol
I can't imagine anyone wanting to spend more than 5 seconds with you, the comments you make about women in particular would get you slapped in my circle of friends. Deservedly so.
I think you go on holiday by yourself and spend your other time on here because you're alone. And that's very sad.
Well, if you really want to get personal - which you clearly do - I am not the one having therapy for my significant mental health issues. Unlike you
If that sounds mean, perhaps desist from getting personal? Up to you, old boy
I've been discharged now after recovering. Thank you for your kind words.
Ukrainian journalist Yanina Sokolova published info on Russian medals marking occupation of cities Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, prepared for RU soldiers. Note the wording: “occupation” of Kyiv+Lviv, but “liberation” of Odesa: a Soviet tradition of pointing out enemy and allied cities.
Getting personal, Leon you literally said I have no friends, which we both know is rubbish. You chose to get personal because I attacked your nonsensical crap about wokeism and how young people apparently care about it. They don't - and if you spoke to a woman in real life rather than wolf whistling you might learn something.
You're the guy we laugh at. Trust me.
Now must be off, getting a new pair of running shoes fitted.
A more general observation. The Left really does not like the word Woke, and it loathes the accusations about Woke madness, hence the desperation with which they try to move the subject on, whenever it arises.
Why? Some of them do it because they are consciously aware there is a big problem., and that this can hurt the Left; more of them - the @kinabalus - because they vaguely sense there might be a major problem, but they prefer not to think about it. Quite a few - @NickPalmer - are probably and sincerely unaware of any issues, and find it all rather puzzling, and distasteful
Ukrainian journalist Yanina Sokolova published info on Russian medals marking occupation of cities Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, prepared for RU soldiers. Note the wording: “occupation” of Kyiv+Lviv, but “liberation” of Odesa: a Soviet tradition of pointing out enemy and allied cities.
Belfast South and Lagan Valley will be worth watching in particular IMO to see exactly what happens to the DUP as they could well do worse than this.
Unionist parties combined should still win more seats than SF and the SDLP however
Depends however how stupid they are - they can still drive the Alliance, Greens etc. into the opposing camp.
The vast majority of DUP voters would only go to the TUV or UUP at most and the Alliance are not a Nationalist Party and oppose a border poll still.
The Northern Ireland Secretary can and will refuse a border poll anyway, certainly the fact that Unionist parties won more seats than Nationalists would be grounds to do so.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
I do wish people would stop talking horseshit.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
If you were less narrowminded, incurious and intellectually middlebrow, you'd realise we are talking sense, and that, if you actually listened to us, Labour would benefit. This is a real issue and it is now getting real traction
It has generated more comments than any other story in the paper today, and they are still coming. And most of them are incensed and angry, and shouting at the Lefty Woke people. ie Labour. Most of them are women
Woke is finally emerging into the daylight of public awareness, via stories like this. There is much danger here for The UK Left, just see what is happening to the Dems in America
I look forward to 'NHS scandals under the Tories' being pushed as a reason to re-elect the Tories.
Along with 'don't vote for ex-DPP Sir Keir Sanity Starmer cos he's a crazy wokie'.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
Except that self declaration is a legitimate reason to discriminate even with gender self ID under the 2010 Equality act, much as @DavidL suggested earlier, provided there is a sound reason
"145. The Equality Act contains a number of limited circumstances, also known as exceptions, where discrimination against someone with a protected characteristic is permitted; this includes exceptions for gender reassignment. These exceptions include sport, single-sex and separate-sex services, genuine occupational requirements, marriage and insurance.237
146. When the Government first launched its consultation into the reform of the GRA, it stated that it did “not intend to make any amendments to the existing exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 associated with the ‘gender reassignment’ protected characteristic’”.238"
Whether the law says it is permissible to make these exceptions is irrelevant if prisons, sport and hospitals aren't making use of it to make exceptions and we have seen that often this is not the case.
Clearly they misunderstanding the law. It wouldn't be the first time.
I think the Parliamentary committee suggested some illustrative examples to help guide interpretation. Seems reasonable to me.
Getting personal, Leon you literally said I have no friends, which we both know is rubbish. You chose to get personal because I attacked your nonsensical crap about wokeism and how young people apparently care about it. They don't - and if you spoke to a woman in real life rather than wolf whistling you might learn something.
You're the guy we laugh at. Trust me.
Now must be off, getting a new pair of running shoes fitted.
May I just add that my daughter was sexually interfered with by our local GP, Dr Alan Tutin, when she was sixteen. It was a fairly minor case and I never heard anything about it until about seven years later when she was one of a number of women who voluntairly submitted evidence to the GMC in support of another local girl who had been much more seriously assaulted by him.
The GMC threw the case out, which surprised me because it implied that my daughter and numerous other impartial and well-educated young women were lying.
Many years later, in 2019, he was convicted at the Old Bailey in a high profile case at which my daughter again gave evidence.
He had of course been practicing in the interim. We can only guess at the number of victims he assaulted between the two hearings, but I think it is fair to say it was likely to have been a lot.
What lessons do we draw? In Tutin's case it is very simple. The GMC is a trade union, which defends its members regardless. Its responsibilities to the public are a secondary issue, if that.
I see no evidence that it has changed its ways as a result of my daughter's case, or any of those you mention. I do not see any reason to think it will change unless forced to do so. It has a deeply entrenched posiiton and there is little pressure on it to show the same concern for you and me as it does for its members.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
I disagree and agree with @kle4 Yes you can find nutty woke stuff and we can all spot it for what it is and when it arises you want to grab the person responsible and shout at them 'What is wrong with you ', but that is it. The rest of the time 99.9% of us get on with our lives not being affected by it except for an occasional 'tut, tut'. You are paranoid on the subject.
No, just better informed.
Nope paranoid. I think you have posted adequate evidence of your repeated panicking here for that definition to stick.
