If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
It's pretty obvious that anti-trans prejudice is a lot more acceptable than anti-gay prejudice. In much the same way that anti-Muslim prejudice is more acceptable than racial prejudice.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
That was proposed which saw a backlash though.
I don't know a good solution but @Nigel_Foremain was on the right track by saying that therapy should be based on science rather than fanatics calling themselves "therapists" which is the problem.
How can you address that through the law though? I honestly don't know.
Fairly easily. You make sure that anyone who claims to be able to "make the gay go away" are prosecuted for being the charlatans that they are. Most medical procedures require regulatory oversight (and I think it also includes psychological "talking therapy". If they claim this is "therapy" they need to be prosecuted as quacks. Additionally people need to sue them.
Scotland Yard are speaking to the army about covering for armed police in London. Other forces have been covering routine armed response patrols in London this weekend, for which the military wouldn’t be used. Army would cover static posts such as embassies and public buildings, and to aid in any anti-terrorist emergency response.
I don't know a good solution but @Nigel_Foremainwas on the right track by saying that therapy should be based on science rather than fanatics calling themselves "therapists" which is the problem. How can you address that through the law though? I honestly don't know.
Bit in bold: yes, I agree with you. Therapy isn't science, social scientists aren't scientists, and enforcing rigor on them will be the work of a lifetime. "What are your diagnostic criteria, how do you measure your success, what are your true positive, false positive, true negative and false negative rates?"
If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
It's pretty obvious that anti-trans prejudice is a lot more acceptable than anti-gay prejudice. In much the same way that anti-Muslim prejudice is more acceptable than racial prejudice.
I take the point, but my point was that if a LGBT+ ban could not have gone thru then a LGB one could have. Sunak could have enforced that. We swallow without demur a powermad shortarse willing to slash IHT, ban smoking and ban nonexistent policies, but something like this happens and PB is willing to go "Oh, poor Sunak, the nwasty activists made him do it, the poor baby, diddums, bless"
Scotland Yard are speaking to the army about covering for armed police in London. Other forces have been covering routine armed response patrols in London this weekend, for which the military wouldn’t be used. Army would cover static posts such as embassies and public buildings, and to aid in any anti-terrorist emergency response.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
“Sunak is Hitler, who must be entirely vanquished” is maybe a tad unfair and Godwinish, but I get the gist.
Putin is in a similar position now. Russia didn’t quite get the memo about the end of empire in 1991.
Sunak is Hitler and Putin is what you get when this site becomes an angry echo chamber, with everyone putting the boot in, and those offering an alternative viewpoint getting fingered as enablers or bullied off.
It's exactly where we're at.
I'm not one to put much stock in "likes" but the fact that Leon's absurdity got zero likes and pretty much a tumbleweed response is rather indicative that people are clued up to Leon's trolling and its not representative of views on Sunak.
Sunak is an awful PM. He's no Hitler, the UK has never had a Hitler.
I don't set much store by likes, to be honest.
Some of the best posts on here get zero or, at best, one or two likes, whereas some really rather poor ones get lots - the driving fact is that they capture the emotional zeitgeist of those logged on and regularly active on here, which is partial and social - not rational.
It's absurd to judge anything on how many likes it gets, since likes simply reflect the subjective viewpoint of a lot of random people on the Internet. I pay at best minimal attention to how many likes my posts receive and I've certainly never checked who is liking it, both because I have no idea how to and because that way madness lies. I didn't "like" Leon's comment because it's Leon and I don't want to encourage him, but it was quite funny. Has there been a Sunak Downfall meme yet? It surely will be along soon.
@MeetThePress · 3h NEW: Almost 60% of Democratic primary voters say they want options other than President Biden in 2024 in the latest NBC News national poll.
@SteveKornacki : “This is not a normal number for an incumbent. ... That’s a very high number.”
If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
That was proposed which saw a backlash though.
I don't know a good solution but @Nigel_Foremain was on the right track by saying that therapy should be based on science rather than fanatics calling themselves "therapists" which is the problem.
How can you address that through the law though? I honestly don't know.
Fairly easily. You make sure that anyone who claims to be able to "make the gay go away" are prosecuted for being the charlatans that they are. Most medical procedures require regulatory oversight (and I think it also includes psychological "talking therapy". If they claim this is "therapy" they need to be prosecuted as quacks. Additionally people need to sue them.
I agree with that completely, but I'm not sure how you write a law that does that without catching entirely genuine therapy which Malmesbury described as 4:34pm.
It probably can be done, but it needs to be done sensibly so that legitimate therapy isn't caught in the crossfires.
If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
It's pretty obvious that anti-trans prejudice is a lot more acceptable than anti-gay prejudice. In much the same way that anti-Muslim prejudice is more acceptable than racial prejudice.
I take the point, but my point was that if a LGBT+ ban could not have gone thru then a LGB one could have. Sunak could have enforced that. We swallow without demur a powermad shortarse willing to slash IHT, ban smoking and ban nonexistent policies, but something like this happens and PB is willing to go "Oh, poor Sunak, the nwasty activists made him do it, the poor baby, diddums, bless"
If people are saying that, I think it only illustrates what I was saying. If dropping action against gay conversion therapy can be defended by exploiting the more-socially-acceptable anti-trans prejudice, to my mind it underlines how homophobia can prosper by cloaking itself as transphobia.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Send the stoats here. They can have as many f*ing seagulls as they can get.
Well, quite. I must say that the gulls around here (not really sea gulls anymore since they never seem to go near it) are a royal pain in the arse and anything that kept their numbers under control would be welcome. Stoats are also pretty good looking animals.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
That was proposed which saw a backlash though.
I don't know a good solution but @Nigel_Foremain was on the right track by saying that therapy should be based on science rather than fanatics calling themselves "therapists" which is the problem.
How can you address that through the law though? I honestly don't know.
