LAB fancied to make more by-election gains in the Feb 15th contests – politicalbetting.com

System · February 7

LAB fancied to make more by-election gains in the Feb 15th contests – politicalbetting.com

There’s been very little betting interest in the two Tory by-elections defences that take place on February 15th. The assumption is that these will be two easy victories for LAB that will take to 7 the number of GE2019 CON seats that have gone red during this parliament.

Read the full story here

algarkirk · February 7

First?

DougSeal · February 7

We’re being spoiled. Two new threads in 10 minutes.

algarkirk · February 7

Slightly think the Tories will do better in Wellingborough than expected. Outside chance of a surprise.

Carnyx · February 7

Eh, did someone say something rude? The last thread is AWOL.

Omnium · February 7

algarkirk said:
First?

Who'd want to be first on a 'Lab fancied' thread!? Heavy losses have tended to follow.

Carnyx · February 7

algarkirk said:
First?

More like last, the speed of thread change we are getting.

viewcode · February 7

@rcs1000, @TSE, @Anabobazina has informed me that they are access-restricted again for reasons unknown. Can you free them from the outer darkness please?

Scott_xP · February 7

@IanDunt

Sunak seemed a fairly run-of-the-mill conservative when he came to power. It transpires that he is a moral vacuum. There is simply no floor to his behaviour. There is no depth he will not plunge

https://t.co/WPvsI3QEIl

Harper · February 7

What happened to the last thread about how useless Rishi is.

LostPassword · February 7

viewcode said:
@rcs1000, @TSE, @Anabobazina has informed me that they are access-restricted again for reasons unknown. Can you free them from the outer darkness please?

It'll be because he did his spam thing of putting a single capital letter on alternate lines.

It's like he's trying to recreate the analogue experience of cutting out letters from a newspaper for a ransom note, instead of making use of the digital formatting options that are available.

LostPassword · February 7

Harper said:
What happened to the last thread about how useless Rishi is.

Cruel and unusual punishment of our few remaining Tory-inclined posters.

Carnyx · February 7

LostPassword said:

viewcode said:
@rcs1000, @TSE, @Anabobazina has informed me that they are access-restricted again for reasons unknown. Can you free them from the outer darkness please?
It'll be because he did his spam thing of putting a single capital letter on alternate lines.

It's like he's trying to recreate the analogue experience of cutting out letters from a newspaper for a ransom note, instead of making use of the digital formatting options that are available.

Tippex, too, no doubt.

The digital equivalent of paying his bill in florins and farthings.

TheScreamingEagles · February 7

viewcode said:
@rcs1000, @TSE, @Anabobazina has informed me that they are access-restricted again for reasons unknown. Can you free them from the outer darkness please?

He's set off the spam trap again with his repeated use of

T

R

U

S

S

He needs to stop acting like a child.

TheScreamingEagles · February 7

Carnyx said:
Eh, did someone say something rude? The last thread is AWOL.

Mike and myself published simultaneous threads, so I pulled mine.

Stuartinromford · February 7

Harper said:
What happened to the last thread about how useless Rishi is.

It shrivelled and died as a metaphor for the Sunak ministry.

Omnium · February 7

TheScreamingEagles said:

Carnyx said:
Eh, did someone say something rude? The last thread is AWOL.
Mike and myself published simultaneous threads, so I pulled mine.

Steady on!

TheScreamingEagles · February 7

Omnium said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Carnyx said:
Eh, did someone say something rude? The last thread is AWOL.
Mike and myself published simultaneous threads, so I pulled mine.
Steady on!

Get your mind out of the gutter.

noneoftheabove · February 7

TheScreamingEagles said:

Carnyx said:
Eh, did someone say something rude? The last thread is AWOL.
Mike and myself published simultaneous threads, so I pulled mine.

Unusual reaction but I guess everyone gets excited in different ways.

viewcode · February 7

Omnium said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Carnyx said:
Eh, did someone say something rude? The last thread is AWOL.
Mike and myself published simultaneous threads, so I pulled mine.
Steady on!

Well he could have pulled off Mike's instead.

Omnium · February 7

TheScreamingEagles said:

Omnium said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Carnyx said:
Eh, did someone say something rude? The last thread is AWOL.
Mike and myself published simultaneous threads, so I pulled mine.
Steady on!
Get your mind out of the gutter.