No, just better informed
To be fair, the average age of PB - eg you - is about 70. To be truly aware of The Wokeness, and what it is doing, you have to be young enough to be working - and working in an industry where it is impacting. It is noticeable that younger PB-ers are, in general, considerably more aware of Woke, and its dangers
Woke has washed over my trade. You wouldn't believe the viciousness of the sex toy TERF wars.
Without that personal upfront experience, stories about Woke can sound like fables from a faraway and slightly unbelievable country, surely exaggerated
So you are forgiven for you ignorance, it's just your age
Bollocks, you are just brainwashed. Nice bit of ageism there. Suspect I might be s little more in touch with the young than you might imagine. You don't know who I am. Would you like to name those PB posters on here. I can think of only 1 and he isn't that young, more middle aged.
By the way I have campaigned against what is now caused wokism in the public sector before it had a name and you had ever heard of it. It isn't new and it isn't worse, although a bit different.
Have a nap, granddad
a) Not a grandad
b) Not significantly different in age to you and interestingly with much more hair than you.
So less of the grandad and more of dealing with the argument.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
I do wish people would stop talking horseshit.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
If you were less narrowminded, incurious and intellectually middlebrow, you'd realise we are talking sense, and that, if you actually listened to us, Labour would benefit. This is a real issue and it is now getting real traction
It has generated more comments than any other story in the paper today, and they are still coming. And most of them are incensed and angry, and shouting at the Lefty Woke people. ie Labour. Most of them are women
Woke is finally emerging into the daylight of public awareness, via stories like this. There is much danger here for The UK Left, just see what is happening to the Dems in America
I look forward to 'NHS scandals under the Tories' being pushed as a reason to re-elect the Tories.
Along with 'don't vote for ex-DPP Sir Keir Sanity Starmer cos he's a crazy wokie'.
It'll be quite the campaign.
Would that be the same as this Keir "Sanity" Starmer? -
Keir Starmer: "It's wrong to say 'only women have a cervix"
A more general observation. The Left really does not like the word Woke, and it loathes the accusations about Woke madness, hence the desperation with which they try to move the subject on, whenever it arises.
Why? Some of them do it because they are consciously aware there is a big problem., and that this can hurt the Left; more of them - the @kinabalus - because they vaguely sense there might be a major problem, but they prefer not to think about it. Quite a few - @NickPalmer - are probably and sincerely unaware of any issues, and find it all rather puzzling, and distasteful
But isn't it your contention that Woke is a left-wing project? Surely the subject only arises because the Left is raising it as urgent issues of more import than mundane things like inflation, jobs, marauding Russian dictators, etc?
You always end up arguing both sides of the argument on this.
For what it's worth I wish the Left would seek to move the subject on when the Right tries to provoke a culture war. Alas, there's probably too* much of the Left more motivated by a culture war than by economic and more traditional social justice** issues.
* Of course, it doesn't take that much to be too much. ** Remember when the online right-wing insult of the day was to accuse someone of being a social-justice warrior? Oh what innocent bygone days.
Belfast South and Lagan Valley will be worth watching in particular IMO to see exactly what happens to the DUP as they could well do worse than this.
Unionist parties combined should still win more seats than SF and the SDLP however
Depends however how stupid they are - they can still drive the Alliance, Greens etc. into the opposing camp.
Yes in theory Edwin Poots should be secure in Belfast South as the DUP is probably unlikely to go below 15% but I do wonder if him standing there will drive up turnout for Alliance/SDLP/Greens.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
I do wish people would stop talking horseshit.
WTF do the likes of you or fruity Leon or any of the umpteen clueless reactionary dingbats on here know about our party's membership or about racism or about transgender people.
Fuck all. Absolutely sweet fuck all. C'mon. Seriously.
Feel a Covid relapse coming on now. Thanks a bunch.
The truth sticking in your throat?
Truth? lol - More of a Peter Finch Network moment, I'd say. Sometimes it's the only way.
A more general observation. The Left really does not like the word Woke, and it loathes the accusations about Woke madness, hence the desperation with which they try to move the subject on, whenever it arises.
Why? Some of them do it because they are consciously aware there is a big problem., and that this can hurt the Left; more of them - the @kinabalus - because they vaguely sense there might be a major problem, but they prefer not to think about it. Quite a few - @NickPalmer - are probably and sincerely unaware of any issues, and find it all rather puzzling, and distasteful
Or it is all bollocks and one of your fantasies like many of the others.
People used to say the much the same about the EU- not so much after 2016....
The EU was irrelevant to 99% of voters until Cameron gambled on it and lost
That doesn't make any sense, yet people persist in claiming it - whatever polling might have said about priorities, if people did not care about the situation or found it irrelevant they would not have voted as they did. Acting as though Cameron created the sentiment by asking us is irrational.
A more general observation. The Left really does not like the word Woke, and it loathes the accusations about Woke madness, hence the desperation with which they try to move the subject on, whenever it arises.
Why? Some of them do it because they are consciously aware there is a big problem., and that this can hurt the Left; more of them - the @kinabalus - because they vaguely sense there might be a major problem, but they prefer not to think about it. Quite a few - @NickPalmer - are probably and sincerely unaware of any issues, and find it all rather puzzling, and distasteful
But isn't it your contention that Woke is a left-wing project? Surely the subject only arises because the Left is raising it as urgent issues of more import than mundane things like inflation, jobs, marauding Russian dictators, etc?
You always end up arguing both sides of the argument on this.
For what it's worth I wish the Left would seek to move the subject on when the Right tries to provoke a culture war. Alas, there's probably too* much of the Left more motivated by a culture war than by economic and more traditional social justice** issues.
* Of course, it doesn't take that much to be too much. ** Remember when the online right-wing insult of the day was to accuse someone of being a social-justice warrior? Oh what innocent bygone days.
Some reasonable observations there
My explanation: most of the Left is NOT consumed with Wokery. Certainly not most Labour voters.