Fairly easily. You make sure that anyone who claims to be able to "make the gay go away" are prosecuted for being the charlatans that they are. Most medical procedures require regulatory oversight (and I think it also includes psychological "talking therapy". If they claim this is "therapy" they need to be prosecuted as quacks. Additionally people need to sue them.
I agree with that completely, but I'm not sure how you write a law that does that without catching entirely genuine therapy which Malmesbury described as 4:34pm.
It probably can be done, but it needs to be done sensibly so that legitimate therapy isn't caught in the crossfires.
Don't you just ban any therapy intended to change someone's sexual preference, and let a jury decide the verdict in the usual way?
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
On a point of order - those with PhDs *are* doctors.
Those who practice medicine are usually BMs *calling themselves* ‘doctor’ as a courtesy title.
If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
That was proposed which saw a backlash though.
I don't know a good solution but @Nigel_Foremain was on the right track by saying that therapy should be based on science rather than fanatics calling themselves "therapists" which is the problem.
How can you address that through the law though? I honestly don't know.
Fairly easily. You make sure that anyone who claims to be able to "make the gay go away" are prosecuted for being the charlatans that they are. Most medical procedures require regulatory oversight (and I think it also includes psychological "talking therapy". If they claim this is "therapy" they need to be prosecuted as quacks. Additionally people need to sue them.
I agree with that completely, but I'm not sure how you write a law that does that without catching entirely genuine therapy which Malmesbury described as 4:34pm.
It probably can be done, but it needs to be done sensibly so that legitimate therapy isn't caught in the crossfires.
Don't you just ban any therapy intended to change someone's sexual preference, and let a jury decide the verdict in the usual way?
"M'lud, X thought she was A when she began the therapy. Now she thinks she is B. This is clear evidence that Dr Gregory House is practising conversion therapy."
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
Scotland Yard are speaking to the army about covering for armed police in London. Other forces have been covering routine armed response patrols in London this weekend, for which the military wouldn’t be used. Army would cover static posts such as embassies and public buildings, and to aid in any anti-terrorist emergency response.
IIRC this was the plan that was made around the time of the Harry Stanley legal proceedings.
Yes the idea is to use some of the diplomatic protection officers, who are a different group and not on strike, to cover the routine patrols while the army backfills the static posts.
The army guys already know how to check passes and search cars, which is most of the job in the static posts. The diplomatic protection guys hate static guard duty, so they’ll happily go along with it too.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
On a point of order - those with PhDs *are* doctors.
Those who practice medicine are usually BMs *calling themselves* ‘doctor’ as a courtesy title.
Senior surgeons of course use ‘Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms.’
I know that anyone with a PhD is a doctor.
What's not helpful is when Doctor Jones on Twitter saying to take horse tranquiliser instead of vaccines is doing so with a PhD in Russian literature rather than being a medical doctor.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
That was already the plan. Sunak announced in January that the bill would be introduced and that it would cover sexuality, not gender identity.
The consultations have been done, the draft bill has been in the works for 18 months or more, and Mordaunt told the house that it would be published by the end of the current session. That's not happened, and it's now too late to get into the King's speech.
People have already been wondering what the hell is going on, and the failure to publish the draft bill has already had a fair bit of media attention in the past few weeks (though until now it's been presented as "yet another delay").
Delay upon delay upon delay is one thing, but having it outright dropped is quite another. Especially if it's presented as the result of "Rishi finally being able to be himself".
If that's really what's happening, the government needs to prepare for a very significant backlash. And not just from the usual suspects, either - huge chunks of the blue wall will hate it.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
To me, it seems as ridiculous as all the shops pedalling magical snake oil in Glastonbury or Totnes, but I fail to see why any of this should be the business of the criminal justice system.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The bigger issue is that after defeat the Tories will probably go and do some really dumb, unelectable things.
You only have to read HY’s stream to see that coming.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
What nonsense. To make something illegal you don't need to have an official register of the people who might try to do it, and threaten to strike them off if they do.
No different to Exctinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, then.
Well funded nutcases.
Quite different, I think.
The anti-science antivaxx movement is led by a bunch of grifters who make many millions from their deluded followers. The science denial movement in the US is quite a new thing as a dangerous political force.
ER and their aren't a great deal different from the anti-capitalist protest groups we've always had. And their cause, though not their prescriptions for addressing climate change, is at least rational.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
On a point of order - those with PhDs *are* doctors.
Those who practice medicine are usually BMs *calling themselves* ‘doctor’ as a courtesy title.
Senior surgeons of course use ‘Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms.’
Our eldest granddaughter has recently qualified as an Educational Psychologist and is now entitled to call herself Doctor. She has a DEdCPsy.
If Labour can't win the next general election they really are a joke. The Tories seem to be going all out to give their opponents ammunition.
Personally I’m against the ban on “conversion therapy”. It’s another piece of illiberal, virtue signalling dressed up as government legislation.
I also don’t like this idea of slowly abolishing cigarettes.
I'm not thinking about the issue being right or wrong, but politically it's inept to say you will do something and then abandon it and in the process paint yourself as homophobic.
Upsets everyone, sooner or later.
"Conversion therapy" should be banned , not only on the moral grounds of its outright offensiveness, but because it has zero basis in science. It is therefore quack science and should be banned on that basis if no other.
The problem comes when everything except aggressive “gender affirming care”, becomes labelled pejoratively as “conversion therapy” - when much of the time, it’s simply the medical practice of psycology and psychiatry.
Again, that can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. I realise that PB has a hobbyhorse when it comes to trans, but the bill's omission means that gay people are unprotected.
That was proposed which saw a backlash though.
I don't know a good solution but @Nigel_Foremain was on the right track by saying that therapy should be based on science rather than fanatics calling themselves "therapists" which is the problem.
How can you address that through the law though? I honestly don't know.
Fairly easily. You make sure that anyone who claims to be able to "make the gay go away" are prosecuted for being the charlatans that they are. Most medical procedures require regulatory oversight (and I think it also includes psychological "talking therapy". If they claim this is "therapy" they need to be prosecuted as quacks. Additionally people need to sue them.
