Going to ask again: how do you get rid of Liz Truss?
First the 1922 need to change the rules, in particular stopping a membership vote.
I suspect that the damage is done, but a further leadership contest would be a farce. The MPs need to only nominate and support candidates who are not completely bonkers, but that is fishing in a very small pond
Truss is not completely bonkers.
She may not be popular, she might lose the election, but she's not completely bonkers.
So Truss has slipped from saviour of Britain to "not completely bonkers" in your eyes?
I think she's good, got the right intentions, and if she can keep the MPs on side will be a good PM.
I think she might lose the next election despite that, because a lot of voters have other intentions and/or have simply had enough of the Tories now, plus I think Tory backbenches are restless and won't be disciplined under Truss or any other potential PM now so she may not be able to get her desired reforms through.
I have said all along, I think Truss should be PM even if she loses the next election. Winning the next election is not the pre-requisite for me.
I think if she loses the next election she'll have to step down as PM to be fair ;-)
“I think she’s comfortably the least impressive person to have become Prime Minister in my lifetime, since the advent of universal suffrage and perhaps even since the creation of the office”. https://twitter.com/dcsandbrook/status/1578272524336611328
And then Dominic Sandbrook @dcsandbrook Replying to @WTMAtkinson and @unherd I did think of Goderich. But he was a serious person and had been an excellent Chancellor, and was continuously in government for almost 30 years. I'm guessing he could have handled a local radio interview.
If Truss really is that bad a Prime Minister - off the dial bad, historically and imperiously bad - one has to ask how come she rose so high prior to this. She was Foreign Secretary, FFS, and that is no small thing. Nor was she obviously useless at that. I don't, for instance, think she made any huge gaffes as Foreign Sec, unlike Boris when he was in the job
So either her crapness as PM is being exaggerated, OR there is something unique in the job of PM, even when compared to high offices like FS, and it is a job only a few people can do
My feeling at the time was that Boris promoted her to Foreign Sec. because he wanted to groom her as his successor and thwart the ambitions of Dom's man Rishi. Remember how adored she was by the membership for all those fabulous trade deals she'd negotiated, so would have been an ideal 'Stop Rishi' candidate from Boris's perspective. But, of course, she got her chance too soon.
Personally I think there’s been an emperor’s new clothes group-style delusion with Liz Truss for a while.
She started getting hyped by a select few for doing these trade deals and that started the ball rolling. Before anyone could stop it she was leading the ConservativeHome ratings and getting media attention. Everyone just went along with the fact that she must be a fairly decent cabinet minister and potential future leader because all these Tory supporters seemed to think so.
And the mini budget was the kid who shouted out that there were, indeed, no clothes (I.e, that actually, she’s a bit crap, is appalling presentationally, and gives off the impression of not having a clue what she’s doing).
Going to ask again: how do you get rid of Liz Truss?
First the 1922 need to change the rules, in particular stopping a membership vote.
I suspect that the damage is done, but a further leadership contest would be a farce. The MPs need to only nominate and support candidates who are not completely bonkers, but that is fishing in a very small pond
Truss is not completely bonkers.
She may not be popular, she might lose the election, but she's not completely bonkers.
So Truss has slipped from saviour of Britain to "not completely bonkers" in your eyes?
On Truss, it is notable that both Matthew Parris and Dominic Cummings - two observers who generally agree on nothing whatsoever, yet both astute in very different ways - reached the same conclusion: she really is bonkers, do not elect her
I doubt this is a complete answer, but up to now, she's been driving through other people's agendas. Now she is driving through her own agenda and it is at best unpopular and at worst utterly batso. And the far-outness of her plans makes her inability to speak or listen a worse problem, because it means she can't persuade.
Mr. Pointer, when I was at school my physics teacher once noted that the optimal place (in his view) for a nuclear strike against the UK was at a certain place, which happens to be within a short walk of my home.
And on that cheery note, I must be off. Don't forget qualifying's at 7am tomorrow.
What could be a winning strategy for the Conservatives at the next election? They’ve had success in the past with, “Everything is terrible, so vote for us to fix it.” That feels less viable after 12+ years of Conservatives in No. 10.
Would it work to say, “We got the big calls right. Everything is terrible, but that’s because of Putin etc. Stick with us to steady the ship.”? Implausible under Truss/Kwarteng, but maybe could work under Sunak?
I’ve had enough of the moaning minnies on here. ‘Oh we’re closer to nuclear war than we have been in 60 years’, ‘oh there will be blackouts across Europe this winter’, ‘oh the global plague blah blah blah’
It’s just constant negativity and sniping. Most of this is driven by jealousy
Yes I think most people get that you hysterically post on here (a) to control your existential crisis and dread when you wake up in the morning; (b) to try and create that same feeling in others.
But are more sensible enough not to get wound up about stuff they can't control, i.e. the bad shit in the world but also you telling them there is lots of bad shit in the world (we know).
No, I was trying to write comments simultaneously so inane and ridiculous it would be impossible to reply to them, and any attempted reply would itself be idiotic
Yet, that one still got two replies
From this I draw two enlightening conclusions: you and @turbotubbs are stupid, and I am bored
The contrast with your usual style was all so obvious it could not fail to draw attention.
Any updates from the Ukrainian 'professor' and his research that got you so excited just a few short weeks ago?
Comprehensively debunked, and disowned by his own university
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
I certainly do not wish to undermine reasonable discussion, nor suggest that those who support smaller government necessarily support more hardline libertarian positions. It appears we disagree on whether we've seen these more extreme positions put forth on vf.PB.com. For example, I note that Bart has explicitly said we should let old people die in the streets to reduce government spending. If that's not extreme, I don't know what is.
Bullshit.
I said we need to recognise there are limits to what we can do. We can't keep everyone alive forever, death is inevitable for everyone.
I want us to help old people as much as we can and as smartly as we can with the resources available for the NHS and without stripping others of basic liberties like leaving your home.
Also, *letting* people die in the streets is not extreme.
People should be free to die where they want to die: at home, in shops, restaurants, etc. The government should not be prescribing that only certain places are acceptable for popping ones' clogs.
I don't know. It would be pretty disconcerting to go to a comedy night and have someone in the row ahead die on you. Or at the butchers about to buy a nice bit of sirloin.
What could be a winning strategy for the Conservatives at the next election? They’ve had success in the past with, “Everything is terrible, so vote for us to fix it.” That feels less viable after 12+ years of Conservatives in No. 10.
Would it work to say, “We got the big calls right. Everything is terrible, but that’s because of Putin etc. Stick with us to steady the ship.”? Implausible under Truss/Kwarteng, but maybe could work under Sunak?
Damned if I know to be honest.
We won’t increase your taxes and we know what a woman is seems to be the most likely angle, TBH. Which is not going to win them an election.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
I think I sense a hardening of the mood. It feels like 1997 again.
Hitting pensions and mortgages has pissed off the key constituencies that have given the Conservatives a run of victories since 2005.
Cutting benefits and freezing public sector wages will piss off the Red Wall.
It's hard to see how Truss can turn it around.
(Some of her supply-side ideas are quite good, actually, and I hope this doesn't set back the cause of reform by 20 years)
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
Looking at the graph, the movement feels too quick?
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
What could be a winning strategy for the Conservatives at the next election? They’ve had success in the past with, “Everything is terrible, so vote for us to fix it.” That feels less viable after 12+ years of Conservatives in No. 10.
Would it work to say, “We got the big calls right. Everything is terrible, but that’s because of Putin etc. Stick with us to steady the ship.”? Implausible under Truss/Kwarteng, but maybe could work under Sunak?
Big tent pragmatism, all in it together against Putins crisis. Leave egos and ideologies behind and they would be back in the 30s in no time.
“I think she’s comfortably the least impressive person to have become Prime Minister in my lifetime, since the advent of universal suffrage and perhaps even since the creation of the office”. https://twitter.com/dcsandbrook/status/1578272524336611328
And then Dominic Sandbrook @dcsandbrook Replying to @WTMAtkinson and @unherd I did think of Goderich. But he was a serious person and had been an excellent Chancellor, and was continuously in government for almost 30 years. I'm guessing he could have handled a local radio interview.
If Truss really is that bad a Prime Minister - off the dial bad, historically and imperiously bad - one has to ask how come she rose so high prior to this. She was Foreign Secretary, FFS, and that is no small thing. Nor was she obviously useless at that. I don't, for instance, think she made any huge gaffes as Foreign Sec, unlike Boris when he was in the job
So either her crapness as PM is being exaggerated, OR there is something unique in the job of PM, even when compared to high offices like FS, and it is a job only a few people can do
My feeling at the time was that Boris promoted her to Foreign Sec. because he wanted to groom her as his successor and thwart the ambitions of Dom's man Rishi. Remember how adored she was by the membership for all those fabulous trade deals she'd negotiated, so would have been an ideal 'Stop Rishi' candidate from Boris's perspective. But, of course, she got her chance too soon.
Personally I think there’s been an emperor’s new clothes group-style delusion with Liz Truss for a while.
She started getting hyped by a select few for doing these trade deals and that started the ball rolling. Before anyone could stop it she was leading the ConservativeHome ratings and getting media attention. Everyone just went along with the fact that she must be a fairly decent cabinet minister and potential future leader because all these Tory supporters seemed to think so.
And the mini budget was the kid who shouted out that there were, indeed, no clothes (I.e, that actually, she’s a bit crap, is appalling presentationally, and gives off the impression of not having a clue what she’s doing).
And the whole house of cards collapsed.
Bingo. She wore the right clothes and mouthed some Thatcherite sounding phrases and that was basically enough. Laughable but true. Proper Thick of It territory.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
Looking at the graph, the movement feels too quick?
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Isn't the very point of opinion polling to ascertain "what's going on in voters' minds"?
Mid term polling is unreliable, granted, but still...
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
“I think she’s comfortably the least impressive person to have become Prime Minister in my lifetime, since the advent of universal suffrage and perhaps even since the creation of the office”. https://twitter.com/dcsandbrook/status/1578272524336611328
And then Dominic Sandbrook @dcsandbrook Replying to @WTMAtkinson and @unherd I did think of Goderich. But he was a serious person and had been an excellent Chancellor, and was continuously in government for almost 30 years. I'm guessing he could have handled a local radio interview.