However, and unfortunately for Labour, the most active and vocal lefties really are committed to Woke (or scared of being labelled as unWoke). And they have taken over the whole enormous diversity industry, meaning they are successfully pushing the agenda outwards, they've taken over academe, the arts, parts of the law, the NHS (as we see), the charity sector, and so on
Belfast South and Lagan Valley will be worth watching in particular IMO to see exactly what happens to the DUP as they could well do worse than this.
Unionist parties combined should still win more seats than SF and the SDLP however
Depends however how stupid they are - they can still drive the Alliance, Greens etc. into the opposing camp.
The vast majority of DUP voters would only go to the TUV or UUP at most and the Alliance are not a Nationalist Party and oppose a border poll still.
The Northern Ireland Secretary can and will refuse a border poll anyway, certainly the fact that Unionist parties won more seats than Nationalists would be grounds to do so.
The Alliance don't oppose a border poll - they just don't support it at present, but are open to changing their minds. Hardly a 'Unionist' party.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
Except that self declaration is a legitimate reason to discriminate even with gender self ID under the 2010 Equality act, much as @DavidL suggested earlier, provided there is a sound reason
"145. The Equality Act contains a number of limited circumstances, also known as exceptions, where discrimination against someone with a protected characteristic is permitted; this includes exceptions for gender reassignment. These exceptions include sport, single-sex and separate-sex services, genuine occupational requirements, marriage and insurance.237
146. When the Government first launched its consultation into the reform of the GRA, it stated that it did “not intend to make any amendments to the existing exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 associated with the ‘gender reassignment’ protected characteristic’”.238"
Whether the law says it is permissible to make these exceptions is irrelevant if prisons, sport and hospitals aren't making use of it to make exceptions and we have seen that often this is not the case.
Clearly they misunderstanding the law. It wouldn't be the first time.
I think the Parliamentary committee suggested some illustrative examples to help guide interpretation. Seems reasonable to me.
No they aren't misunderstanding the law. The law is clear. They can be discriminated against.....not must be discriminated against.
Too many people making decisions therefore look at it as if I do discriminate using the law I am definitely going to have bad headlines generated as someone like Stonewall will raise a storm over it. If I don't discriminate chances are nothing will happen and if it does I can rely on my colleagues and the trans lobby to help me try and cover it up.
To save misunderstandings here....I have no issue with people being trans or even self identify. My only issue is there rights end where it puts women in danger is spaces that should be safe such as single sex wards, womens refuges and prisons or at a huge disadvantage such as sport.
For the safe spaces I am all for the trans people to be there once they are no longer anatomically male.
Little thought experiment for you all. You have a daughter, she self identifies as male but is still anatomically female. Would you as a parent really want him being locked up in a mens prison? I suspect anyone honest will say no because it would be asking for trouble.
'It can seem churlish and ungrateful to criticise the NHS'
To quote Nigel Lawson
'The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a national religion'
All the more powerful coming from a right wing Conservative. The trouble with anything near sacred is how do you criticise it? Love the NHS all you want if that is your thing but beware any institution put on an unchallenged pedestal.
It wasn’t that long ago people were standing on their doorsteps applauding this institution.
We should applaud. Also criticise it. It is over 1 million people, of course it will have very good and very bad within it.
We applaud. We don’t criticise. The sheep like devotion to the NHS makes criticism of it deemed an outrage.
"The NHS is a religion. A sacred cow. Nobody ever criticizes it."
A famous person who wasn't Churchill or Orwell or PJ O'Rourke supposedly said he knew when the stock market was due a crash when his shoeshine boy started talking about shares.
The same principle can imo be applied to spot when an oft-expressed sentiment has completed its journey to ye olde chestnut - and I think we are just about there with this one about the National Health Service.
Not, I stress, to be equating Taz with a shoeshine boy. It just happened to be Taz but could have been almost anybody. That's the point. Almost anybody and just about everybody.
Anyway, now it's made chestnut status that's it. It won't let go. Once you're in you're in. Years from now, when slagging off the NHS has joined the weather, schools and house prices as national ice-breakers, it will still be the case that it's a sacred cow that can never be criticized.
Cyclefree appears to be immune though, thankfully, hence the interesting header. I've bookmarked the Cass report to read. From the exec summary it sounds like a combination of under-resource and lack of flexibility and tailoring of treatment is letting down troubled young people.
Its not that the NHS cannot be and is not criticised.
Its that for some people it has become an irrational pseudo religion which needs to be worshipped.
Similarly perhaps to the French language in France or beer is in Germany or the constitution is in the USA - if those actually apply rather than just being an impression formed from too much PB.
Now there are always going to be people who have their irrational pseudo religions (football fans as an example) but a problem arises when too many become too fervent in their worship.
There's undue deference sometimes. Some schmaltzy stuff about "angels". That sort of thing. But it's massively overstated to talk about religion and worship. It's become a chestnut.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Drawing Bayesian inferences after extensive sampling, I've determined that it's 99-percent certain that anyone who uses "woke" as pejorative will turn out to be a fuckhead. Please don't blame me for pointing this out--it's just science.
Ukrainian journalist Yanina Sokolova published info on Russian medals marking occupation of cities Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, prepared for RU soldiers. Note the wording: “occupation” of Kyiv+Lviv, but “liberation” of Odesa: a Soviet tradition of pointing out enemy and allied cities.
Ukrainian journalist Yanina Sokolova published info on Russian medals marking occupation of cities Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, prepared for RU soldiers. Note the wording: “occupation” of Kyiv+Lviv, but “liberation” of Odesa: a Soviet tradition of pointing out enemy and allied cities.
Fashions change so quickly, I see ‘I will continue to vote for the FLSOJ party cos of Woke and women with penises’ is the new ‘I voted for the FLSOJ party cos of Corbyn’. I just can’t keep up!
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Was that what stopped batshit Corbyn from ever becoming the leader of the p...... oh wait!