Er, yes, right, and sorry about that. (I guess I just have the wrong shoes for the club)

DecrepiterJohnL · February 7

tbh I'd completely forgotten about these by-elections next week.

noneoftheabove · February 7

Phantom thread related rather than this one, but Sunak went badly wrong in the first five seconds of his answer well before the controversial bit. Grinning inanely whilst boasting about waiting lists coming down. It is a message that is key but just cannot be delivered with tiggerish enthusiasm and no empathy.

The takeaway for me is not really the controversy but a re-enforcement of my view that Sunak is really really bad at being PM and will get hammered in a campaign. Therefore, sorry Brenda, but we shall have two new PMs this year.

williamglenn · February 7

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.

What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.

Andy_JS · February 7

BBC2: Nigeria v South Africa.

148grss · February 7

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.

I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.

Malmesbury · February 7

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.

That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.

Omnium · February 7

Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.

DougSeal · February 7

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.

People with penises, and I speak as one, are all potential rapists by virtue of having a penis, so is it not understandable for people without penises to want to have certain spaces free of all people with penises, whatever their gender identity. What’s the problem with that?

MoonRabbit · February 7

Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.

148grss · February 7

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.

I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.

Omnium · February 7

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.

I'm sure it's traditional here that Betting Posts suggest a bet!

noneoftheabove · February 7

Omnium said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
I'm sure it's traditional here that Betting Posts suggest a bet!

Lay Starmer next PM.

Carnyx · February 7

Omnium said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
I'm sure it's traditional here that Betting Posts suggest a bet!

Er, referendum? I must have missed the news. On what? Hanging? Immigration?

148grss · February 7

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
People with penises, and I speak as one, are all potential rapists by virtue of having a penis, so is it not understandable for people without penises to want to have certain spaces free of all people with penises, whatever their gender identity. What’s the problem with that?

I mean that depends on the very specific definition of rape in British law; all people are capable of being sexual abusers and rapists. I can find you an example of a cis woman who sexually assaulted kids or murdered people, or assaulted other women in prisons - does that prove anything?

And even then, transphobes would disagree with that because many would (and do) argue about transpeople who do not have penises being in those spaces because they may have been born with a penis.

maxh · February 7

FPT

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.

This is a totally uncalled for response, for which I think you should apologise @dougseal.

There is a wide range of views on this board, some well informed, some less so. @148grss is at one extreme of those views, sure, but is consistently well informed and informative, and the board is better for their posts.

The post you replied to in no way said that abuse doesn’t matter. And your ad hominem follow up was just unpleasant.

DougSeal · February 7

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.

There is no evidence that says trans people are higher risk than cis people. But there is evidence that biological males, whether trans or cis, are higher risk. That is the problem we have to wrestle with. Some people, a tiny minority, abuse self-ID. A tiny, miniscule, number of people, but ignoring their existence doesn't help.

Malmesbury · February 7

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.

Just pointing out that the statement you suggested is stupid is the basis of existing laws and regulations.

For example, a man trying to sue for discrimination on not being able to enter a variety of women only spaces would lose the case. Women as a protected class etc.

148grss · February 7

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.

He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.

MoonRabbit · February 7

algarkirk said:
Slightly think the Tories will do better in Wellingborough than expected. Outside chance of a surprise.

Labour could fail in both. There were two newspaper visits to Wellingborough over the weekend, both saying that Labour feel it’s tight there. The one in the Observer/Guardian suggested it might be very tight. Is that Labour just trying to get voters not to take Labour win for granted and turn out for it. And I have already called Kingswood a Labour loss as green voters will vote green in Bristol in this election and the GE, labour will probably only lose just the one of their current MPs there, Debonaire but struggle to take Tory seats like this with a large green vote sticking to Green.

Carnyx · February 7

O/T but I can see why the thing is being coy after what happened to the last escapee monkey there:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/07/sunderland-search-for-fugitive-raccoon-enters-seventh-week

Omnium · February 7

noneoftheabove said:

Omnium said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
I'm sure it's traditional here that Betting Posts suggest a bet!
Lay Starmer next PM.

It's certainly a bet. Would you really suggest it? I'm not doing so, but 1.20 seems a better back than lay.

148grss · February 7

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.
Just pointing out that the statement you suggested is stupid is the basis of existing laws and regulations.

For example, a man trying to sue for discrimination on not being able to enter a variety of women only spaces would lose the case. Women as a protected class etc.