This article is very true. However, if she remains PM for long enough, which I am guessing she will as Tory MPs probably won't get rid of her, she may somehow start to do ok and the current problems will fall away. I guess it is like any job where, for some reason, the person there cannot get removed. They just keep going. I think she is similar to Theresa May the more time goes by. I think the only thing that interrupts this narrative is a crisis that she really cannot handle, which is a possibility. But another problem with her is that she doesn't seem to have any self awareness at how bad it is going, so she will probably keep going long after she should have exited the stage. The long term damage is to the Tories, they are being ruined by this.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
The thing is, you undermine your points by pretending you actually want the Tories to lose.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
Looking at the graph, the movement feels too quick?
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Isn't the very point of opinion polling to ascertain "what's going on in voters' minds"?
Mid term polling is unreliable, granted, but still...
The potential parallel with the fuel protests does seem pertinent. The Tories had an 8% lead at one point, but it didn't really represent voting intentions and Hague made no progress in the General Election.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
Looking at the graph, the movement feels too quick?
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
I know already. Trust me, this is not a fuel protest type blip.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
Looking at the graph, the movement feels too quick?
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
“I think she’s comfortably the least impressive person to have become Prime Minister in my lifetime, since the advent of universal suffrage and perhaps even since the creation of the office”. https://twitter.com/dcsandbrook/status/1578272524336611328
And then Dominic Sandbrook @dcsandbrook Replying to @WTMAtkinson and @unherd I did think of Goderich. But he was a serious person and had been an excellent Chancellor, and was continuously in government for almost 30 years. I'm guessing he could have handled a local radio interview.
If Truss really is that bad a Prime Minister - off the dial bad, historically and imperiously bad - one has to ask how come she rose so high prior to this. She was Foreign Secretary, FFS, and that is no small thing. Nor was she obviously useless at that. I don't, for instance, think she made any huge gaffes as Foreign Sec, unlike Boris when he was in the job
So either her crapness as PM is being exaggerated, OR there is something unique in the job of PM, even when compared to high offices like FS, and it is a job only a few people can do
Pretty obviously, once you're PM no one can make you listen to the people saying "don't be an idiot, you can't do that".
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman.
Sex matters as much as gender.
How do we organise a ballot on a trans circular discussion strike?
“I think she’s comfortably the least impressive person to have become Prime Minister in my lifetime, since the advent of universal suffrage and perhaps even since the creation of the office”. https://twitter.com/dcsandbrook/status/1578272524336611328
And then Dominic Sandbrook @dcsandbrook Replying to @WTMAtkinson and @unherd I did think of Goderich. But he was a serious person and had been an excellent Chancellor, and was continuously in government for almost 30 years. I'm guessing he could have handled a local radio interview.
If Truss really is that bad a Prime Minister - off the dial bad, historically and imperiously bad - one has to ask how come she rose so high prior to this. She was Foreign Secretary, FFS, and that is no small thing. Nor was she obviously useless at that. I don't, for instance, think she made any huge gaffes as Foreign Sec, unlike Boris when he was in the job
So either her crapness as PM is being exaggerated, OR there is something unique in the job of PM, even when compared to high offices like FS, and it is a job only a few people can do
Pretty obviously, once you're PM no one can make you listen to the people saying "don't be an idiot, you can't do that".
Until they remove you.
The top dog is always unique. I can't remember who it was but there was some big businessman from the 1930s who said the only way you could practice being a CEO was by being a CEO.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
You put "miniscule" in quotes.
Because it was a quote.
Violence against women is not "miniscule" (a word quoted from the text I was replying) which is why women's only safe spaces are necessary.
Trans women should be treated with dignity and respect but that respect does not need to violate real women's safe spaces.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
Looking at the graph, the movement feels too quick?
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Isn't the very point of opinion polling to ascertain "what's going on in voters' minds"?
Mid term polling is unreliable, granted, but still...
That’s a good direct question. I would answer no. the poll only gives you what, not so much why. A focus group, especially if using same lab rats through consecutive elections, can tell us a bit more as to why, a shift in trust and perception of strong leadership from one party to another for example.
I’ve posted before, the polls are not compliant with Tory collapse if it’s all going to Labour (in England wales, Scot polls a little different) Lib Dem and ReformUK going down too as Labour rises. But Labour did little to deserve that - they were thought of as boring going into a conference that was boring, their leader thought of as uninspiring duly delivered an uninspiring speech with no interesting policy announcement.
All the polling figures seem to be telling us Tory’s cutting tax to benefit the richest (it’s not just top level one but whole package) when all voters tuned in to the statement expecting the opposite, and then media coverage of economic collapse, seems to be the major factors that have made Labour more popular. I would add a third - voters just don’t like Truss at all, they think she is stupid and shit - and a great deal of her own party thought this even whilst they were electing her.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
I think I have a theory of why the numbers have moved - we would need to look at cross tabs to check:
Essentially the Tory coalition is made of mortgage holders, homeowners, and pensioners and a few others. The recent market scare has threatened that coalition - mortgage holders are looking at really big increases in costs in repayment, and the stuff in the markets threatened pension security. Enough of those two groups have noticed that, and are reacting strongly. I was also listening to Gary from Gary's Economics, a youtube famous day trader turned inequality economist, guest on a podcast who was making the argument that essentially once these groups notice this happen, they're also more likely to notice the other failures around them that have a less material impact on them (road quality, NHS, etc.) and very quickly noticed that the emperor had no clothes.
There was also a discussion about how, similarly to the adage of "fucking with the money", this crisis has fucked with essentially all the kinds of people who work in media and politics, the 30-40 somethings with good salaries and nice houses, but who are looking in the face of a serious decline in living standards if they have to pay these significantly increased mortgage rates. These people are better placed to have their concerns amplified, and therefore considered by the electorate.
Testing this hypothesis would require looking at cross tabs and seeing if age and class / income band are predictive of the switchers from Tory to Lab / DK.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
Building regs is also a big part of the problem with high build costs which I keep pointing out on here. The trouble is that there is an out of control process whereby well meaning politicians keep loading on increased environmental regulation to building, whilst being totally indifferent to the costs it is imposing on developers. It is all seen as "progress". Increases in new build sale prices allow developers to absorb higher costs of building. But when the house prices stop and go in to reverse it suddenly no longer viable to build anything.
Between 2010-2013 the tories had to have a 'bonfire of the building regulations' in the last recession to try and reverse this process (which had inevitably gone out of control under the labour government) and get housebuilding starting again. The trouble is that they have now reached new heights of regulation with the latest 'building safety regulations' following the Grenfell fire, which they will never politically be able to unpick.
It is not a case that everything will be solved once people are allowed to just build anything anywhere.
Anyone wished Vlad a happy birthday yet? It’s a big one too. An opportunity to swing from a Moscow lamp-post might be an appropriate treat for the birthday boy?
Or skydiving from a Kremlin window without a parachute.
Putin has had his birthday present flown in from those whacky Scandinavians. Russia has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, Russian dissidents but it still counts.
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2022/press-release/
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
I couldn't really give a monkeys about planning law. But I wouldn't delude myself that bashing around ideas, at great length, on a political betting website will somehow solve the problem in the real world.
I suspect you ain't an expert in planning law, you have no influence or impact upon it or on government policy and I certainly know Bart won't/doesn't. So all the pontificating and endless flatulence about it is fairly moot. It's just glorified pub talk.
My input into this little tale is just to say "Yes there are signs of American-style libertarianism on this website, just look at Barty and LuckyGuy'. That's it.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
I think I have a theory of why the numbers have moved - we would need to look at cross tabs to check:
Essentially the Tory coalition is made of mortgage holders, homeowners, and pensioners and a few others. The recent market scare has threatened that coalition - mortgage holders are looking at really big increases in costs in repayment, and the stuff in the markets threatened pension security. Enough of those two groups have noticed that, and are reacting strongly. I was also listening to Gary from Gary's Economics, a youtube famous day trader turned inequality economist, guest on a podcast who was making the argument that essentially once these groups notice this happen, they're also more likely to notice the other failures around them that have a less material impact on them (road quality, NHS, etc.) and very quickly noticed that the emperor had no clothes.
There was also a discussion about how, similarly to the adage of "fucking with the money", this crisis has fucked with essentially all the kinds of people who work in media and politics, the 30-40 somethings with good salaries and nice houses, but who are looking in the face of a serious decline in living standards if they have to pay these significantly increased mortgage rates. These people are better placed to have their concerns amplified, and therefore considered by the electorate.
Testing this hypothesis would require looking at cross tabs and seeing if age and class / income band are predictive of the switchers from Tory to Lab / DK.
I’m not dismissing your theory - we at least agree with each other that understanding this dramatic polling change is at hypothesis phase - but I think the crucial cross tab would be previous voting. Off top my head the graph is like a dramatic cross these days in contrast with older elections, younger voters don’t go near Tories, older voters not near Labour, the cross meets in middle age range - your theory would still hold as a player, but be diminished if those groups hurt/worried by tge mini budget actually voted Labour last time so not in position to switch.
I suspect, but again don’t have the facts, what’s driven the poll change is people with even less money and assets than the ones you describe, what are they called, the Es and Fs? My suspicion is they have deserted the Tories on mass and will tell focus groups it’s nothing complicated we just regard Truss as shit, so intend to vote Labour.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
I certainly do not wish to undermine reasonable discussion, nor suggest that those who support smaller government necessarily support more hardline libertarian positions. It appears we disagree on whether we've seen these more extreme positions put forth on vf.PB.com. For example, I note that Bart has explicitly said we should let old people die in the streets to reduce government spending. If that's not extreme, I don't know what is.
Bullshit.
I said we need to recognise there are limits to what we can do. We can't keep everyone alive forever, death is inevitable for everyone.
I want us to help old people as much as we can and as smartly as we can with the resources available for the NHS and without stripping others of basic liberties like leaving your home.
Also, *letting* people die in the streets is not extreme.
People should be free to die where they want to die: at home, in shops, restaurants, etc. The government should not be prescribing that only certain places are acceptable for popping ones' clogs.