Membership is a moveable feast - people join and leave as the party changes. I'd say there is a core of about 70% of the membership who simply prefer it to the Tories and are loyal no matter what (that's me, basically). Of the other 30%, about 20% joined with a view to helping Starmer get elected and have stayed on, and a somewhat larger number previously joined to help get Corbyn elected and have now mostly dropped out. The net result is that now only about 10% of the party is far left. That's why you're not seeing much insurgency going on from Momentum, McDonnell, Abbot, etc. - they hope for better days, of course, but they recognise the reality. One can always find the odd batshit type posting on Twitter, but most have lapsed.
Personally I'm more concerned that the party has lost its idealistic edge and is now mostly about winning. But I can see why that is, after 12 years of Conservative government and our view of it as, shall we say, suboptimal.
As for the woke stuff, it's a dry stick that the Tories keep rubbing in the hope that it'll catch fire. I don't care about any of that stuff, and no members that I know ever mention it. We adapt with the rest of society as the language changes, but that's pretty much it.
@NickPalmer I must apologise for purporting to out you as a commie sleeper the night before last.
If I may explain - without in any way excusing - my train of thought, the relevant exchange reads
dixiedean: I do wonder if a lot of this comes down to the widely reported confiscation of soldiers' mobiles before the invasion? This is a generation raised with them. Has any training in something as basic as map reading been given? Do they even have maps? No mobile, no map, or the inability to use one, and all road signs altered and you soon get lost.
NP: An oddity about that report is that Ukraine has broadcast intercepted phone conversations between Russian troops and their families, expressing bewilderment and dismay. If they don't have phones, then the conversations are presumably fake? There's plenty of disinformation out there on both sides, and that's pretty normal in a war, though the Ukrainians are definitely better at marshalling global public opinion.
1. The more natural conclusion is, any operation designed to confiscate mobile phones from the entire army is likely to fail, esp when carried out by someone as incompetent as the Russian military. The conclusion that the calls are fake is therefore unjustified and seemed to me at the time, perverse
2. It's one thing to say the Ukrainians are spreading disinfo about the progress of the war - who wouldn't? - another to say they are marshalling public opinion [on the rights and wrongs of the war] - the facts are all that is needed to marshall public opinion
3. Your point that as a communist sympathiser, you have no reason to be on the side of the right wing kleptocracy which runs Russia, would usually be a knockdown one, except that you are a Corbyn enthusiast and Corbyn, unaccountably, seemed at the time of Salisbury to have completely missed the bit where Russia ceased to be a bastion of Marxist-Leninist excellence.
A more general observation. The Left really does not like the word Woke, and it loathes the accusations about Woke madness, hence the desperation with which they try to move the subject on, whenever it arises.
Why? Some of them do it because they are consciously aware there is a big problem., and that this can hurt the Left; more of them - the @kinabalus - because they vaguely sense there might be a major problem, but they prefer not to think about it. Quite a few - @NickPalmer - are probably and sincerely unaware of any issues, and find it all rather puzzling, and distasteful
But isn't it your contention that Woke is a left-wing project? Surely the subject only arises because the Left is raising it as urgent issues of more import than mundane things like inflation, jobs, marauding Russian dictators, etc?
You always end up arguing both sides of the argument on this.
For what it's worth I wish the Left would seek to move the subject on when the Right tries to provoke a culture war. Alas, there's probably too* much of the Left more motivated by a culture war than by economic and more traditional social justice** issues.
* Of course, it doesn't take that much to be too much. ** Remember when the online right-wing insult of the day was to accuse someone of being a social-justice warrior? Oh what innocent bygone days.
Some reasonable observations there
My explanation: most of the Left is NOT consumed with Wokery. Certainly not most Labour voters.
However, and unfortunately for Labour, the most active and vocal lefties really are committed to Woke (or scared of being labelled as unWoke). And they have taken over the whole enormous diversity industry, meaning they are successfully pushing the agenda outwards, they've taken over academe, the arts, parts of the law, the NHS (as we see), the charity sector, and so on
So the problem is growing
Fair do's. That's a reasonably good attempt at resolving the apparent contradiction I'd identified.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
Except that self declaration is a legitimate reason to discriminate even with gender self ID under the 2010 Equality act, much as @DavidL suggested earlier, provided there is a sound reason
Careful, you’re dangerously close to suggesting we examine what went wrong in any given case, put in place steps to avoid it being repeated, and address any specific failing or wrongdoing. That might lead to a sensible approach backed by 80% of people, in which we strike a balance between various rights, and protect the needs of the most vulnerable in any given situation (in today’s example the woman at risk of rape, elsewhere the trans person at risk of discrimination).
That sort of dangerous thinking will never catch on. If it did, when we might live in a world where everyone can accept that I don’t actually believe trans-women are women (or the reverse), but I am happy to call them such out of politeness and deference to their wishes, and because I have no desire to attack or upset them if they are doing no harm - which is frankly where I suspect most people are.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
This is at the heart of the supposed or real distinction between sex and gender.
A lot of people that aren't Labour members seem to spend their days on here telling us how "batshit" the Labour membership is.
I'm an actual Labour member, I can tell you with certainty that is rubbish. The majority of the membership voted for Starmer, voted to get the Corbynites out of the control of the party and are overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer. I know that first hand and the polling confirms this.
A tiny subsection are batshit - but also totally irrelevant.
Was that what stopped batshit Corbyn from ever becoming the leader of the p...... oh wait!
Membership is a moveable feast - people join and leave as the party changes. I'd say there is a core of about 70% of the membership who simply prefer it to the Tories and are loyal no matter what (that's me, basically). Of the other 30%, about 20% joined with a view to helping Starmer get elected and have stayed on, and a somewhat larger number previously joined to help get Corbyn elected and have now mostly dropped out. The net result is that now only about 10% of the party is far left. That's why you're not seeing much insurgency going on from Momentum, McDonnell, Abbot, etc. - they hope for better days, of course, but they recognise the reality. One can always find the odd batshit type posting on Twitter, but most have lapsed.
Personally I'm more concerned that the party has lost its idealistic edge and is now mostly about winning. But I can see why that is, after 12 years of Conservative government and our view of it as, shall we say, suboptimal.