I agree with that completely, but I'm not sure how you write a law that does that without catching entirely genuine therapy which Malmesbury described as 4:34pm.
It probably can be done, but it needs to be done sensibly so that legitimate therapy isn't caught in the crossfires.
Don't you just ban any therapy intended to change someone's sexual preference, and let a jury decide the verdict in the usual way?
"M'lud, X thought she was A when she began the therapy. Now she thinks she is B. This is clear evidence that Dr Gregory House is practising conversion therapy."
That's why I suggested a criterion that wouldn't allow such a daft argument to be put.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
What nonsense. To make something illegal you don't need to have an official register of the people who might try to do it, and threaten to strike them off if they do.
You do need a watertight, legal definition of what "it" is though.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Phasing out smoking is a good idea.
Prohibition is a bad idea.
Square that circle. Phase out smoking through education, not prohibition.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
Quite easily, I would have thought ?
There's a clear difference between therapy to help explore an individual's issues, and a directed effort to persuade them that they are something other than they say they are.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Smoking at break and lunch times is a hugely successful social bonding activity at my workplace.
On conversion therapy - this relates to sexuality not gender, surely? Gay conversion therapy has been around in the States for a while. I've never heard of anyone doing trans conversion therapy, unless someone can enlighten me?
I mean practitioners could be struck off a professional register for offering a bogus treatment. Making it illegal?
No different to Exctinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, then.
Well funded nutcases.
Quite different, I think.
The anti-science antivaxx movement is led by a bunch of grifters who make many millions from their deluded followers. The science denial movement in the US is quite a new thing as a dangerous political force.
ER and their aren't a great deal different from the anti-capitalist protest groups we've always had. And their cause, though not their prescriptions for addressing climate change, is at least rational.
There’s grifters around everything these days.
Addressing climate change is something most of us support. I certainly do.
XR, JSO and other cranks are extremists, well funded extremists. Little different to the anti vax loons. Peoples,views of them are based on their support for their message.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
What nonsense. To make something illegal you don't need to have an official register of the people who might try to do it, and threaten to strike them off if they do.
You do need a watertight, legal definition of what "it" is though.
Therapy intended to try to change someone's sexual preference would be a fairly straightforward definition.
I don't know what you mean by "watertight". It would always have to be a matter for a jury to decide.
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The other difficulty is that it's not obvious how a regenerated Conservative Party will be staffed.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Smoking at break and lunch times is a hugely successful social bonding activity at my workplace.
No offence but it doesn't speak highly of the education levels at your workplace.
Hopefully other workplaces are better educated and don't have that as much nowadays.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
The upside is, some people enjoy doing it, for reasons that escape me, but it doesn’t hurt me.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
What nonsense. To make something illegal you don't need to have an official register of the people who might try to do it, and threaten to strike them off if they do.
You do need a watertight, legal definition of what "it" is though.
Therapy intended to try to change someone's sexual preference would be a fairly straightforward definition.
I don't know what you mean by "watertight". It would always have to be a matter for a jury to decide.
We're back to where I came in though. What does "therapy" mean? And jury trials that take years to come to Court surely isn't beneficial to anyone concerned?
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
What nonsense. To make something illegal you don't need to have an official register of the people who might try to do it, and threaten to strike them off if they do.
You do need a watertight, legal definition of what "it" is though.
Therapy intended to try to change someone's sexual preference would be a fairly straightforward definition.
I don't know what you mean by "watertight". It would always have to be a matter for a jury to decide.
That would be an LGB therapy ban, not an LGBT one, which you objected to repeatedly including at 5:16.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Smoking at break and lunch times is a hugely successful social bonding activity at my workplace.
No offence but it doesn't speak highly of the education levels at your workplace.
Hopefully other workplaces are better educated and don't have that as much nowadays.
Speaks highly of the stress levels of the bone idle teachers.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Phasing out smoking is a good idea.
Prohibition is a bad idea.
Square that circle. Phase out smoking through education, not prohibition.
Smoking is in decline anyway and has been since the seventies. But you’re a free market adherent, if people know the risks and want to smoke why shouldn’t they ? We all do stuff that is dangerous, or has some risk. I cycle to work every day. I know the risk, I manage it and I have a go pro.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Smoking at break and lunch times is a hugely successful social bonding activity at my workplace.
No offence but it doesn't speak highly of the education levels at your workplace.
Hopefully other workplaces are better educated and don't have that as much nowadays.
Speaks highly of the stress levels of the bone idle teachers.
If you're in a stressful job, then not being addicted to a deadly substance that makes you cranky and more stressed if you're suffering from cravings would seem to be a good idea to me.
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The other difficulty is that it's not obvious how a regenerated Conservative Party will be staffed.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
People get pissed off at the government and join their main opponent.
The Conservative and Labour parties have often been pronounced “dead” in my lifetime.
Our system provides space for one right wing party and one left wing party. It always has done, and always will.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Apparently there is the figure of a quarter of a million cigarettes that Doctors use. That's the point at which you are likely to get serious health consequences. That's an awful lot of cigarettes. The issue for me is not that it has no upside but that the downside is insufficient for it to be banned in a free society. It's strange how we have gone from talk of legalising drugs not so long ago to banning smoking tobacco now. Won't we end up with another black market?
On therapy, Sigmund's grandson Clement told how a conference was once convened in the mid-west by "Therapists of Indiana" with an unfortunately misplaced gap in the first word after the first syllable
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The other difficulty is that it's not obvious how a regenerated Conservative Party will be staffed.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
People get pissed off at the government and join their main opponent.
The Conservative and Labour parties have often been pronounced “dead” in my lifetime.
Our system provides space for one right wing party and one left wing party. It always has done, and always will.
The Conservatives won't be dead, but like Doctor Who they will need to regenerate and when they appear successfully next time it will be with a new face and appearance.
Cameron's Tories in 2010 were not a direct continuation of the Tories of 1979-97, only once the Tories faced upto their problems and took the issue of reform seriously were they able to regain office.