I don't know. It would be pretty disconcerting to go to a comedy night and have someone in the row ahead die on you. Or at the butchers about to buy a nice bit of sirloin.
Of course, Tommy Cooper literally died on stage, doing comedy on television. No doubt some did find it disconcerting. You might not want to click this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPyfQYpTJb0
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
You put "miniscule" in quotes.
Because it was a quote.
Violence against women is not "miniscule" (a word quoted from the text I was replying) which is why women's only safe spaces are necessary.
Trans women should be treated with dignity and respect but that respect does not need to violate real women's safe spaces.
Can't you see how that's misrepresenting what I wrote? I said violence by a *certain subset* of people was miniscule. You then changed that to violence by everyone. I would never, ever say that violence against women is miniscule.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
They do note that tactical voting isn't taken into account. Labour has the problem in seats like Richmond Park that it's quite possible that it does have more support than any other party, but lots of its voters are used to voting LD, because they think that only the LibDems can beat the Tories in that seat. The challenge is to distinguish the cases where that's actually true, from the cases where it's no longer true. Cambridge is an example, Portsmouth South another, where Labour did overcome the perception and won (from 3rd place IIRC). But there are other seats where Labour genuinely can't win and the LibDems can.
A more fundamental question is whether Starmer's Labour is gradually displacing the LibDems as "the moderate party" among many voters who simply like the idea of moderation and centrism. That may be the real reason for the relatively low LibDem polling. There are core LibDem voters who support them because they're the most pro-EU, pro-PR and in some ways libertarian party, but the party has always relied on also being seen as the reasonable middle ground, a natural place for floating voters to go, even those indifferent to the EU or PR. Starmer may be a credible option for them.
You can safely vote for Christmas if you don't think it impacts you and remember there are probably 100-200 or so safe Tory seats were Tory polling to improve even slightly...
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
You can safely vote for Christmas if you don't think it impacts you and remember there are probably 100-200 or so safe Tory seats were Tory polling to improve even slightly...
An interesting argument. A shame that Truss' seat is one of the safest in the country.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
I couldn't really give a monkeys about planning law. But I wouldn't delude myself that bashing around ideas, at great length, on a political betting website will somehow solve the problem in the real world.
I suspect you ain't an expert in planning law, you have no influence or impact upon it or on government policy and I certainly know Bart won't/doesn't. So all the pontificating and endless flatulence about it is fairly moot. It's just glorified pub talk.
My input into this little tale is just to say "Yes there are signs of American-style libertarianism on this website, just look at Barty and LuckyGuy'. That's it.
Well you have been wrong in just about every point you have made so far so it is no surprise that you are continuing your abysmal record. If your only answer when you are pulled up for making fuckwitted comments is to claim you 'don't give a monkeys' then it is clear your argument aren't worth the time you spend writing them. Try colouring books instead. Probably more your level.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
I think I have a theory of why the numbers have moved - we would need to look at cross tabs to check:
Essentially the Tory coalition is made of mortgage holders, homeowners, and pensioners and a few others. The recent market scare has threatened that coalition - mortgage holders are looking at really big increases in costs in repayment, and the stuff in the markets threatened pension security. Enough of those two groups have noticed that, and are reacting strongly. I was also listening to Gary from Gary's Economics, a youtube famous day trader turned inequality economist, guest on a podcast who was making the argument that essentially once these groups notice this happen, they're also more likely to notice the other failures around them that have a less material impact on them (road quality, NHS, etc.) and very quickly noticed that the emperor had no clothes.
There was also a discussion about how, similarly to the adage of "fucking with the money", this crisis has fucked with essentially all the kinds of people who work in media and politics, the 30-40 somethings with good salaries and nice houses, but who are looking in the face of a serious decline in living standards if they have to pay these significantly increased mortgage rates. These people are better placed to have their concerns amplified, and therefore considered by the electorate.
Testing this hypothesis would require looking at cross tabs and seeing if age and class / income band are predictive of the switchers from Tory to Lab / DK.
I’m not dismissing your theory - we at least agree with each other that understanding this dramatic polling change is at hypothesis phase - but I think the crucial cross tab would be previous voting. Off top my head the graph is like a dramatic cross these days in contrast with older elections, younger voters don’t go near Tories, older voters not near Labour, the cross meets in middle age range - your theory would still hold as a player, but be diminished if those groups hurt/worried by tge mini budget actually voted Labour last time so not in position to switch.
I suspect, but again don’t have the facts, what’s driven the poll change is people with even less money and assets than the ones you describe, what are they called, the Es and Fs? My suspicion is they have deserted the Tories on mass and will tell focus groups it’s nothing complicated we just regard Truss as shit, so intend to vote Labour.
Nope - what changed things was a news story (mortgage rates increasing) that highlighted that they were going to have less money and pinned the blame on the Government.
After that people will then start looking at things in a slightly different light at which point items they may have ignored become more prominent and obvious.
It's the age old story of once you lose confidence it drains away because other issues come to light that make everything incredibly obvious.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
I think I have a theory of why the numbers have moved - we would need to look at cross tabs to check:
Essentially the Tory coalition is made of mortgage holders, homeowners, and pensioners and a few others. The recent market scare has threatened that coalition - mortgage holders are looking at really big increases in costs in repayment, and the stuff in the markets threatened pension security. Enough of those two groups have noticed that, and are reacting strongly. I was also listening to Gary from Gary's Economics, a youtube famous day trader turned inequality economist, guest on a podcast who was making the argument that essentially once these groups notice this happen, they're also more likely to notice the other failures around them that have a less material impact on them (road quality, NHS, etc.) and very quickly noticed that the emperor had no clothes.
There was also a discussion about how, similarly to the adage of "fucking with the money", this crisis has fucked with essentially all the kinds of people who work in media and politics, the 30-40 somethings with good salaries and nice houses, but who are looking in the face of a serious decline in living standards if they have to pay these significantly increased mortgage rates. These people are better placed to have their concerns amplified, and therefore considered by the electorate.
Testing this hypothesis would require looking at cross tabs and seeing if age and class / income band are predictive of the switchers from Tory to Lab / DK.
I’m not dismissing your theory - we at least agree with each other that understanding this dramatic polling change is at hypothesis phase - but I think the crucial cross tab would be previous voting. Off top my head the graph is like a dramatic cross these days in contrast with older elections, younger voters don’t go near Tories, older voters not near Labour, the cross meets in middle age range - your theory would still hold as a player, but be diminished if those groups hurt/worried by tge mini budget actually voted Labour last time so not in position to switch.
I suspect, but again don’t have the facts, what’s driven the poll change is people with even less money and assets than the ones you describe, what are they called, the Es and Fs? My suspicion is they have deserted the Tories on mass and will tell focus groups it’s nothing complicated we just regard Truss as shit, so intend to vote Labour.
But Labour's numbers are beyond anything they've achieved before, so they can't just be winning back "natural" Labour voters (the Red wall, or white working class voters), but must mean some switchers from Tory to Lab. Considering polls are showing a huge lead (between 15 - 30 points, depending on the poll) it would require a significant number of typically Tory voters being polled changing to Labour. Yes we need to know previous voting, but I do think age and class will also show the kicker. One of the dramatic ones, like the 33 point lead poll, had Labour winning in every class category and winning all age groups except 65+, where the gap was only a few percentage points, which would clearly show a rout from the Tory base.
What could be a winning strategy for the Conservatives at the next election? They’ve had success in the past with, “Everything is terrible, so vote for us to fix it.” That feels less viable after 12+ years of Conservatives in No. 10.
Would it work to say, “We got the big calls right. Everything is terrible, but that’s because of Putin etc. Stick with us to steady the ship.”? Implausible under Truss/Kwarteng, but maybe could work under Sunak?
All they have to fall back on is stoking fear of Labour. It’ll be Demon eyes redux, with added SNP.
Simon Coveney sounding very reasonable for once, saying all parties have "legitimate concerns" and that he wants to get them resolved.
Truss has good solutions with her Protocol Bill, hopefully those can be implemented via negotiations instead of unilateral action being necessary.
Ancient history was never my strong point, but didn't NI vote to Remain in the EU by 56% to 44%?
No, it didn't, NI didn't have a referendum.
The UK had a referendum and the UK voted to Leave the EU by 52 to 48.
The NI subset of that referendum was as you say, but that was not an NI vote, it was a part of the UK vote. If NI wants to vote unilaterally, it first needs to vote to leave the UK.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
You only have to look at the shedload of unimplemented permissions, most applied for by the landowner and often as not the property (non-)developer to see that it isn’t the planning system that is holding anything up.
It is almost as if the developers had an interest in supply being short and prices being high.
I’ve had enough of the moaning minnies on here. ‘Oh we’re closer to nuclear war than we have been in 60 years’, ‘oh there will be blackouts across Europe this winter’, ‘oh the global plague blah blah blah’
It’s just constant negativity and sniping. Most of this is driven by jealousy
Yes I think most people get that you hysterically post on here (a) to control your existential crisis and dread when you wake up in the morning; (b) to try and create that same feeling in others.
But are more sensible enough not to get wound up about stuff they can't control, i.e. the bad shit in the world but also you telling them there is lots of bad shit in the world (we know).
No, I was trying to write comments simultaneously so inane and ridiculous it would be impossible to reply to them, and any attempted reply would itself be idiotic.
Yet, that one still got two replies.
Not from me it didn't.
Just back from Waitrose and they had a deal on crisps - the big enormous bags - whereby it was £2.50 for one but only £3.50 for two.
How much better to just charge (say) £2.25 per bag and leave it at that.
The effect of that kind of offer on me is often to reduce sales. If I want just the one bag, I neither want to overpay by paying more tham half the price of two, nor overcrisp myself and spend an extra £, so I leave it.
This effect is less marked for 25% off 6 bottles offers.
Yep same here. You don't want 2 gigantic bags of crisps but the offer makes buying just the 1 feel like a rip off. And I say this as a crisps fan.
Birmingham: Lab hold Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole: Ind hold Ceredigion: Plaid Cymru GAIN from Lab Eastbourne: LDm hold Mendip: Con hold Shropshire: Lab GAIN from Con
Good Week/Bad Week Index
PC +85 LDm +84 Grn -3 Lab -17 Con -76
Adjusted Seat Value
PC +1.4 LDm +1.4 Grn -0.1 Lab -0.3 Con -1.3
This week, the Labour figure is distorted by the Ceredigion result, where the previous councillor was well-established and high-profile, in an area not naturally Labour. Without that result, Labour would have had the best score this week.