As for the woke stuff, it's a dry stick that the Tories keep rubbing in the hope that it'll catch fire. I don't care about any of that stuff, and no members that I know ever mention it. We adapt with the rest of society as the language changes, but that's pretty much it.
@NickPalmer I must apologise for purporting to out you as a commie sleeper the night before last.
If I may explain - without in any way excusing - my train of thought, the relevant exchange reads
dixiedean: I do wonder if a lot of this comes down to the widely reported confiscation of soldiers' mobiles before the invasion? This is a generation raised with them. Has any training in something as basic as map reading been given? Do they even have maps? No mobile, no map, or the inability to use one, and all road signs altered and you soon get lost.
NP: An oddity about that report is that Ukraine has broadcast intercepted phone conversations between Russian troops and their families, expressing bewilderment and dismay. If they don't have phones, then the conversations are presumably fake? There's plenty of disinformation out there on both sides, and that's pretty normal in a war, though the Ukrainians are definitely better at marshalling global public opinion.
1. The more natural conclusion is, any operation designed to confiscate mobile phones from the entire army is likely to fail, esp when carried out by someone as incompetent as the Russian military. The conclusion that the calls are fake is therefore unjustified and seemed to me at the time, perverse
2. It's one thing to say the Ukrainians are spreading disinfo about the progress of the war - who wouldn't? - another to say they are marshalling public opinion [on the rights and wrongs of the war] - the facts are all that is needed to marshall public opinion
3. Your point that as a communist sympathiser, you have no reason to be on the side of the right wing kleptocracy which runs Russia, would usually be a knockdown one, except that you are a Corbyn enthusiast and Corbyn, unaccountably, seemed at the time of Salisbury to have completely missed the bit where Russia ceased to be a bastion of Marxist-Leninist excellence.
but all this is to explain, not to excuse.
It is also possible that even if your phone has been taken you might obtain one as spoils of battle
To be fair everyone else got their Ukrainian predictions wrong as well, but @Dura_Ace likes to claim special military insight
Oh dear
That's not actually true. When I've asked him specific questions about tactics, for example, he's disclaimed any specialist insight.
He clearly was wrong about the impact of these shipments of weapons, which do seem to have made quite a difference, but it wasn't a ludicrous comment based on his experience of the effectiveness of similar weapons either.
People used to say the much the same about the EU- not so much after 2016....
The EU was irrelevant to 99% of voters until Cameron gambled on it and lost
That doesn't make any sense, yet people persist in claiming it - whatever polling might have said about priorities, if people did not care about the situation or found it irrelevant they would not have voted as they did. Acting as though Cameron created the sentiment by asking us is irrational.
The EU Referendum vote became all things to all voters.
I didn't have a view one way or the other about the EU. We were just part of it and life went on. I was rallied by Cameron's Referendum and I fell four square behind him because I was of the opinion that my current and future life was better served inside the EU. I am now even more sure I was correct and lament the day we left.
I can understand why people voted to leave. I thought it folly for Cameron to spend six months telling us we were being failed by the EU and our relationship needed to be recalibrated. On returning from Brussels empty handed he then demanded we vote Remain. He didn't think he could lose.
A more general observation. The Left really does not like the word Woke, and it loathes the accusations about Woke madness, hence the desperation with which they try to move the subject on, whenever it arises.
Why? Some of them do it because they are consciously aware there is a big problem., and that this can hurt the Left; more of them - the @kinabalus - because they vaguely sense there might be a major problem, but they prefer not to think about it. Quite a few - @NickPalmer - are probably and sincerely unaware of any issues, and find it all rather puzzling, and distasteful
But isn't it your contention that Woke is a left-wing project? Surely the subject only arises because the Left is raising it as urgent issues of more import than mundane things like inflation, jobs, marauding Russian dictators, etc?
You always end up arguing both sides of the argument on this.
For what it's worth I wish the Left would seek to move the subject on when the Right tries to provoke a culture war. Alas, there's probably too* much of the Left more motivated by a culture war than by economic and more traditional social justice** issues.
* Of course, it doesn't take that much to be too much. ** Remember when the online right-wing insult of the day was to accuse someone of being a social-justice warrior? Oh what innocent bygone days.
Some reasonable observations there
My explanation: most of the Left is NOT consumed with Wokery. Certainly not most Labour voters.
However, and unfortunately for Labour, the most active and vocal lefties really are committed to Woke (or scared of being labelled as unWoke). And they have taken over the whole enormous diversity industry, meaning they are successfully pushing the agenda outwards, they've taken over academe, the arts, parts of the law, the NHS (as we see), the charity sector, and so on
So the problem is growing
So woke lefties have, over the last 10 years, taken over the commanding heights of the public sector, the not-for-profit sector, and most of the great institutions of state. All this under Tory governments.
Sounds like you need to vote Labour to me, to stop the march of the woke that we've seen over the last 10 years under the Tories.
British volunteer fighters are feared to have triggered a deadly airstrike on a Ukrainian military base after their phones were detected in the area, the Telegraph can reveal.
At least 35 people were killed, potentially including three British ex-special forces troops, when 30 Russian cruise missiles pulverised the Yavoriv facility, near the Polish border, on March 13.
The target on the base is believed to have been the International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, where Ukraine has been training foreign civilian recruits for its international brigade.
Now, the Telegraph has learned that around 12 to 14 phone numbers starting with +44 were visible to surveillance equipment in the area in the hours before the missile strike.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
This is at the heart of the supposed or real distinction between sex and gender.
How do single sex wards stop murderers if all you have to do to get on a ward is to say "I'm not a murderer"?
My great great g g g g (x 38) grandfather fought and won the Siege of Chartres in 911, after which he converted to fierce Catholicism, seized many lands west of the Seine, and married a five year old girl.
My family KNOWS what war does to you. Don’t need reminding.