For the Tories to be electable again once in opposition will depend upon how long they take to question seriously why they lost and what they need to reform and why.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Apparently there is the figure of a quarter of a million cigarettes that Doctors use. That's the point at which you are likely to get serious health consequences. That's an awful lot of cigarettes. The issue for me is not that it has no upside but that the downside is insufficient for it to be banned in a free society. It's strange how we have gone from talk of legalising drugs not so long ago to banning smoking tobacco now. Won't we end up with another black market?
The thing about a black market in fags if they were made illegal is that they aren’t very subtle to hide you’ve been smoking them. You can’t just sneak off to the loo in a pub or work and have a quick smoke as you will smell of fags and the smoke is a bit of a giveaway - unlike doing a bump of coke at work where you just act a bit more twatty when you get back to your desk.
Wildlife is really important for tourism there, and alien predators can do huge damage.
Since when did stoats become aliens?
On the islands. Hence the impact on naive populations.
Edit: not native to the Orkneys anyway.
There was also an (I believe) English cleric who introduced seven hedgehogs onto South Uist in the 70's - with consequent devastation on numbers of ground-nesting waders.
That's an excellent example of an intrusive carnivore on islands. Greatly reduced bird breeding success. Still getting rid of them island by island. .
PS This is very revealing - over 50 hedgehogs per sq km of machair, killing a significant proportion of chicks, and yet not particularly dependent on them - so no way will they become extinct themselves when the birds leave.
Yep. A major reason Orkney and the Western Isles are so important for seabirds, and other species such as ground-nesting waders, hen harriers, etc,, is the absence of mammal predators. That's why introduced hedgehogs, stoats, etc., can be so disastrous.
Given the pressures on our wildlife from man-made climate change it seem a bit churlish to moan about spending some cash to protect what remains from introduced predators.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Apparently there is the figure of a quarter of a million cigarettes that Doctors use. That's the point at which you are likely to get serious health consequences. That's an awful lot of cigarettes. The issue for me is not that it has no upside but that the downside is insufficient for it to be banned in a free society. It's strange how we have gone from talk of legalising drugs not so long ago to banning smoking tobacco now. Won't we end up with another black market?
The thing about a black market in fags if they were made illegal is that they aren’t very subtle to hide you’ve been smoking them. You can’t just sneak off to the loo in a pub or work and have a quick smoke as you will smell of fags and the smoke is a bit of a giveaway - unlike doing a bump of coke at work where you just act a bit more twatty when you get back to your desk.
Because the distinctive smell of cannabis has really helped make prohibition of that be an overwhelming success?
Also cokeheads aren't nearly as discrete as they think they are. Not only are they all twats and get more aggressive too, but it also results in red eyes etc too.
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The other difficulty is that it's not obvious how a regenerated Conservative Party will be staffed.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
People get pissed off at the government and join their main opponent.
The Conservative and Labour parties have often been pronounced “dead” in my lifetime.
Our system provides space for one right wing party and one left wing party. It always has done, and always will.
The Conservatives won't be dead, but like Doctor Who they will need to regenerate and when they appear successfully next time it will be with a new face and appearance.
Cameron's Tories in 2010 were not a direct continuation of the Tories of 1979-97, only once the Tories faced upto their problems and took the issue of reform seriously were they able to regain office.
For the Tories to be electable again once in opposition will depend upon how long they take to question seriously why they lost and what they need to reform and why.
There was a thread of continuity, though. Cameron was a spad in the Major era. Gove and Johnson were highish profile journalists, clearly destined for bigger things. Much harder to point to similar characters now.
And the age profile for the Conservatives is a horrible challenge, in a way that it wasn't in 1997. Even in that landslide defeat, they got about 28-29 percent of the youth (18-24) vote. In the most recent YouGov, they're on eight.
This time is significantly different, and there's a risk for the Conservatives that wasn't there before.
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The bigger issue is that after defeat the Tories will probably go and do some really dumb, unelectable things.
You only have to read HY’s stream to see that coming.
They may well of course, one certainly wouldn't bet against it. But I think their problem is deeper than the usual one of losing/defeated parties going a bit bonkers. Eventually they get sick of losing and come to their senses. The Tories have an issue that could really hamper them in the longer term as they're a bit trapped with policies that have effectively got the status of the tenets of religion within the party, being incredibly unpopular with those who will become increasingly electorally important and are showing no signs of becoming more conservative as they age - as their parents might have done. To pick the obvious, if Brexit is seen as a terrible idea by a huge majority of those under 60, as it is. Then the party responsible that never gets sick of advertising that fact, will struggle. It's a tougher rebranding job than, say, Cameron, pulled off by throwing in a bit of social liberalism, going big on climate change, and softening some of its rhetoric. For a generation now coming towards middle-age they will always be the party that badly broke Britain and screwed up their future a bit. Difficult to see how you overcome that without major rethinks that would be seen as heresy by members and an increasingly narrow and elderly base.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
What nonsense. To make something illegal you don't need to have an official register of the people who might try to do it, and threaten to strike them off if they do.
You do need a watertight, legal definition of what "it" is though.
Therapy intended to try to change someone's sexual preference would be a fairly straightforward definition.
I don't know what you mean by "watertight". It would always have to be a matter for a jury to decide.
That would be an LGB therapy ban, not an LGBT one, which you objected to repeatedly including at 5:16.
T is not about sexual preference.
Yes, you've understood what those letters mean perfectly.
If you look at the discussion above, someone says it would be simple to limit it to sexual preference. I was agreeing. I think it would be equally simple to include gender. If it were up to me, I would outlaw both.
On conversion therapy - this relates to sexuality not gender, surely? Gay conversion therapy has been around in the States for a while. I've never heard of anyone doing trans conversion therapy, unless someone can enlighten me?
I mean practitioners could be struck off a professional register for offering a bogus treatment. Making it illegal?