In 1992, the polls had been drifting blue-to-red all summer, and that drift continued at roughly the same speed. Even at Christmas '92, the score was roughly C33 L48.
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
I think I have a theory of why the numbers have moved - we would need to look at cross tabs to check:
Essentially the Tory coalition is made of mortgage holders, homeowners, and pensioners and a few others. The recent market scare has threatened that coalition - mortgage holders are looking at really big increases in costs in repayment, and the stuff in the markets threatened pension security. Enough of those two groups have noticed that, and are reacting strongly. I was also listening to Gary from Gary's Economics, a youtube famous day trader turned inequality economist, guest on a podcast who was making the argument that essentially once these groups notice this happen, they're also more likely to notice the other failures around them that have a less material impact on them (road quality, NHS, etc.) and very quickly noticed that the emperor had no clothes.
There was also a discussion about how, similarly to the adage of "fucking with the money", this crisis has fucked with essentially all the kinds of people who work in media and politics, the 30-40 somethings with good salaries and nice houses, but who are looking in the face of a serious decline in living standards if they have to pay these significantly increased mortgage rates. These people are better placed to have their concerns amplified, and therefore considered by the electorate.
Testing this hypothesis would require looking at cross tabs and seeing if age and class / income band are predictive of the switchers from Tory to Lab / DK.
I’m not dismissing your theory - we at least agree with each other that understanding this dramatic polling change is at hypothesis phase - but I think the crucial cross tab would be previous voting. Off top my head the graph is like a dramatic cross these days in contrast with older elections, younger voters don’t go near Tories, older voters not near Labour, the cross meets in middle age range - your theory would still hold as a player, but be diminished if those groups hurt/worried by tge mini budget actually voted Labour last time so not in position to switch.
I suspect, but again don’t have the facts, what’s driven the poll change is people with even less money and assets than the ones you describe, what are they called, the Es and Fs? My suspicion is they have deserted the Tories on mass and will tell focus groups it’s nothing complicated we just regard Truss as shit, so intend to vote Labour.
Nope - what changed things was a news story (mortgage rates increasing) that highlighted that they were going to have less money and pinned the blame on the Government.
After that people will then start looking at things in a slightly different light at which point items they may have ignored become more prominent and obvious.
It's the age old story of once you lose confidence it drains away because other issues come to light that make everything incredibly obvious.
Maybe not Eek. We need to look at voters who didn’t vote labour last time whose switch can show up in polling. And my suspicion is a lot on under 40s with mortgages did actually vote Labour last time - whilst a lot of people further down the rungs, poorer, more reliant on benefits and food banks, many of which whose votes delivered Brexit, came out for Boris, and these polls may well be telling us are the biggest group to have switch from Truss Tory’s to Labour in this poll quake.
Can we call it the Starmergasm?
That’s my theory you see, who you would presume voted Tory last time so switching now, might have already voted Labour last time, drifting there over a few elections now, it’s the whole new switcheroo at last election from tribal labour voters to Boris who suddenly shifted from Truss to Labour in this poll quake, this Keiruption
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
They do note that tactical voting isn't taken into account. Labour has the problem in seats like Richmond Park that it's quite possible that it does have more support than any other party, but lots of its voters are used to voting LD, because they think that only the LibDems can beat the Tories in that seat. The challenge is to distinguish the cases where that's actually true, from the cases where it's no longer true. Cambridge is an example, Portsmouth South another, where Labour did overcome the perception and won (from 3rd place IIRC). But there are other seats where Labour genuinely can't win and the LibDems can.
A more fundamental question is whether Starmer's Labour is gradually displacing the LibDems as "the moderate party" among many voters who simply like the idea of moderation and centrism. That may be the real reason for the relatively low LibDem polling. There are core LibDem voters who support them because they're the most pro-EU, pro-PR and in some ways libertarian party, but the party has always relied on also being seen as the reasonable middle ground, a natural place for floating voters to go, even those indifferent to the EU or PR. Starmer may be a credible option for them.
I don’t buy that last point, as we have discussed before. Although not having your mate Corbyn obviously removes a big negative for many voters.
On the first you probably have a point, in urban areas, where non-Tory voters are willing to vote Labour or LibDem interchangeably, and the LDs hang onto their tactical vote by dint of forty-plus years campaigning and having captured the non-Tory vote back when it was much smaller and the population of the Borough more settled and older than it is now.
In rural areas, there are as you say seats where Labour can probably never win, even where they are second. My own island seat (soon to become two, which may open things up a little) is a classic example - Labour has managed to elbow out the LDs and Greens to secure a solid second place, but I don’t believe even in current circumstances there are enough people ever willing to vote Labour to put them over the top. Their second place essentially ensures the seat will stay in Tory hands.
They also polled on independence, using a Remain/Leave premise rather than a Yes/No one. I'm always amazed by the way in which you can ask the same question - one which has been argued over ad nauseam for what feels like forever, and of which it is therefore logical to assume that even the most disengaged and ignorant respondents have some awareness and view - using two slightly different forms of words, and get 5% or more of the population to change sides entirely on that basis.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
I’ve had enough of the moaning minnies on here. ‘Oh we’re closer to nuclear war than we have been in 60 years’, ‘oh there will be blackouts across Europe this winter’, ‘oh the global plague blah blah blah’
It’s just constant negativity and sniping. Most of this is driven by jealousy
Yes I think most people get that you hysterically post on here (a) to control your existential crisis and dread when you wake up in the morning; (b) to try and create that same feeling in others.
But are more sensible enough not to get wound up about stuff they can't control, i.e. the bad shit in the world but also you telling them there is lots of bad shit in the world (we know).
No, I was trying to write comments simultaneously so inane and ridiculous it would be impossible to reply to them, and any attempted reply would itself be idiotic.
Yet, that one still got two replies.
Not from me it didn't.
Just back from Waitrose and they had a deal on crisps - the big enormous bags - whereby it was £2.50 for one but only £3.50 for two.
How much better to just charge (say) £2.25 per bag and leave it at that.
The effect of that kind of offer on me is often to reduce sales. If I want just the one bag, I neither want to overpay by paying more tham half the price of two, nor overcrisp myself and spend an extra £, so I leave it.
This effect is less marked for 25% off 6 bottles offers.
Yep same here. You don't want 2 gigantic bags of crisps but the offer makes buying just the 1 feel like a rip off. And I say this as a crisps fan.
Who isn't a crisps fan? They are the food of the Gods and one of the few areas of global cuisine where the UK is indisputably a world leader.
I think you're being a bit harsh on Waitrose though. Whatever you buy, and especially on high margin goods like crisps, a good portion of the cost reflects the fixed cost of operating the shop and the distribution network behind it. In that context a 2 for 1 offer doesn't mean you're getting ripped off on the single bag.
FWIW in my view kettle chips sweet chilli and sour cream are the ultimate crisps.
Birmingham: Lab hold Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole: Ind hold Ceredigion: Plaid Cymru GAIN from Lab Eastbourne: LDm hold Mendip: Con hold Shropshire: Lab GAIN from Con
Good Week/Bad Week Index
PC +85 LDm +84 Grn -3 Lab -17 Con -76
Adjusted Seat Value
PC +1.4 LDm +1.4 Grn -0.1 Lab -0.3 Con -1.3
This week, the Labour figure is distorted by the Ceredigion result, where the previous councillor was well-established and high-profile, in an area not naturally Labour. Without that result, Labour would have had the best score this week.
How seriously should we pay attention to council by elections. On the one hand is it too easy to say these are real votes not polls, but on the other, I might be wrong just a gut feel, but whoever seems to be holding a seat normally seems to be the one with swing against them and an almost random or undeserved rise in a challengers vote - we may be measuring voter behaviour very very localised and trying to extrapolate that to the national picture?
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
Barty - build houses wherever you want.
LuckyGuy - frack away.
Neither position advocates no government rules. They are simply specific policies that they happen to have views on. You could have an extremely centralised and rule bound government that allowed fracking and that let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.
Oh dear, sounds like you are tying yourself in knots here. 'Let people build where they like whilst still have lots of controls on how they build.' lol.
Barty / LuckyGuy represent fringe points of view. I suspect bondegezou was making the fairly uncontroversial point that these fringe points of view seem to have, somehow, become quite prominent in the Conservative Party. It's obvious why that it is, because those sorts of individuals are hugely over-represented in the membership and on certain political forums, for that matter.
Nope because if you had actually bothered to follow the arguments I have had with Bart over this then you would know that there are two very distinct sets of laws governing building. Bart believes it is planning laws which stop people building. It isn't. The whole presumption of planning laws is that building will be allowed as the default position.
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
I couldn't really give a monkeys about planning law. But I wouldn't delude myself that bashing around ideas, at great length, on a political betting website will somehow solve the problem in the real world.
I suspect you ain't an expert in planning law, you have no influence or impact upon it or on government policy and I certainly know Bart won't/doesn't. So all the pontificating and endless flatulence about it is fairly moot. It's just glorified pub talk.
My input into this little tale is just to say "Yes there are signs of American-style libertarianism on this website, just look at Barty and LuckyGuy'. That's it.
Well you have been wrong in just about every point you have made so far so it is no surprise that you are continuing your abysmal record. If your only answer when you are pulled up for making fuckwitted comments is to claim you 'don't give a monkeys' then it is clear your argument aren't worth the time you spend writing them. Try colouring books instead. Probably more your level.
Cool. I'll leave two further points then. You seem to get very angry when challenged and you take yourself and your opinions way too seriously.
I’ve had enough of the moaning minnies on here. ‘Oh we’re closer to nuclear war than we have been in 60 years’, ‘oh there will be blackouts across Europe this winter’, ‘oh the global plague blah blah blah’
It’s just constant negativity and sniping. Most of this is driven by jealousy
The majority of the Ukrainian army's entire tank force consists of captured Russian kit, apparently. Small wonder that the situation is developing not necessarily to Vladimir Putin's advantage.