It ties in with the Woke debate. People still try to deny that Woke exists, or, if it does, that it matters. Well here is proof that it exists and that yes it really matters
Part of Wokeness is the elevation of extreme identity politics to a (deliberately?) destructive level - way beyond common sense. Critical Race Theory is one example: all white people are inherently racist and can never atone, etc
Another is the trans debate and “intersectionality” - the *value* of your identity depends on how oppressed you are. A trans person is apparently more oppressed than almost anyone therefore they must be protected more than others, lest you commit the awful crime of transphobia
Hence you get the grotesque situation where a woman’s legitimate rape complaint is flatly denied, as to admit it would be “transphobic”: denying the self-identified gender of the rapist by calling her “a man”
Perhaps the criminal law needs a different standard. We already have beyond reasonable doubt v balance of probabilities in civil law. Perhaps there needs to be a different standard that a "woman" has to pass the test of their gender being beyond reasonable doubt before being accepted - and not "because I say I am a woman".
The slight reservation I have about this is that it reminds me of the gays in the armed forces debate. The hypothesis of that was that gays might get excited by their male colleagues being naked etc and be a threat to them because they are that way inclined. It was, of course, complete nonsense. There was no more risk of a gay person being predatory than a hetrosexual person being so. We moved past that with little difficulty.
I have no doubt that trans people are exactly the same. The vast majority of them will, like heterosexuals or gays, be completely harmless and a threat to no one. But a loophole has been created and exploited by what are in fact heterosexual predators to get into what are meant to be protected spaces.
How do we deal with this loophole? One way, as I mentioned on the previous thread, is to gender neutralise the crime as we have in Scotland. The other is to set the goalposts for these protected areas slightly higher. So, in the general community you can self identify as whatever you like but if you want to get into those protected spaces you need to be sufficiently far along in the treatment that you are no longer biologically functional as a male.
Quite why this practical issue has caused so much hysteria simply baffles me.
Come off it David.
You know perfectly well that the proposed GRA reform proposed by Sturgeon removes pretty much all requirements before one can legally transition: no requirement for a medical diagnosis, no requirement for chemical treatment or surgery, no requirement to prove that one has lived as an acquired gender for a prolonged period and one can do it at 16.
So anyone - anyone not just those who are genuinely trans - can legally change and get access to womens spaces.
What do you think this means? It widens the loophole so much it's pretty much the size of a prairie. And what will that mean? It will make it much much easier for male sexual predators to get access to women. As indeed has already happened - in prisons in England, for instance - and in other countries where effective self-ID has already happened.
The Scottish proposal fundamentally changes the scope of people who can call themselves women. It does not improve matters for trans people. It gives any male the opportunity to do so without needing to do anything at all beyond sign a form. You say that trans people are not a threat to anyone. But when trans effectively means a man who does not need a diagnosis or treatment the risk from them is the same as from other men ie high. Not low. There have been studies of the number of trans men in prison for sexual offences and they show, tho more analysis is needed, that they have a higher rate of sexual offending than others.
I could fill a thread with the names of men claiming to be trans in prison with offences for sexual violence against women. And if the Scottish government has its way, life will be made much easier for them to claim to be women and access women in spaces where women and girls should be able to feel safe. If Labour and the Lib Dems have their way the same will happen in England.
This is wrong. There is a reason why women need women only spaces. Men - with male bodies - are not women and should not be in womens' spaces.
If men with gender dysphoria want or need their own space, let men give up their spaces for them. Let's make male spaces gender neutral and let women (just women) have their own spaces.
We might need to see the full context. Contrasting how we can just pop down the polling station and change our nation's direction, the Ukrainians try that and have to face a Russian invasion.
The full context appears to include the war on woke.
I really think Tory strategists try too hard on the war on woke stuff. It comes across as distraction, when all they would need to do is highlight some of the more extreme and ridiculous instances of people quibbling about pronouns or cancelling things etc, and I think the general public can and does apply common sense on the ridiculous element. The Tories don't need to fan that fire, and the extent they do can undermine it by turning what for many public might be just a common sense issue, into a political one which will push people to take a partisan side instead.
Disagree
Most people are sensible about politics and therefore WAAAAAAY less well-informed than us geeks. And, as we see, many of the geeks on here don't understand Woke, or don't want to understand it, some refuse to believe it exists (which is actually understandable, in a way, because elements of it are so truly bizarre. It's a bit like the Victorians who refused to believe the first descriptions of a duck billed platypus)
Therefore if you want to raise awareness and get people as angry as they should be, you have to be pretty damn brutal and heavy handed. The Republicans have shown that waging the Culture Wars can win elections, if you go in hard enough. They won Virginia thereby
Someone should ask Starmer if a rape took place in that hospital. Because of his Wokeness, he won't be able to answer coherently. A well timed bomb like that could, by itself, win the GE for the Tories, by turning millions of despairing women away from Labour
Starmer is a reasonable guy, but his party membership is batshit insane and Starmer needs them. So the Tories should force him to answer questions that divides the public from the Labour activists.
- Was there a rape at this hospital? - Will you take off the income threshold for immigration? - Do you believe Diane Abbott's past comments are racist?
Yes, that's the way to do it. Along with highlighting the crazier and nastier examples of actual Wokeness "gone wrong"
And the Tories need to hammer this. Raise awareness
Didn’t single sex wards used to be a Labour campaigning point, or was that the tories?
How are single sex wards a help when all you need to do to get on one is say "I identify as a woman" and don't claim it won't happen as it already does for single sex prisons
This is at the heart of the supposed or real distinction between sex and gender.
How do single sex wards stop murderers if all you have to do to get on a ward is to say "I'm not a murderer"?
I've thought about it a bit more. Maybe we shouldn't allow patients on wards because there is a tiny risk that one of those patients is a murderer? And people that identify as men are far more likely to be murderers than anyone else. So men definitely shouldn't allowed in hospital. Even as doctors. Look at Harold Shipman if you want a concrete example. Don't understand why we still train them in the profession. Too risky.
I would call you a bastard for gloating, but that would leave me nowhere to go for @TSE ...