Most people offering this sort of therapy aren't on any sort of professional register, and they don't have any sort of licence to practice. No medical, psychotherapy, or any other professional body supports conversion therapy. The people who are doing this aren't sitting it nice plush offices and won't be deterred by the threat of being struck off.
And yet, the government's own figures show that 7% of LGBTQ people have been offered it, generally by religious groups. And usually there's a degree of pressure or implied coercion involved - escaping the threat of it is the biggest single cause of children running away from home.
Some conversion practices, such as "corrective" rape and physical torture have already been banned in the UK. It really shouldn't be beyond us as a civilised society to ban the rest.
(And, indeed, it's been the government's proud intention to do so. Until now.)
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The other difficulty is that it's not obvious how a regenerated Conservative Party will be staffed.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
People get pissed off at the government and join their main opponent.
The Conservative and Labour parties have often been pronounced “dead” in my lifetime.
Our system provides space for one right wing party and one left wing party. It always has done, and always will.
The Conservatives won't be dead, but like Doctor Who they will need to regenerate and when they appear successfully next time it will be with a new face and appearance.
Cameron's Tories in 2010 were not a direct continuation of the Tories of 1979-97, only once the Tories faced upto their problems and took the issue of reform seriously were they able to regain office.
For the Tories to be electable again once in opposition will depend upon how long they take to question seriously why they lost and what they need to reform and why.
There was a thread of continuity, though. Cameron was a spad in the Major era. Gove and Johnson were highish profile journalists, clearly destined for bigger things. Much harder to point to similar characters now.
And the age profile for the Conservatives is a horrible challenge, in a way that it wasn't in 1997. Even in that landslide defeat, they got about 28-29 percent of the youth (18-24) vote. In the most recent YouGov, they're on eight.
This time is significantly different, and there's a risk for the Conservatives that wasn't there before.
Good point.
What's worse is they got 8% of those aged 25-49 too. That's both atrocious and justified.
Albeit the two figures aren't directly comparable since 37% of both 25-49 and 18-24 said don't know etc whereas the percentage of vote excludes them.
But still, being in single digits of under 50s is remarkable.
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term
The problem with creating a band on conversion therapy is a bit like the dangerous dog thing.
We know it, when we see it. But creating a legal definition that holds water and protects legitimate medical professionals is another issue.
Consider - a friend’s daughter thought she might be trans. He didn’t judge - but got her to see a high end shrink. Who said she probably wasn’t trans but probably had other issues. So he paid a fortune over a couple of years in shrinks. She’s worked out her problems and is much happier now. How do you define that at not-conversion-therapy?
That can easily be solved by omitting gender identity from the bill. A bill on sexual orientation would have gone thru both houses. As I have commented before, politics is about priorities. To Sunak, bans on nonexistent meat bans and smoking have a higher priority than a ban on gay conversion therapy. And there y'go.
Except. Replace trans with gay in the example above and it isn't so easy.
Then again, some people who thought they were gay latter came to the conclusion they were actually trans....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
Then again, some people who thought they were trans la[t]ter came to the conclusion they were actually gay....
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
I should thought the distinction between diagnosis and therapy would be fairly straightforward to draw.
Therapists can't make diagnoses. They don't have to have any qualifications. The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
Therapy is not a protected term in this country. If you call yourself a doctor*, or a dentist, or a psychiatrist when you're not one then you're committing fraud but anyone can call themselves a therapist.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
Which is why it (a conversion therapy ban) was never going to happen. Too many vested interests in the status quo. Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it. Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first. What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had? A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive. A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off. But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
What nonsense. To make something illegal you don't need to have an official register of the people who might try to do it, and threaten to strike them off if they do.
You do need a watertight, legal definition of what "it" is though.
Therapy intended to try to change someone's sexual preference would be a fairly straightforward definition.
I don't know what you mean by "watertight". It would always have to be a matter for a jury to decide.
We're back to where I came in though. What does "therapy" mean? And jury trials that take years to come to Court surely isn't beneficial to anyone concerned?
This is just feeble stuff. If you think it should be legal as a matter of principle, for heaven's sake just say so.
On therapy, Sigmund's grandson Clement told how a conference was once convened in the mid-west by "Therapists of Indiana" with an unfortunately misplaced gap in the first word after the first syllable
I know, I know...but you don't need to agree with it, to note that the right-wing press is gearing itself to support Rishi Sunak in a way that was denied to John Major in 1997. And, also, that Sunak will not have to deal to quite the same extent with a rebellious right-wing and the perception of a "split" party as Major did.
Add to that the contrast between Blair/Ashdown in '97 with Starmer/Davey in '24 and you can make a case that the Conservative position is not quite so desperate as it was then. Plus the Tories should retain some seats in Scotland - possibly even gain a few.
A change in Govt is absolutely nailed on - this will be a change election - and it may be a Labour landslide. But there is still something to play for.
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The other difficulty is that it's not obvious how a regenerated Conservative Party will be staffed.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
People get pissed off at the government and join their main opponent.
The Conservative and Labour parties have often been pronounced “dead” in my lifetime.
Our system provides space for one right wing party and one left wing party. It always has done, and always will.
The Conservatives won't be dead, but like Doctor Who they will need to regenerate and when they appear successfully next time it will be with a new face and appearance.
Cameron's Tories in 2010 were not a direct continuation of the Tories of 1979-97, only once the Tories faced upto their problems and took the issue of reform seriously were they able to regain office.
For the Tories to be electable again once in opposition will depend upon how long they take to question seriously why they lost and what they need to reform and why.
There was a thread of continuity, though. Cameron was a spad in the Major era. Gove and Johnson were highish profile journalists, clearly destined for bigger things. Much harder to point to similar characters now.
And the age profile for the Conservatives is a horrible challenge, in a way that it wasn't in 1997. Even in that landslide defeat, they got about 28-29 percent of the youth (18-24) vote. In the most recent YouGov, they're on eight.
This time is significantly different, and there's a risk for the Conservatives that wasn't there before.
Good point.
What's worse is they got 8% of those aged 25-49 too. That's both atrocious and justified.