Since Feb. 24, Ukraine's Armed Forces have captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks and 650 other armored vehicles, which make up "over half of Ukraine's currently fielded tank fleet," the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Oct. 7.
I'm always amazed by the way in which you can ask the same question - one which has been argued over ad nauseam for what feels like forever, and of which it is therefore logical to assume that even the most disengaged and ignorant respondents have some awareness and view - using two slightly different forms of words, and get 5% or more of the population to change sides entirely on that basis.
Or reveal a difference in your sampling bias for 2 different cohorts
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
“I think she’s comfortably the least impressive person to have become Prime Minister in my lifetime, since the advent of universal suffrage and perhaps even since the creation of the office”. https://twitter.com/dcsandbrook/status/1578272524336611328
And then Dominic Sandbrook @dcsandbrook Replying to @WTMAtkinson and @unherd I did think of Goderich. But he was a serious person and had been an excellent Chancellor, and was continuously in government for almost 30 years. I'm guessing he could have handled a local radio interview.
If Truss really is that bad a Prime Minister - off the dial bad, historically and imperiously bad - one has to ask how come she rose so high prior to this. She was Foreign Secretary, FFS, and that is no small thing. Nor was she obviously useless at that. I don't, for instance, think she made any huge gaffes as Foreign Sec, unlike Boris when he was in the job
So either her crapness as PM is being exaggerated, OR there is something unique in the job of PM, even when compared to high offices like FS, and it is a job only a few people can do
The PM job combines judgement, leadership and communication skills. Most of the rest of the Cabinet have some level of each, but PM is maxxed on all of them.
Truss both failed to plan properly and then failed to execute well. She failed to prepare the ground and sell her policy changes.
That’s what has created the issue, not necessarily the actual policy itself (although it offends the sense of fairness).
Birmingham: Lab hold Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole: Ind hold Ceredigion: Plaid Cymru GAIN from Lab Eastbourne: LDm hold Mendip: Con hold Shropshire: Lab GAIN from Con
Good Week/Bad Week Index
PC +85 LDm +84 Grn -3 Lab -17 Con -76
Adjusted Seat Value
PC +1.4 LDm +1.4 Grn -0.1 Lab -0.3 Con -1.3
This week, the Labour figure is distorted by the Ceredigion result, where the previous councillor was well-established and high-profile, in an area not naturally Labour. Without that result, Labour would have had the best score this week.
How seriously should we pay attention to council by elections. On the one hand is it too easy to say these are real votes not polls, but on the other, I might be wrong just a gut feel, but whoever seems to be holding a seat normally seems to be the one with swing against them and an almost random or undeserved rise in a challengers vote - we may be measuring voter behaviour very very localised and trying to extrapolate that to the national picture?
Local authority by-election results tell us nothing about the broader picture, and are therefore only relevant to those directly impacted.
They also polled on independence, using a Remain/Leave premise rather than a Yes/No one. I'm always amazed by the way in which you can ask the same question - one which has been argued over ad nauseam for what feels like forever, and of which it is therefore logical to assume that even the most disengaged and ignorant respondents have some awareness and view - using two slightly different forms of words, and get 5% or more of the population to change sides entirely on that basis.
That's quite a good poll for the Pro-Union side. Both in terms of the Leave/Remain vote, and in terms of the rise in Labour support. The Conservatives can never hope to be more than a fairly substantial minority, in a leftwards leaning country. Labour have the potential to win.
In an actual referendum, however, I don't think they wording of the question makes much difference, given that people will know what they are voting on.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Given a sizeable number of people live in communal apartments, this is a pretty broad regulation defining the date central heating can be switched on, how many hours a day it can run and what it can be set to. It is split by zone, from a few Alpine locations where limitations are minimal, to the South where the heating is only allowed to come on 5 hours a day for a few weeks a year.
Also note the article is from 2020 - Italy's approach this year has been to reset the regulations as 1 degree less on the the thermostat, one hour less per day, one week less on the start and end dates (broadly, I liked the idea and it is how I've set up my heating for winter)
That seems sensible. A similar campaign here could mean no risk of blackouts. Liz Truss is an idiot.
Liz Truss represents the end state of a weird subclass of libertarian thinking. An absolute belief that the state should not exercise any kind of control over individual citizens, not even the most minimal control of persuasive argument & influence, because to do so is to deny the liberty of individual citizens to do whatever they damn well please & take the consequences. When those consequences only affect them as individuals this is a perfectly workable moral system, but it fails utterly when collective action is required to stave off consequences that affect all of us.
The weird thing here is that, perhaps surprisingly, in many cases all that is actually required is to explain the inevitable consequences and request co-operation & people are happy to comply, within the limits set by their individual circumstances. What could be more libertarian than that? Individuals know their personal circumstances & can do their best to act appropritely if they so choose, given the information that the goverment presents them with.
In this case, to get through this winter without blackouts no one needs to go without heating or power: Some attention to necessity is all that’s required, as far as I can tell. Yet the government refuses to do anything at all. Madness.
Yep, the line in her conf speech she delivered with the most relish and authenticity was this one -
"I have no interest in looking over people's shoulder to see if they're buying 2 for 1 deals in the supermarket."
Sounds a bit of a throwaway but it wasn't. It says a lot about the brain chemistry that has somehow wriggled into government.
Yes, its good isn't it?
The state should be doing that which it needs to do, and ideally doing it well. Do less, but do it better.
The state doesn't need to be pissing about issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals etc
It's good if you share the libertarian fringe mindset, yes.
You think the state should be issuing decrees about 2 for 1 deals?
What is wrong with the idea of do less, but do it better? Should our state really be the jack of all trades, master of none?
The 2-for-1 thing is a staggeringly disingenuous way of putting it. Is controlling the sale of very unhealthy foods to (long run) save the country money and help people stay healthy less important that FrEeDoM oF cHoIcE then I dunno what to say. The logical conclusion of that strawmannish argument is to legalise everything because people aught to be able to make their own minds about whether or not they should smoke crack.
The notion that the nanny state is stopping people doing things they enjoy is bollocks. Controlling harmful factors is a core responsibility of government.
Libertarians get hugely upset about random things government does, while completely overlooking other things government does. There are huge numbers of rules around the preparation of food, food safety, hygiene in kitchens making food for public consumption, allowed ingredients in food, etc. etc. etc. All of which work very well, so libertarians happily munch away on shop-bought sandwiches without recognising the intrusions the state has made to make those sandwiches safe.
This is a genuinely stupid argument and you should be ashamed. What you are saying, quite blatantly, is that because we have good and useful government regulation we should also accept all the bad, stupid and unnecessary regulation as well.
There is a world of difference between stopping someone poisoning us and forcing us down a particular route that happens to suit the current health fad. Maybe you missed the fact that for decades Governments were complicit in pushing the line that the primary cause of obesity and ill health was fat when much of the evidence now is that it was refined and processed carbs.
If the Government decided that alcohol was bad for us and so should be banned would you support that? Or would you consider it an infringement of your rights and a Nanny state. Because that is the natural progression of your argument. And if you forget it was tried once before and failed very badly.
Obviously there are good and useful government regulations and there are bad, stupid and unnecessary government regulations. We want more of the former and fewer of the latter. This shouldn't need saying. 90% of people get that. However, there are a few hardcore libertarians, with well-thumbed copies of "Atlas Shrugged", who see all or any, or at least the vast majority, of government regulations to be in the bad category. In the past, such odd views were confined to Internet message boards, but unfortunately they now seem to have captured much of the Conservative Party, as they previously captured the Republican Party in the US.
These libertarians rant and rail against many things. It seems helpful to remind them, on occasion, that actually many forms of government regulation are enormously successful. The modern state is not like it is as part of a conspiracy to restrict their rights: the modern state is like it is because it has evolved successful approaches over centuries.
And yet I don't see a single example of that sort of American extremism on here. It certainly exists in some dark corners of British politics - I mentioned the extremist Propertarian movement on here the other day - but no one here on PB has advocated that sort of blanket approach. Advocating small government is not the same as advocating no government. So your original posting was, at best, misleading and was, in fact, designed to undermine any reasonable discussion about the proper limits of Government power and the Nanny State.
I certainly do not wish to undermine reasonable discussion, nor suggest that those who support smaller government necessarily support more hardline libertarian positions. It appears we disagree on whether we've seen these more extreme positions put forth on vf.PB.com. For example, I note that Bart has explicitly said we should let old people die in the streets to reduce government spending. If that's not extreme, I don't know what is.
Bullshit.
I said we need to recognise there are limits to what we can do. We can't keep everyone alive forever, death is inevitable for everyone.
I want us to help old people as much as we can and as smartly as we can with the resources available for the NHS and without stripping others of basic liberties like leaving your home.
Also, *letting* people die in the streets is not extreme.
People should be free to die where they want to die: at home, in shops, restaurants, etc. The government should not be prescribing that only certain places are acceptable for popping ones' clogs.
I don't know. It would be pretty disconcerting to go to a comedy night and have someone in the row ahead die on you. Or at the butchers about to buy a nice bit of sirloin.
Of course, Tommy Cooper literally died on stage, doing comedy on television. No doubt some did find it disconcerting. You might not want to click this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPyfQYpTJb0
After the enforced commercial break they carried on with the show and poor old Les Dennis was on with Dustin Gee. Les then had to watch Dustin Gee die in similar circumstances two years later during a pantomime they were doing.
I’ve had enough of the moaning minnies on here. ‘Oh we’re closer to nuclear war than we have been in 60 years’, ‘oh there will be blackouts across Europe this winter’, ‘oh the global plague blah blah blah’
It’s just constant negativity and sniping. Most of this is driven by jealousy
Yes I think most people get that you hysterically post on here (a) to control your existential crisis and dread when you wake up in the morning; (b) to try and create that same feeling in others.
But are more sensible enough not to get wound up about stuff they can't control, i.e. the bad shit in the world but also you telling them there is lots of bad shit in the world (we know).
No, I was trying to write comments simultaneously so inane and ridiculous it would be impossible to reply to them, and any attempted reply would itself be idiotic.
Yet, that one still got two replies.
Not from me it didn't.