Pivac has underwhelmed. I am glad that Italy have had another 6 Nations victory. All the "Italy should be replaced in the Six Nations by South Africa" nonsense will hopefully be placed on the back seat.
I would call you a bastard for gloating, but that would leave me nowhere to go for @TSE ...
Pivac has underwhelmed. I am glad that Italy have had another 6 Nations victory. All the "Italy should be replaced in the Six Nations by South Africa" nonsense will hopefully be placed on the back seat.
Hey, hold on a minute. Italy winning a game isn't the problem, it's Wales losing.
If Italy had beaten England or France I'd be cheering so loudly TSE would actually kill me.
Comments
I think you go on holiday by yourself and spend your other time on here because you're alone. And that's very sad.
I hope the Tories do try and win the next GE from the culture war gutter. Against 'Sanity' Starmer it'll flop badly.
https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1505137845576601603?s=21
It started mainly as work. I was sent abroad a lot - on my own - by the Knappers' Gazette. After doing that for many years - along with a few mad solo adventures, to escape situations - I discovered I actually enjoy the experience of travelling alone, and often prefer it to travelling with partners, family, friends (which I also enjoy but in different ways).
I've explained before why it is in some ways preferable. Being alone means you can do what you like, it also forces you to go out and meet local people and have local experiences you really would not - if you were in a couple dining together in the hotel every night.
The majority of my most intense and rewarding travel experiences have been on solo trips
"145. The Equality Act contains a number of limited circumstances, also known as exceptions, where discrimination against someone with a protected characteristic is permitted; this includes exceptions for gender reassignment. These exceptions include sport, single-sex and separate-sex services, genuine occupational requirements, marriage and insurance.237
146. When the Government first launched its consultation into the reform of the GRA, it stated that it did “not intend to make any amendments to the existing exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 associated with the ‘gender reassignment’ protected characteristic’”.238"
Of course, Wales scored a try as I typed the above
Personally I'm more concerned that the party has lost its idealistic edge and is now mostly about winning. But I can see why that is, after 12 years of Conservative government and our view of it as, shall we say, suboptimal.
As for the woke stuff, it's a dry stick that the Tories keep rubbing in the hope that it'll catch fire. I don't care about any of that stuff, and no members that I know ever mention it. We adapt with the rest of society as the language changes, but that's pretty much it.
If that sounds mean, perhaps desist from getting personal? Up to you, old boy
Losing to Italy would be even worse than losing to England. At least England know what a rugby ball looks like.
War aims revealed by medals?
The Battle of Cape Finisterre then happened. Followed, rather more dramatically, by Trafalgar.
Best laid plans...
You're the guy we laugh at. Trust me.
Now must be off, getting a new pair of running shoes fitted.
Why? Some of them do it because they are consciously aware there is a big problem., and that this can hurt the Left; more of them - the @kinabalus - because they vaguely sense there might be a major problem, but they prefer not to think about it. Quite a few - @NickPalmer - are probably and sincerely unaware of any issues, and find it all rather puzzling, and distasteful
The Northern Ireland Secretary can and will refuse a border poll anyway, certainly the fact that Unionist parties won more seats than Nationalists would be grounds to do so.
Along with 'don't vote for ex-DPP Sir Keir Sanity Starmer cos he's a crazy wokie'.
It'll be quite the campaign.
I think the Parliamentary committee suggested some illustrative examples to help guide interpretation. Seems reasonable to me.
May I just add that my daughter was sexually interfered with by our local GP, Dr Alan Tutin, when she was sixteen. It was a fairly minor case and I never heard anything about it until about seven years later when she was one of a number of women who voluntairly submitted evidence to the GMC in support of another local girl who had been much more seriously assaulted by him.
The GMC threw the case out, which surprised me because it implied that my daughter and numerous other impartial and well-educated young women were lying.
Many years later, in 2019, he was convicted at the Old Bailey in a high profile case at which my daughter again gave evidence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-48299118
He had of course been practicing in the interim. We can only guess at the number of victims he assaulted between the two hearings, but I think it is fair to say it was likely to have been a lot.
What lessons do we draw? In Tutin's case it is very simple. The GMC is a trade union, which defends its members regardless. Its responsibilities to the public are a secondary issue, if that.
I see no evidence that it has changed its ways as a result of my daughter's case, or any of those you mention. I do not see any reason to think it will change unless forced to do so. It has a deeply entrenched posiiton and there is little pressure on it to show the same concern for you and me as it does for its members.
b) Not significantly different in age to you and interestingly with much more hair than you.
So less of the grandad and more of dealing with the argument.
Keir Starmer: "It's wrong to say 'only women have a cervix"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r81aZGJHDeM
You always end up arguing both sides of the argument on this.
For what it's worth I wish the Left would seek to move the subject on when the Right tries to provoke a culture war. Alas, there's probably too* much of the Left more motivated by a culture war than by economic and more traditional social justice** issues.
* Of course, it doesn't take that much to be too much.
** Remember when the online right-wing insult of the day was to accuse someone of being a social-justice warrior? Oh what innocent bygone days.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Zuby's Razor
@Dura_Ace said:
"We destroyed a grand total of two Iraqi tanks with ATGMs across both Gulf Wars.
Hezbollah have destroyed five Israeli tanks over about 15 years despite firing (literally) thousands of ATGM rounds at them.
The two British C-17 loads of NLAW aren't going to make any difference beyond the politics of the gesture."
My explanation: most of the Left is NOT consumed with Wokery. Certainly not most Labour voters.
However, and unfortunately for Labour, the most active and vocal lefties really are committed to Woke (or scared of being labelled as unWoke). And they have taken over the whole enormous diversity industry, meaning they are successfully pushing the agenda outwards, they've taken over academe, the arts, parts of the law, the NHS (as we see), the charity sector, and so on
So the problem is growing
Too many people making decisions therefore look at it as if I do discriminate using the law I am definitely going to have bad headlines generated as someone like Stonewall will raise a storm over it. If I don't discriminate chances are nothing will happen and if it does I can rely on my colleagues and the trans lobby to help me try and cover it up.