Albeit the two figures aren't directly comparable since 37% of both 25-49 and 18-24 said don't know etc whereas the percentage of vote excludes them.
But still, being in single digits of under 50s is remarkable.
Entirely deserved, they should be glad of the 8%. Conservative will be a slur for a few generations.
Off topic, but a different view on the David Brooks admission: New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia once confessed to making a mistake by saying: "When I make a mistake it's a beauty." He is almost universally considered a great mayor, and I think part of his greatness was his willingness to admit mistakes.
Which is rarer than it should be. (Year and years ago, my mother and my girlfiriend at the time were watching me work in a garden. I did something that I had earlier said I wouldn't do, and my mother needled me about it. I just replied: "I was wrong." And both women started laughing out of surprise, because such admissions are so rare.
Even here at PB.)
So I think a little bit more of Brooks for admitting he was wrong. And I think you should, too.
(Brooks is one of the NYT's token conservatives, as this quote explains: '[Gail] Collins was looking for a conservative to replace outgoing columnist William Safire, but one who understood how liberals think. "I was looking for the kind of conservative writer that wouldn't make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the window," says Collins. "He was perfect." Brooks started writing in September 2003. "The first six months were miserable," Brooks says. "I'd never been hated on a mass scale before."[7]' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(commentator)
I like him but don't consider him a great thinker.)
My best guess is that real wages will grow fairly strongly between now and the next election. That will enable the Conservatives to close the gap on economic issues, with Labour.
But, Labour will remain well ahead, on public services, which, combined with the general exasperation with the government, still gives them a pretty big lead on polling day.
Labour's own poor ratings probably point to quite a drop off in support, after winning the next election.
For the Conservatives to actually win a majority, or near-majority, would require the blackest of black swans.
Yes, I think Starmer will get a pretty good majority, but then his polling will go into steep decline very quickly (after a few months of thank-God-the-Tories-are-gone honeymoon) when it is revealed that he has zero new ideas for dealing with migration, the debt, public services, and no money to throw at problems. Moreover a lot of his stuff will be seriously unpopular in itself - Woke issues, trans stuff, all that- his activists and MPs will ensure he ends up at the wrong end of debates. And he is fervently Remoaner and this will become a thorny issue
I can see Labour plunging to great depths of polling negativity within 1-2 years of their election, and the Tories might easily be back in power by 2029, so their despair is rather overdone
Obviously one should never be complacent about a Tory recovery happening sooner rather than later ('never' would be nice given the damage they have done to Britain) given past history but there's a lot running against them that makes one thing they could be out for a while. Firstly, Starmer will be able to do what Cameron and Osborne did and arrive in office and say "Oh God it's so much worse than we thought" and blame the previous government for everything. Allied to that, being a 'Remoaner' isn't the problem it once was, given Brexit is now seen as a terrible error by a majority - and demographics mean even if no one changed their mind that would get stronger. Working age people, currently, aren't becoming more Conservative as they age as previous generations did for a variety of reasons. And among that generation the anger at events of 2010-2023 isn't going away but calcifying into why you never, ever vote for or trust the Tories. That group is growing, and the older boomer voters who are the Tories sole reliable base now may have passed their peak of electoral effectiveness. Furthermore, a major problem for Labour has been trust that they're up to the job of government. Once you are the government and are setting the baselines of where debates are conducted, that dissipates. Furthermore, the easiest path to electability for an opposition - ditching the stuff key target voters didn't like and brushing up your image, isn't really open to the Tory Party as it now treats Brexit and associated hardline policies like a religion that can't be rowed back on at all, even when have become very unpopular or are unpopular with key groups. One can always be proved wrong, but so far Tories give little indication they understand the hole they are in let alone showing signs they know how to get out of it.
The other difficulty is that it's not obvious how a regenerated Conservative Party will be staffed.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
Also, what sort of Tory party will it be. Will those excluded by Boris (Gauke etc) be welcomed back or will the Tory members who chose Liz Truss at their last opportunity push the party further to the right? My guess is the latter.
Banning “conversion therapy” , like phasing out smoking, is a solution without a problem.
I don’t really understand the idea that phasing out smoking is a bad idea. I’m saying this as a smoker and a liberal but smoking is something where there really is no upside. It kills and damages so many people for absolutely no benefit.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
Phasing out smoking is a good idea.
Prohibition is a bad idea.
Square that circle. Phase out smoking through education, not prohibition.
Smoking is in decline anyway and has been since the seventies. But you’re a free market adherent, if people know the risks and want to smoke why shouldn’t they ? We all do stuff that is dangerous, or has some risk. I cycle to work every day. I know the risk, I manage it and I have a go pro.
Cycling is a lot less risky for those around you than smoking is. Passive smoking, even in the age of bans on smoking in indoor public places, still causes large numbers of cancers, heart disease, asthma, and much more.
Cycling causes a handful of deaths to e.g. pedestrians each year. Much lower numbers of fatalities and my best guess would be correspondingly lower numbers of non-fatal injuries than smoking causes.
Off topic, but a different view on the David Brooks admission: New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia once confessed to making a mistake by saying: "When I make a mistake it's a beauty." He is almost universally considered a great mayor, and I think part of his greatness was his willingness to admit mistakes.
Which is rarer than it should be. (Year and years ago, my mother and my girlfiriend at the time were watching me work in a garden. I did something that I had earlier said I wouldn't do, and my mother needled me about it. I just replied: "I was wrong." And both women started laughing out of surprise, because such admissions are so rare.
Even here at PB.)
So I think a little bit more of Brooks for admitting he was wrong. And I think you should, too.
(Brooks is one of the NYT's token conservatives, as this quote explains: '[Gail] Collins was looking for a conservative to replace outgoing columnist William Safire, but one who understood how liberals think. "I was looking for the kind of conservative writer that wouldn't make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the window," says Collins. "He was perfect." Brooks started writing in September 2003. "The first six months were miserable," Brooks says. "I'd never been hated on a mass scale before."[7]' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(commentator)
I like him but don't consider him a great thinker.)