Just back from Waitrose and they had a deal on crisps - the big enormous bags - whereby it was £2.50 for one but only £3.50 for two.
How much better to just charge (say) £2.25 per bag and leave it at that.
Given Waitrose is a rational organisation I’m assuming that what they are doing is better than what you propose
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
Both the trans panic around abuse of women, and the trans panic around abuse of children, miss the salient factor about abuse - that most abuse, of women and children, happens by a family member or close friend, and typically happens in the immediate family (so mother, father / spouse, partner). These are, typically, by male people (fathers, husbands, boyfriends etc.)
This is bad, obviously, but it is also hard for people to believe. People do not like to think that most of these things happen in what is considered the core cultural unit: the family. And so these anxieties are often projected onto the other. Black men in the USA, the anti-gay panic of the 50s onwards, the Satanic panic of the 70s and now a trans panic. It has often been that these groups are a threat to "our" women, or "our" children. Because it can't be the patriarch at home who is the real threat, that would be too threatening to what society tells itself.
That poll has the LDs losing Richmond Park to Labour. Given the LDs were 48 points ahead of Labour there last time, I find it hard to take entirely seriously.
They do note that tactical voting isn't taken into account. Labour has the problem in seats like Richmond Park that it's quite possible that it does have more support than any other party, but lots of its voters are used to voting LD, because they think that only the LibDems can beat the Tories in that seat. The challenge is to distinguish the cases where that's actually true, from the cases where it's no longer true. Cambridge is an example, Portsmouth South another, where Labour did overcome the perception and won (from 3rd place IIRC). But there are other seats where Labour genuinely can't win and the LibDems can.
A more fundamental question is whether Starmer's Labour is gradually displacing the LibDems as "the moderate party" among many voters who simply like the idea of moderation and centrism. That may be the real reason for the relatively low LibDem polling. There are core LibDem voters who support them because they're the most pro-EU, pro-PR and in some ways libertarian party, but the party has always relied on also being seen as the reasonable middle ground, a natural place for floating voters to go, even those indifferent to the EU or PR. Starmer may be a credible option for them.
I don’t buy that last point, as we have discussed before. Although not having your mate Corbyn obviously removes a big negative for many voters.
On the first you probably have a point, in urban areas, where non-Tory voters are willing to vote Labour or LibDem interchangeably, and the LDs hang onto their tactical vote by dint of forty-plus years campaigning and having captured the non-Tory vote back when it was much smaller and the population of the Borough more settled and older than it is now.
In rural areas, there are as you say seats where Labour can probably never win, even where they are second. My own island seat (soon to become two, which may open things up a little) is a classic example - Labour has managed to elbow out the LDs and Greens to secure a solid second place, but I don’t believe even in current circumstances there are enough people ever willing to vote Labour to put them over the top. Their second place essentially ensures the seat will stay in Tory hands.
I have family connections to the island, and I've been tangentially involved in island politics as a result. A few years ago I used to say that it was the one place I could see ever becoming a Green-UKIP marginal, because of the nature of the demographics. I think you're absolutely right - Labour have a really hard ceiling on their vote there - high enough for second, but there are no foreseeable circumstances where they could improve on that; whereas the Greens or LibDems could, with work and the right circumstances, do much better.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
Who doesn't think violence against women is abhorrent? Perhaps we should all signal our virtue on this subject a bit more, but I don't think it's fair to hold it against Rowling for being focussed on the trans debate.
The problem the Tories have is the talent pool is so low now that a new leader isn’t a given to improve the position.
Who actually can do the job and command the sort of presence it requires. Gove probably, but has his enemies. Wallace maybe, but a blank canvas. May has done it before, but her previous bumpy time in office defines her. Mordaunt and Badenoch are too green. Suella and Priti too extreme. Hunt too unpopular. Boris too tainted by partygate and the other scandals. Rishi too distrusted by the BoJo fans. Zahawi doesn’t have the presence. Javid has been an also-ran for too long and no real base in the party.
If the Tories believe the next election is lost then it opens up the possibility of a Howard type figure to limit the damage.
I would suggest Hague except I don’t see how you get him back in the commons in the current environment.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
The majority of the Ukrainian army's entire tank force consists of captured Russian kit, apparently. Small wonder that the situation is developing not necessarily to Vladimir Putin's advantage.
Since Feb. 24, Ukraine's Armed Forces have captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks and 650 other armored vehicles, which make up "over half of Ukraine's currently fielded tank fleet," the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Oct. 7.
Russia has had to stop delivery of its top of the range tanks to India. Partly because they can't build them, partly because they need to nab what they have ready for export.
If India gets a bit frosty towards Moscow, that is another consequence of Ukrainian battlefield wins.
They also polled on independence, using a Remain/Leave premise rather than a Yes/No one. I'm always amazed by the way in which you can ask the same question - one which has been argued over ad nauseam for what feels like forever, and of which it is therefore logical to assume that even the most disengaged and ignorant respondents have some awareness and view - using two slightly different forms of words, and get 5% or more of the population to change sides entirely on that basis.
That's quite a good poll for the Pro-Union side.
In an actual referendum, however, I don't think they wording of the question makes much difference, given that people will know what they are voting on.
If the wording makes no difference then why does changing the wording change the response?
The electorate is full of people who are, variously, vacillating, very dense, have the attention span of a flea or possess some combination of all of these characteristics. Clearly some of them can be swayed easily by the simplest of methods. It's like the Jedi mind trick: "that's not the answer you're looking for..."
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
Both the trans panic around abuse of women, and the trans panic around abuse of children, miss the salient factor about abuse - that most abuse, of women and children, happens by a family member or close friend, and typically happens in the immediate family (so mother, father / spouse, partner). These are, typically, by male people (fathers, husbands, boyfriends etc.)
This is bad, obviously, but it is also hard for people to believe. People do not like to think that most of these things happen in what is considered the core cultural unit: the family. And so these anxieties are often projected onto the other. Black men in the USA, the anti-gay panic of the 50s onwards, the Satanic panic of the 70s and now a trans panic. It has often been that these groups are a threat to "our" women, or "our" children. Because it can't be the patriarch at home who is the real threat, that would be too threatening to what society tells itself.
Sometimes, however, "moral panics" are justified, even if most abuse is in the family. The panic generated about the abuse of children by grooming gangs, in places like Rotherham and Rochdale, proved extremely well-founded. This was something that people in authority preferred to turn a blind eye to.
Mary Whitehouse was daft in a lot of respects, but she was absolutely correct to generate a moral panic about PIE.
Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though.
It's a shame we can't have sensible discussions in this issue and it has to be all or nothing.
And your first line was supposed to be an effort at a 'sensible discussion', was it?
The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule. Every crime is a tragedy and should be investigated, but the number is tiny. In comparison, the amount of abuse against women by non-trans men is shocking. In fact, the general level of violence in our society is shocking, in whatever direction it is directed.
That's the effing issue. That's what you should be screaming against. But it's easier to look and point at the marginalised people instead and make *them* out to be the problem, because they are 'different'. And then to make *all* of 'them' be the problem because they are 'different'. And then we can sleep safely at night, knowing the screams and bangs we hear through the wall from our neighbour cannot possible be him beating her, because he isn't trans.
Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule".
And violating that safeguarding that was done for women by allowing men into those spaces, whether those men by genuinely trans women or falsely "trans women" who want to abuse women, violates their safety.
We need to provide appropriate safeguarding for trans women, but not by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and violating female-only safe spaces.
"Unfortunately women-only safe spaces are needed because violence against women is not remotely "miniscule"."
I did not say violence against women is minuscule; quite the opposite.
And the rest of your post proves my point.
How does it prove your point?
Women want women-only safe spaces to be available to them, especially after potentially being abused by an abusive man.
Sturgeon is against that.
Why should there not be women-only safe spaces?
Trans women should have support, absolutely, and be protected and given their own safeguarding too but it should come at the cost of breaking safeguarding for real women.
I used 'miniscule' in relation to violence by trans people. (To be clear, I wrote: "The number of 'trans' men who go about abusing women is miniscule".) Which it is.
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
No I did not infer that.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Women-only safe spaces would exist with transwomen being allowed in, what with transwomen being women. The issue are abusive people allowed in these spaces, surely? If you had a lesbian couple, where a woman was being abused by their female partner, you wouldn't allow the abusive partner into the space because they are still a woman. So abusive behaviour is already a criteria to allow entrance. If a transwoman is also an abuser, of course they shouldn't be allowed in those spaces, but if a transwoman who is a victim of abuse needs to use a shelter then there is no reason that they shouldn't be in a womans only shelter.
A pre-op transwoman is sexually male, not female.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
Is a woman who has had a hysterectomy not a woman anymore, if removal of these organs is what dictates ones sex? Woman who have had breast cancer and had mammectomies? This is an obviously absurd position, as is the idea that only post-op transwomen are women in a way pre-op transwomen aren't.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
A woman who's had a hysterectomy is still a woman. Someone born male who is trans, is not a real or as you call it "cis" woman.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden. If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
Outside of a conversation about what a woman is; what you are describing is, as far as I understand things, the current state of affairs. You just felt the need to conflate transwomen with abusive men right at top of the conversation for no real reason.
No I did not!
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
The first thing you said was: "Bit of an issue though when the "trans woman" turns out to actually be an abusive man though. " I think it is clear what you were suggesting there.
That diminishing safeguarding and opening up safe spaces to trans women allows abusive men to exploit that weakness, and abuse that. That loosening protections and safeguarding allows abusive men to get into those spaces, not just trans women.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
It's time to get the figures out again, guys and gals:
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
Both the trans panic around abuse of women, and the trans panic around abuse of children, miss the salient factor about abuse - that most abuse, of women and children, happens by a family member or close friend, and typically happens in the immediate family (so mother, father / spouse, partner). These are, typically, by male people (fathers, husbands, boyfriends etc.)
This is bad, obviously, but it is also hard for people to believe. People do not like to think that most of these things happen in what is considered the core cultural unit: the family. And so these anxieties are often projected onto the other. Black men in the USA, the anti-gay panic of the 50s onwards, the Satanic panic of the 70s and now a trans panic. It has often been that these groups are a threat to "our" women, or "our" children. Because it can't be the patriarch at home who is the real threat, that would be too threatening to what society tells itself.