To save misunderstandings here....I have no issue with people being trans or even self identify. My only issue is there rights end where it puts women in danger is spaces that should be safe such as single sex wards, womens refuges and prisons or at a huge disadvantage such as sport.
For the safe spaces I am all for the trans people to be there once they are no longer anatomically male.
Little thought experiment for you all. You have a daughter, she self identifies as male but is still anatomically female. Would you as a parent really want him being locked up in a mens prison? I suspect anyone honest will say no because it would be asking for trouble.
The current "fuckheads" appear to be coordinated. Liz Truss is at it, as is Johnson and Oliver Dowden:
https://mobile.twitter.com/vampthebs/status/1505182206339256329
If I may explain - without in any way excusing - my train of thought, the relevant exchange reads
dixiedean:
I do wonder if a lot of this comes down to the widely reported confiscation of soldiers' mobiles before the invasion?
This is a generation raised with them. Has any training in something as basic as map reading been given?
Do they even have maps?
No mobile, no map, or the inability to use one, and all road signs altered and you soon get lost.
NP: An oddity about that report is that Ukraine has broadcast intercepted phone conversations between Russian troops and their families, expressing bewilderment and dismay. If they don't have phones, then the conversations are presumably fake? There's plenty of disinformation out there on both sides, and that's pretty normal in a war, though the Ukrainians are definitely better at marshalling global public opinion.
1. The more natural conclusion is, any operation designed to confiscate mobile phones from the entire army is likely to fail, esp when carried out by someone as incompetent as the Russian military. The conclusion that the calls are fake is therefore unjustified and seemed to me at the time, perverse
2. It's one thing to say the Ukrainians are spreading disinfo about the progress of the war - who wouldn't? - another to say they are marshalling public opinion [on the rights and wrongs of the war] - the facts are all that is needed to marshall public opinion
3. Your point that as a communist sympathiser, you have no reason to be on the side of the right wing kleptocracy which runs Russia, would usually be a knockdown one, except that you are a Corbyn enthusiast and Corbyn, unaccountably, seemed at the time of Salisbury to have completely missed the bit where Russia ceased to be a bastion of Marxist-Leninist excellence.
but all this is to explain, not to excuse.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3751935#Comment_3751935
That sort of dangerous thinking will never catch on. If it did, when we might live in a world where everyone can accept that I don’t actually believe trans-women are women (or the reverse), but I am happy to call them such out of politeness and deference to their wishes, and because I have no desire to attack or upset them if they are doing no harm - which is frankly where I suspect most people are.
To be fair everyone else got their Ukrainian predictions wrong as well, but @Dura_Ace likes to claim special military insight
Oh dear
He clearly was wrong about the impact of these shipments of weapons, which do seem to have made quite a difference, but it wasn't a ludicrous comment based on his experience of the effectiveness of similar weapons either.
Sorry @ydoethur
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1505191579975401474?s=20&t=0VStg22CTqdgqKg0ojczfg
I didn't have a view one way or the other about the EU. We were just part of it and life went on. I was rallied by Cameron's Referendum and I fell four square behind him because I was of the opinion that my current and future life was better served inside the EU. I am now even more sure I was correct and lament the day we left.
I can understand why people voted to leave. I thought it folly for Cameron to spend six months telling us we were being failed by the EU and our relationship needed to be recalibrated. On returning from Brussels empty handed he then demanded we vote Remain. He didn't think he could lose.
"I don't know why a corrupt shithole like Ukraine is our problem all of a sudden."
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3778074#Comment_3778074
Sounds like you need to vote Labour to me, to stop the march of the woke that we've seen over the last 10 years under the Tories.
Ferrari take pole in Bahrain and moments later, that try.
At least 35 people were killed, potentially including three British ex-special forces troops, when 30 Russian cruise missiles pulverised the Yavoriv facility, near the Polish border, on March 13.
The target on the base is believed to have been the International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, where Ukraine has been training foreign civilian recruits for its international brigade.
Now, the Telegraph has learned that around 12 to 14 phone numbers starting with +44 were visible to surveillance equipment in the area in the hours before the missile strike.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/03/19/ukraine-war-russia-latest-news-peace-talks-putin-zelensky/
sobering
This is just embarrassing.
TWT, TIN
You know perfectly well that the proposed GRA reform proposed by Sturgeon removes pretty much all requirements before one can legally transition: no requirement for a medical diagnosis, no requirement for chemical treatment or surgery, no requirement to prove that one has lived as an acquired gender for a prolonged period and one can do it at 16.
So anyone - anyone not just those who are genuinely trans - can legally change and get access to womens spaces.
What do you think this means? It widens the loophole so much it's pretty much the size of a prairie. And what will that mean? It will make it much much easier for male sexual predators to get access to women. As indeed has already happened - in prisons in England, for instance - and in other countries where effective self-ID has already happened.
The Scottish proposal fundamentally changes the scope of people who can call themselves women. It does not improve matters for trans people. It gives any male the opportunity to do so without needing to do anything at all beyond sign a form. You say that trans people are not a threat to anyone. But when trans effectively means a man who does not need a diagnosis or treatment the risk from them is the same as from other men ie high. Not low. There have been studies of the number of trans men in prison for sexual offences and they show, tho more analysis is needed, that they have a higher rate of sexual offending than others.
I could fill a thread with the names of men claiming to be trans in prison with offences for sexual violence against women. And if the Scottish government has its way, life will be made much easier for them to claim to be women and access women in spaces where women and girls should be able to feel safe. If Labour and the Lib Dems have their way the same will happen in England.
This is wrong. There is a reason why women need women only spaces. Men - with male bodies - are not women and should not be in womens' spaces.
If men with gender dysphoria want or need their own space, let men give up their spaces for them. Let's make male spaces gender neutral and let women (just women) have their own spaces.
If Italy had beaten England or France I'd be cheering so loudly TSE would actually kill me.