He only admitted he was wrong when publicly confronted with his idiocy. There's not much credit in that.
Brooks is, and has been for years, a piss poor columnist, IMO.
This is poor from Scotland, they really don't deserve to get out of the pool, sadly
A shame for Finn Russell, one of the greatest players in the world
Not a vintage month for Russells.
I can see England getting to the final now, maybe England v Ireland final?
Absolutely, England will win the WC and Rishi will storm to victory in the election. The joy of the next year will more than make up for the misery since Covid appeared. A glorious period of history and a fine time to be alive. And then the UFOs arrive and they are all massive Anglophiles and we will be top nation again.
@MeetThePress · 3h NEW: Almost 60% of Democratic primary voters say they want options other than President Biden in 2024 in the latest NBC News national poll.
@SteveKornacki : “This is not a normal number for an incumbent. ... That’s a very high number.”
Odd really that there isn't a similar number in the Republican Party. Trump is only 3 years younger and appears much more intellectually challenged than Biden.
This is poor from Scotland, they really don't deserve to get out of the pool, sadly
A shame for Finn Russell, one of the greatest players in the world
Not a vintage month for Russells.
I can see England getting to the final now, maybe England v Ireland final?
Absolutely, England will win the WC and Rishi will storm to victory in the election. The joy of the next year will more than make up for the misery since Covid appeared. A glorious period of history and a fine time to be alive. And then the UFOs arrive and they are all massive Anglophiles and we will be top nation again.
This is poor from Scotland, they really don't deserve to get out of the pool, sadly
A shame for Finn Russell, one of the greatest players in the world
Not a vintage month for Russells.
I can see England getting to the final now, maybe England v Ireland final?
Absolutely, England will win the WC and Rishi will storm to victory in the election. The joy of the next year will more than make up for the misery since Covid appeared. A glorious period of history and a fine time to be alive. And then the UFOs arrive and they are all massive Anglophiles and we will be top nation again.
Olympics next summer. The PM will be hoping for a fantastic result for Team GB & NI, and call the election just after the No.10 garden party for the medallists.
On therapy, Sigmund's grandson Clement told how a conference was once convened in the mid-west by "Therapists of Indiana" with an unfortunately misplaced gap in the first word after the first syllable
Comments
Would a trick cyclist who gave that as opinion be a bigot?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/24/army-called-in-met-firearms-officers-refuse-to-carry-guns/
Goodwin is right: we are not a serious country.
I didn't "like" Leon's comment because it's Leon and I don't want to encourage him, but it was quite funny. Has there been a Sunak Downfall meme yet? It surely will be along soon.
@MeetThePress
·
3h
NEW: Almost 60% of Democratic primary voters say they want options other than President Biden in 2024 in the latest NBC News national poll.
@SteveKornacki
: “This is not a normal number for an incumbent. ... That’s a very high number.”
It probably can be done, but it needs to be done sensibly so that legitimate therapy isn't caught in the crossfires.
They don't have to have any qualifications.
The vast majority of conversion therapy is not performed by doctors.
* This isn't helped by people with a PhD in something like literature then calling themselves Doctor and giving dodgy medical advice.
The only question is if like prohibition the solution might cause more problems than the problem.
Those who practice medicine are usually BMs *calling themselves* ‘doctor’ as a courtesy title.
Senior surgeons of course use ‘Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms.’
Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it.
Regulating therapist as a protected term (like most countries) would have to come first.
What punishment could you currently give for flouting a ban? And who would decide you had?
A lengthy complex court case seems sub-optimal. Jail if guilty excessive.
A doctor, lawyer or teacher would get struck off.
But there's no register to be struck off from. Nor any governing body to do it even if there were.
The army guys already know how to check passes and search cars, which is most of the job in the static posts. The diplomatic protection guys hate static guard duty, so they’ll happily go along with it too.
What's not helpful is when Doctor Jones on Twitter saying to take horse tranquiliser instead of vaccines is doing so with a PhD in Russian literature rather than being a medical doctor.
The consultations have been done, the draft bill has been in the works for 18 months or more, and Mordaunt told the house that it would be published by the end of the current session. That's not happened, and it's now too late to get into the King's speech.
People have already been wondering what the hell is going on, and the failure to publish the draft bill has already had a fair bit of media attention in the past few weeks (though until now it's been presented as "yet another delay").
Delay upon delay upon delay is one thing, but having it outright dropped is quite another. Especially if it's presented as the result of "Rishi finally being able to be himself".
If that's really what's happening, the government needs to prepare for a very significant backlash. And not just from the usual suspects, either - huge chunks of the blue wall will hate it.
It’s not just the danger but the anti social side to it - if I’m outside a bar or restaurant I won’t smoke whilst neighbouring tables are eating but a lot of smokers don’t give a shit so others have to put up with toxic smoke and the resulting smell and of course the passive smoking element.
It’s not like booze where, whilst some people overindulge with damaging effects, alcohol does have a benefit to society in its relaxation, social bonding, joy of different tastes and flavours but smoking is grim - you smell of smoke, taste of smoke, cough, die.
It’s like making seatbelts compulsory in that it’s something that in hindsight is a no-brainier for the lives it saves for how little it damages society through the law.
In fifty years time people will look back and wonder why society allowed people to buy a product that massively increases their chances of death from a dangerous chemical that’s just not good in any way. I think the future lives saved, the reduction in smoking related cancers and even fag butts on the street are well worth the state stepping in.
You only have to read HY’s stream to see that coming.
‘This can only end badly’: Tories fear Sunak policy blitz is bound to fail
https://x.com/REWearmouth/status/1705983786247213554?s=20
I just heard of it today and it seems to be almost insanely popular and loved
Earlier there were reports of a HS2 announcement this week.
Now that’s a lot less clear and I’m told any announcement will almost certainly be just in the context of the Autumn Statement in November
And I’m told not to expect even guidance on IHT at Tory conference …
The anti-science antivaxx movement is led by a bunch of grifters who make many millions from their deluded followers.