How stupid actually are you if you think it is not universally appreciated "that most abuse, of women and children, happens by a family member or close friend?" Fuck off with the "panic" label for adults addressing specific moral issues.
Remember how Putin said "the west is killing our philosophers" during his Official Annexation Rant?
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
The problem the Tories have is the talent pool is so low now that a new leader isn’t a given to improve the position.
Who actually can do the job and command the sort of presence it requires. Gove probably, but has his enemies. Wallace maybe, but a blank canvas. May has done it before, but her previous bumpy time in office defines her. Mordaunt and Badenoch are too green. Suella and Priti too extreme. Hunt too unpopular. Boris too tainted by partygate and the other scandals. Rishi too distrusted by the BoJo fans. Zahawi doesn’t have the presence. Javid has been an also-ran for too long and no real base in the party.
If the Tories believe the next election is lost then it opens up the possibility of a Howard type figure to limit the damage.
I would suggest Hague except I don’t see how you get him back in the commons in the current environment.
The idea of a Howard-style figure doesn't really work when you're in government. In opposition you can keep the party together by avoiding issues which would divide it, and focusing your efforts on criticising the government, something which everyone in your party will be happy with. In government, the new figure would actually have to make some decisions, and there would be bitter objections from one faction or another whatever decisions are made.
I do no think people have priced in that the general public don't understand that the "Price Cap" on energy is not a cap on their bill. On another forum I frequent, in the politics thread I've now seen a second person being confused that their projected energy bill is above £2500.
Birmingham: Lab hold Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole: Ind hold Ceredigion: Plaid Cymru GAIN from Lab Eastbourne: LDm hold Mendip: Con hold Shropshire: Lab GAIN from Con
Good Week/Bad Week Index
PC +85 LDm +84 Grn -3 Lab -17 Con -76
Adjusted Seat Value
PC +1.4 LDm +1.4 Grn -0.1 Lab -0.3 Con -1.3
This week, the Labour figure is distorted by the Ceredigion result, where the previous councillor was well-established and high-profile, in an area not naturally Labour. Without that result, Labour would have had the best score this week.
How seriously should we pay attention to council by elections. On the one hand is it too easy to say these are real votes not polls, but on the other, I might be wrong just a gut feel, but whoever seems to be holding a seat normally seems to be the one with swing against them and an almost random or undeserved rise in a challengers vote - we may be measuring voter behaviour very very localised and trying to extrapolate that to the national picture?
The connection between holding a seat and the direction of swing isn't anywhere near that predictable. Although there are inevitably local factors which affect individual wards, when you take the aggregate picture you start to see that actually national feeling has a significant role in how voters decide in local elections. Last year, the Cons were doing reasonably well at defending by-elections until the mid to late part of the year, when their results fell off a cliff, and haven't recovered since. IIRC - and I don't have my full spreadsheet in front of me to check - the start f that movement preceded both the opinion poll changes and the parliamentary by-elections.
Council by-elections aren't a perfect tool, but they are a useful part of the toolkit. As I said a couple of weeks ago, one key factor I am seeing is that the Cons are being beaten by Lab, LDems and Greens - whichever is seen as the best anti-Con option in each area. The sentiment is not so much pro-Labour (or any other) as anti-Con. It'll be interesting to see if Labour's rise in the polls will start to see them replicate that locally, or whether (and this is my view) the high Labour figure is just the national way of voters saying they are anti-Con, and an actual election will see them target their vote more specifically.
Comments
She started getting hyped by a select few for doing these trade deals and that started the ball rolling. Before anyone could stop it she was leading the ConservativeHome ratings and getting media attention. Everyone just went along with the fact that she must be a fairly decent cabinet minister and potential future leader because all these Tory supporters seemed to think so.
And the mini budget was the kid who shouted out that there were, indeed, no clothes (I.e, that actually, she’s a bit crap, is appalling presentationally, and gives off the impression of not having a clue what she’s doing).
And the whole house of cards collapsed.
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy birthday your arse
I pray God it's your last
And on that cheery note, I must be off. Don't forget qualifying's at 7am tomorrow.
Would it work to say, “We got the big calls right. Everything is terrible, but that’s because of Putin etc. Stick with us to steady the ship.”? Implausible under Truss/Kwarteng, but maybe could work under Sunak?
Big axe, green logs, very satisfying.
We won’t increase your taxes and we know what a woman is seems to be the most likely angle, TBH. Which is not going to win them an election.
Hitting pensions and mortgages has pissed off the key constituencies that have given the Conservatives a run of victories since 2005.
Cutting benefits and freezing public sector wages will piss off the Red Wall.
It's hard to see how Truss can turn it around.
(Some of her supply-side ideas are quite good, actually, and I hope this doesn't set back the cause of reform by 20 years)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
https://www.survation.com/scottish-westminster-holyrood-voting-intention-update-scottish-labour-on-the-bounce/
Mid term polling is unreliable, granted, but still...
You then changed that to infer that I was saying that violence towards women by *all* people was miniscule.
That's a drastic difference, and something I did not say.
Looking at the graph, the movement feels too quick?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Rather like how Blair’s lead was wiped in the middle of his conference by a protest anger about lack of fuel. To know how serious this polling is, or not serious like a temporary protest spike, we need polling looking into exactly what the voters are protesting about.
All these raw numbers are meaningless, we need to know what is going on inside voters minds.
Not that it answers your question, i’m merely asking the same one, MarqueeMark pointed out below Tories on 23% under May, winning a general election by more than ten just months later under a new leader.
We can see what the voters suddenly did to the polls, but the truth is we are still only making assumptions as to why.
I said that because violence against women is not miniscule is why we need women only safe spaces. That is an important principle of safeguarding for women.
Trans people should have their own concerns, of course, but abolishing women-only safe spaces harms women's safety.
We need to treat trans people with respect, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater by preventing women from having women-only safe spaces.
Cassetteboy on Truss. not his best but...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA-SMYnroiU
What impacts a lot of building - particularly by smaller developers and individuals which is what Bart is so concerned about - is building regs, which become more and more convoluted every year.
Of course if you had any understanding of the issues or any interest in them beyond just wanting to score cheap facile points then you would know this. But you don't. Because you have no real interest in solutions, just in making smart alec ill informed comments which add nothing to the debate.
Until they remove you.
Calling her by a girl's name and using her preferred pronoun is fine, but she is not actually a woman. So we can call her a her, but not let her in women's sport or women's safe spaces.
Sex matters as much as gender.
"These crimes disproportionately affect women and girls, and the statistics show they are still all too common: estimates from the year ending March 2020 show around 1 in 5 women aged 16 to 74 are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault in their lifetime, over 27% of women aged 16 to 74 had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, and 20% of women aged 16-74 had experienced stalking since the age of 16." (1)
So 1 in 5 women have been the victims of sexual or attempted sexual assaults in their lives, whilst 27% had suffered domestic abuse.
"Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data for the year ending March 2020 shows that 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 (equivalent to 773,000 people) had been a victim of sexual assault in the last year; 2.9% of women and 0.7% of men. In the same year, there were an estimated 139,000 victims of rape (including attempts), 132,000 of whom were women." (2)
So nearly 3% of women (and 0.7% of men) have been victims of sexual assault in the last year.
This is just one type of violence; adding other non-sexual forms of abuse and assault and the figures skyrocket. This means one uncomfortable fact: unless you are a hermit, the chances are you know someone who has been sexually abused in their lifetime, or even has been abused in the last year. You almost certainly know someone who has suffered domestic abuse.
Yet it rarely gets talked about.
But there's an extension to this: you also probably know an abuser. I know it's uncomfortable to think that old Harry from the pub might hit his wife, or that sweet-mannered Mary at the office might slap and kick her husband, but they might, however sweet-natured they appear in public.
Yet the talk on here is about the threat posed by trans people. Because they're different. I'd have much more time for the anti-trans obsessives on here if they actually spoke out about general abuse against women, and general violence in society.
But all too often they do not.
Abuse and violence is ingrained in our society. It is all too common. That needs to change. And we will change it by being open and honest about it, not by ignoring it and pretend we do by pouring all the attention onto a minority.
(1): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-violence-against-women-and-girls-strategy-progress-update/tackling-violence-against-women-and-girls-strategy-progress-update
(2): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/violence-against-women-and-girls-national-statement-of-expectations-and-commissioning-toolkit/violence-against-women-and-girls-services-commissioning-toolkit-accessible
(edit for missed link)
Violence against women is not "miniscule" (a word quoted from the text I was replying) which is why women's only safe spaces are necessary.
Trans women should be treated with dignity and respect but that respect does not need to violate real women's safe spaces.
I’ve posted before, the polls are not compliant with Tory collapse if it’s all going to Labour (in England wales, Scot polls a little different) Lib Dem and ReformUK going down too as Labour rises. But Labour did little to deserve that - they were thought of as boring going into a conference that was boring, their leader thought of as uninspiring duly delivered an uninspiring speech with no interesting policy announcement.
All the polling figures seem to be telling us Tory’s cutting tax to benefit the richest (it’s not just top level one but whole package) when all voters tuned in to the statement expecting the opposite, and then media coverage of economic collapse, seems to be the major factors that have made Labour more popular. I would add a third - voters just don’t like Truss at all, they think she is stupid and shit - and a great deal of her own party thought this even whilst they were electing her.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Essentially the Tory coalition is made of mortgage holders, homeowners, and pensioners and a few others. The recent market scare has threatened that coalition - mortgage holders are looking at really big increases in costs in repayment, and the stuff in the markets threatened pension security. Enough of those two groups have noticed that, and are reacting strongly. I was also listening to Gary from Gary's Economics, a youtube famous day trader turned inequality economist, guest on a podcast who was making the argument that essentially once these groups notice this happen, they're also more likely to notice the other failures around them that have a less material impact on them (road quality, NHS, etc.) and very quickly noticed that the emperor had no clothes.
There was also a discussion about how, similarly to the adage of "fucking with the money", this crisis has fucked with essentially all the kinds of people who work in media and politics, the 30-40 somethings with good salaries and nice houses, but who are looking in the face of a serious decline in living standards if they have to pay these significantly increased mortgage rates. These people are better placed to have their concerns amplified, and therefore considered by the electorate.