The science denial movement in the US is quite a new thing as a dangerous political force.
ER and their aren't a great deal different from the anti-capitalist protest groups we've always had.
And their cause, though not their prescriptions for addressing climate change, is at least rational.
She has a DEdCPsy.
Keir to be PM in 2024. Then he will hand over to Wes in 2028 (Keir will be around 66 then) for Wes to win GE 2028/9.
Then maybe CON back 2032/3 led by someone we have virtually no knowledge of currently.
Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it.
Regulating therapist as a protected term You do need a watertight, legal definition of what "it" is though.
Prohibition is a bad idea.
Square that circle. Phase out smoking through education, not prohibition.
There's a clear difference between therapy to help explore an individual's issues, and a directed effort to persuade them that they are something other than they say they are.
I mean practitioners could be struck off a professional register for offering a bogus treatment. Making it illegal?
Addressing climate change is something most of us support. I certainly do.
XR, JSO and other cranks are extremists, well funded extremists. Little different to the anti vax loons. Peoples,views of them are based on their support for their message.
I don't know what you mean by "watertight". It would always have to be a matter for a jury to decide.
The party set to lose in 2024 is considerably older and more insular than that of 1997. Replenishing is going to be an urgent job.
Hopefully other workplaces are better educated and don't have that as much nowadays.
What does "therapy" mean?
And jury trials that take years to come to Court surely isn't beneficial to anyone concerned?
Then again, a musical on Mormon missionaries in Africa seems a bit odd too yet we enjoyed that one.
T is not about sexual preference.
Far from being simple it gets more complicated the deeper you look at it.
Regulating therapist as a protected term Speaks highly of the stress levels of the bone idle teachers.
The Conservative and Labour parties have often been pronounced “dead” in my lifetime.
Our system provides space for one right wing party and one left wing party. It always has done, and always will.
Cameron's Tories in 2010 were not a direct continuation of the Tories of 1979-97, only once the Tories faced upto their problems and took the issue of reform seriously were they able to regain office.
For the Tories to be electable again once in opposition will depend upon how long they take to question seriously why they lost and what they need to reform and why.
Given the pressures on our wildlife from man-made climate change it seem a bit churlish to moan about spending some cash to protect what remains from introduced predators.
https://twitter.com/OxfordClarion/status/1705981264329617803
Also cokeheads aren't nearly as discrete as they think they are. Not only are they all twats and get more aggressive too, but it also results in red eyes etc too.
@Peter_the_Punter you were right!!
And the age profile for the Conservatives is a horrible challenge, in a way that it wasn't in 1997. Even in that landslide defeat, they got about 28-29 percent of the youth (18-24) vote. In the most recent YouGov, they're on eight.
This time is significantly different, and there's a risk for the Conservatives that wasn't there before.
If you look at the discussion above, someone says it would be simple to limit it to sexual preference. I was agreeing. I think it would be equally simple to include gender. If it were up to me, I would outlaw both.
And yet, the government's own figures show that 7% of LGBTQ people have been offered it, generally by religious groups. And usually there's a degree of pressure or implied coercion involved - escaping the threat of it is the biggest single cause of children running away from home.
Some conversion practices, such as "corrective" rape and physical torture have already been banned in the UK. It really shouldn't be beyond us as a civilised society to ban the rest.
(And, indeed, it's been the government's proud intention to do so. Until now.)
What's worse is they got 8% of those aged 25-49 too. That's both atrocious and justified.
Albeit the two figures aren't directly comparable since 37% of both 25-49 and 18-24 said don't know etc whereas the percentage of vote excludes them.
But still, being in single digits of under 50s is remarkable.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x34id0y
"Keep this up, Prime Minister and you might just see off Sir Keir"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12553891/MAIL-SUNDAY-COMMENT-Prime-Minister-just-Sir-Keir.html
I know, I know...but you don't need to agree with it, to note that the right-wing press is gearing itself to support Rishi Sunak in a way that was denied to John Major in 1997. And, also, that Sunak will not have to deal to quite the same extent with a rebellious right-wing and the perception of a "split" party as Major did.
Add to that the contrast between Blair/Ashdown in '97 with Starmer/Davey in '24 and you can make a case that the Conservative position is not quite so desperate as it was then. Plus the Tories should retain some seats in Scotland - possibly even gain a few.
A change in Govt is absolutely nailed on - this will be a change election - and it may be a Labour landslide. But there is still something to play for.
A shame for Finn Russell, one of the greatest players in the world
Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Which is rarer than it should be. (Year and years ago, my mother and my girlfiriend at the time were watching me work in a garden. I did something that I had earlier said I wouldn't do, and my mother needled me about it. I just replied: "I was wrong." And both women started laughing out of surprise, because such admissions are so rare.
Even here at PB.)
So I think a little bit more of Brooks for admitting he was wrong. And I think you should, too.
(Brooks is one of the NYT's token conservatives, as this quote explains: '[Gail] Collins was looking for a conservative to replace outgoing columnist William Safire, but one who understood how liberals think. "I was looking for the kind of conservative writer that wouldn't make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the window," says Collins. "He was perfect." Brooks started writing in September 2003. "The first six months were miserable," Brooks says. "I'd never been hated on a mass scale before."[7]' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(commentator)
I like him but don't consider him a great thinker.)
Will those excluded by Boris (Gauke etc) be welcomed back or will the Tory members who chose Liz Truss at their last opportunity push the party further to the right? My guess is the latter.
Cycling causes a handful of deaths to e.g. pedestrians each year. Much lower numbers of fatalities and my best guess would be correspondingly lower numbers of non-fatal injuries than smoking causes.
Brooks is, and has been for years, a piss poor columnist, IMO.
But them's the breaks
We have to promote this lamest of memes
I've spent much of the weekend speaking to many old and wise friends - much in contrast to my old and daft self. Nobody has a clue what's going on!