Testing this hypothesis would require looking at cross tabs and seeing if age and class / income band are predictive of the switchers from Tory to Lab / DK.
Between 2010-2013 the tories had to have a 'bonfire of the building regulations' in the last recession to try and reverse this process (which had inevitably gone out of control under the labour government) and get housebuilding starting again. The trouble is that they have now reached new heights of regulation with the latest 'building safety regulations' following the Grenfell fire, which they will never politically be able to unpick.
It is not a case that everything will be solved once people are allowed to just build anything anywhere.
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2022/press-release/
I suspect you ain't an expert in planning law, you have no influence or impact upon it or on government policy and I certainly know Bart won't/doesn't. So all the pontificating and endless flatulence about it is fairly moot. It's just glorified pub talk.
My input into this little tale is just to say "Yes there are signs of American-style libertarianism on this website, just look at Barty and LuckyGuy'. That's it.
I suspect, but again don’t have the facts, what’s driven the poll change is people with even less money and assets than the ones you describe, what are they called, the Es and Fs? My suspicion is they have deserted the Tories on mass and will tell focus groups it’s nothing complicated we just regard Truss as shit, so intend to vote Labour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPyfQYpTJb0
A more fundamental question is whether Starmer's Labour is gradually displacing the LibDems as "the moderate party" among many voters who simply like the idea of moderation and centrism. That may be the real reason for the relatively low LibDem polling. There are core LibDem voters who support them because they're the most pro-EU, pro-PR and in some ways libertarian party, but the party has always relied on also being seen as the reasonable middle ground, a natural place for floating voters to go, even those indifferent to the EU or PR. Starmer may be a credible option for them.
https://twitter.com/garius/status/1578352577980207105
You can safely vote for Christmas if you don't think it impacts you and remember there are probably 100-200 or so safe Tory seats were Tory polling to improve even slightly...
Truss has good solutions with her Protocol Bill, hopefully those can be implemented via negotiations instead of unilateral action being necessary.
How should shelters check if a woman is trans or not, or has had the operation? Should every woman who comes into a shelter be forced to undergo an examination, to show documentation, or just the ones who look too manish?
It doesn't make sense socially, transwomen are treated by society very much like women, subject to misogyny and misogynistic violence, and it doesn't make sense practically - there is no way to police this without also subject ciswomen to the same policing because (no matter what people say) actually you usually can't "just tell"...
After that people will then start looking at things in a slightly different light at which point items they may have ignored become more prominent and obvious.
It's the age old story of once you lose confidence it drains away because other issues come to light that make everything incredibly obvious.
Its fine to treat transwomen very much like women, without saying they actually are women.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for transwomen, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide shelter for women only, that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
If a shelter wants to provide a space for women only, and a separate space mixed between women and transwomen, then that should be their choice, it shouldn't be forbidden.
Safe spaces for women should be able to exist and as much as we may want to treat trans women like real women much of the time, there are times to acknowledge that they are not real women, and real women should be able to have their own safe spaces if that makes them feel safe.
The UK had a referendum and the UK voted to Leave the EU by 52 to 48.
The NI subset of that referendum was as you say, but that was not an NI vote, it was a part of the UK vote. If NI wants to vote unilaterally, it first needs to vote to leave the UK.
It is almost as if the developers had an interest in supply being short and prices being high.
Birmingham: Lab hold
Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole: Ind hold
Ceredigion: Plaid Cymru GAIN from Lab
Eastbourne: LDm hold
Mendip: Con hold
Shropshire: Lab GAIN from Con
Good Week/Bad Week Index
PC +85
LDm +84
Grn -3
Lab -17
Con -76
Adjusted Seat Value
PC +1.4
LDm +1.4
Grn -0.1
Lab -0.3
Con -1.3
This week, the Labour figure is distorted by the Ceredigion result, where the previous councillor was well-established and high-profile, in an area not naturally Labour. Without that result, Labour would have had the best score this week.
Can we call it the Starmergasm?
That’s my theory you see, who you would presume voted Tory last time so switching now, might have already voted Labour last time, drifting there over a few elections now, it’s the whole new switcheroo at last election from tribal labour voters to Boris who suddenly shifted from Truss to Labour in this poll quake, this Keiruption
On the first you probably have a point, in urban areas, where non-Tory voters are willing to vote Labour or LibDem interchangeably, and the LDs hang onto their tactical vote by dint of forty-plus years campaigning and having captured the non-Tory vote back when it was much smaller and the population of the Borough more settled and older than it is now.
In rural areas, there are as you say seats where Labour can probably never win, even where they are second. My own island seat (soon to become two, which may open things up a little) is a classic example - Labour has managed to elbow out the LDs and Greens to secure a solid second place, but I don’t believe even in current circumstances there are enough people ever willing to vote Labour to put them over the top. Their second place essentially ensures the seat will stay in Tory hands.
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
But as I say, it's more deep-rooted than even 'violence towards women'. There's too much *general* violence in society, with abuses and victims been of any gender, colour, or background. And to confuse matters, victims can be abusers, sometimes of the same people.
I think you're being a bit harsh on Waitrose though. Whatever you buy, and especially on high margin goods like crisps, a good portion of the cost reflects the fixed cost of operating the shop and the distribution network behind it. In that context a 2 for 1 offer doesn't mean you're getting ripped off on the single bag.
FWIW in my view kettle chips sweet chilli and sour cream are the ultimate crisps.
https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1578298208631296000
Since Feb. 24, Ukraine's Armed Forces have captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks and 650 other armored vehicles, which make up "over half of Ukraine's currently fielded tank fleet," the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Oct. 7.
I said that women need women's only spaces because the risks that they are under.
Transwomen should be given what support they need, but they are not women, and if women's only spaces exclude them then that should be entirely legal.
EDIT: As far as I understand the argument here is that Sturgeon wants to change what you say is "the current state of affairs", which would put more barriers up against women-only safe spaces.
Truss both failed to plan properly and then failed to execute well. She failed to prepare the ground and sell her policy changes.
That’s what has created the issue, not necessarily the actual policy itself (although it offends the sense of fairness).
In an actual referendum, however, I don't think they wording of the question makes much difference, given that people will know what they are voting on.
I couldn't work out what he meant, it was so bizarre, but then I realised. He means Darya Dugin, daughter of his favourite philosopher, Alexander Dugin
This is ominous. Why?
A Muscovite film maker called Andrey Loshak writes:
"In 2011, the party youth under the leadership of Dugin staged the occult mystery play Finis Mundi (The End of the World) at the ESM’s summer camp. Darya [Dugina], by the way, played the role of a sacrificial victim who voluntarily self-immolates in order to save Russia. As the girl is burning, a man’s voice proclaims, “Cross yourself with fire, Rus! Burn up in the fire and save your diamond from the black furnace!” The extravaganza’s director described the concept of the production as follows: “We have to bring the end of the world closer. Antonin Artaud said there is only one means of curing the world’s disease—burning the world, which I illustrated in the play’s final scene, in which the burning of the universe takes place.” In the finale, Dugin came on stage and said, “We have lived three days of our life towards death. I don’t think that the scenes you have staged need to be deciphered. The hermeneutics of the world’s end is the task that faces you in the future.”
Frankly, I’m not a great connoisseur of Dugin’s philosophy. It is obvious, though, that Dugin is obsessed with the idea of bringing the world to a purgatory apocalypse, after which the Great Eurasian Empire of the End will be born."
There's plenty more. Loshak concludes:
"If we assume for a second that this is true, it really gets creepy. “We will go to heaven, and they will just drop dead,” Putin said when asked to explain what the phrase “we don’t need a world without Russia” had meant. This is exactly what Dugin calls the “hermeneutics of the world’s end,” only couched in the dialect of the backstreets, which the dictator speaks fluently. It sometimes seems to me that they have already made the “final decision.” They have not only canceled Ukraine. They have canceled the world."
https://www.e-flux.com/notes/487550/dugin-s-black-mass
I'm trying to think of a word that captures this mood. Ah yes:
BRACE
https://twitter.com/RikhardHusu/status/1578308226709590017
This is bad, obviously, but it is also hard for people to believe. People do not like to think that most of these things happen in what is considered the core cultural unit: the family. And so these anxieties are often projected onto the other. Black men in the USA, the anti-gay panic of the 50s onwards, the Satanic panic of the 70s and now a trans panic. It has often been that these groups are a threat to "our" women, or "our" children. Because it can't be the patriarch at home who is the real threat, that would be too threatening to what society tells itself.
I would suggest Hague except I don’t see how you get him back in the commons in the current environment.
If India gets a bit frosty towards Moscow, that is another consequence of Ukrainian battlefield wins.
The electorate is full of people who are, variously, vacillating, very dense, have the attention span of a flea or possess some combination of all of these characteristics. Clearly some of them can be swayed easily by the simplest of methods. It's like the Jedi mind trick: "that's not the answer you're looking for..."
Mary Whitehouse was daft in a lot of respects, but she was absolutely correct to generate a moral panic about PIE.
If you can suggest a way to make women's-only safe spaces be open to trans women but not abusive men then I'm all ears. Otherwise what you're doing is abolishing women's-only safe spaces, because abusive men are now able to enter them as easily as trans women can.
https://twitter.com/ccsewell/status/1578342777582018560?s=46&t=75Mm3HazjpbTgEBqZRBj7Q&fbclid=IwAR2rQ6QgHdJEjsvuYhX0F7oF3At-4QeF-44aNwUphxnu6c191WpDWsS8kVA
Russia has a different weapons-grade loon altogether.
300k householders on fixed rates roll off every 3 months. That’s a lot of people who will start to feel pain.
Council by-elections aren't a perfect tool, but they are a useful part of the toolkit. As I said a couple of weeks ago, one key factor I am seeing is that the Cons are being beaten by Lab, LDems and Greens - whichever is seen as the best anti-Con option in each area. The sentiment is not so much pro-Labour (or any other) as anti-Con. It'll be interesting to see if Labour's rise in the polls will start to see them replicate that locally, or whether (and this is my view) the high Labour figure is just the national way of voters saying they are anti-Con, and an actual election will see them target their vote more specifically.