But this is emblematic of the problem with this “debate”; people just Motte and Bailey the whole thing. They’ll start by being like “trans women are a risk to women because” and then start talking about cis men. Trans women are not cis men. So why are we talking about cis men?!?

DougSeal · February 7

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
People with penises, and I speak as one, are all potential rapists by virtue of having a penis, so is it not understandable for people without penises to want to have certain spaces free of all people with penises, whatever their gender identity. What’s the problem with that?
I mean that depends on the very specific definition of rape in British law; all people are capable of being sexual abusers and rapists. I can find you an example of a cis woman who sexually assaulted kids or murdered people, or assaulted other women in prisons - does that prove anything?

And even then, transphobes would disagree with that because many would (and do) argue about transpeople who do not have penises being in those spaces because they may have been born with a penis.

Again, what's the problem with people without penises wanting a space without people with penises? Why does that harm transwomen? It is a small thing. Women have been persecuted throughout history for their reproductive capacity, not their gender identity, the Salic Law for example, so it seems a small thing to reserve a small number of spaces to make up for that. It doesn't harm transwomen in any way.

SouthamObserver · February 7

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.

Sunak is failing because the Tories have failed and because he is very bad at politics.

williamglenn · February 7

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.
Just pointing out that the statement you suggested is stupid is the basis of existing laws and regulations.

For example, a man trying to sue for discrimination on not being able to enter a variety of women only spaces would lose the case. Women as a protected class etc.
But this is emblematic of the problem with this “debate”; people just Motte and Bailey the whole thing. They’ll start by being like “trans women are a risk to women because” and then start talking about cis men. Trans women are not cis men. So why are we talking about cis men?!?

You're the one motte and baileying the whole thing. You've been presented with examples of people who present as transwomen who clearly do pose a significant risk. How can you tell the difference between them and someone who wouldn't hurt a fly?

mickydroy · February 7

Omnium said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
I'm sure it's traditional here that Betting Posts suggest a bet!

Sunak should just call an election and be done with it, by hanging on it can only get worse, it would seem the majority of people have made their minds up, and are voting for the anyone but Torys, party. And any tory MPs who are left, will derive a lot of pleasure from watching Starmer deal with the car crash he has inherited

148grss · February 7

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.
There is no evidence that says trans people are higher risk than cis people. But there is evidence that biological males, whether trans or cis, are higher risk. That is the problem we have to wrestle with. Some people, a tiny minority, abuse self-ID. A tiny, miniscule, number of people, but ignoring their existence doesn't help.

Right - so trans people aren’t the issue, the issue is cis people perhaps pretending to be trans? Cool. So - what’s the alternative to self ID? Everyone carrying a card with their birth sex on it at all times? Genital inspections before going into a toilet? Self ID is the norm because it is the only practicable thing to do; you can’t just say “only trans people have to carry x card or document” because anyone who looks not femme or masc enough for society then gets called trans and won’t be able to prove it either. So the answer is - deal with people who abuse people in environments where that’s a higher risk - no matter who they are.

Phil · February 7

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.

It’s the old “members of the targeted out-group who do <despicable thing> are clearly emblematic of the group as a whole whereas members of my in-group who do <despicable thing> are obviously exceptions who don’t reflect our core values” thing repurposed for the culture war du jour.

williamglenn · February 7

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.
There is no evidence that says trans people are higher risk than cis people. But there is evidence that biological males, whether trans or cis, are higher risk. That is the problem we have to wrestle with. Some people, a tiny minority, abuse self-ID. A tiny, miniscule, number of people, but ignoring their existence doesn't help.
Right - so trans people aren’t the issue, the issue is cis people perhaps pretending to be trans? Cool. So - what’s the alternative to self ID? Everyone carrying a card with their birth sex on it at all times? Genital inspections before going into a toilet? Self ID is the norm because it is the only practicable thing to do; you can’t just say “only trans people have to carry x card or document” because anyone who looks not femme or masc enough for society then gets called trans and won’t be able to prove it either. So the answer is - deal with people who abuse people in environments where that’s a higher risk - no matter who they are.

So you're arguing against single-sex spaces on principle?

noneoftheabove · February 7

Omnium said:

noneoftheabove said:

Omnium said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
I'm sure it's traditional here that Betting Posts suggest a bet!
Lay Starmer next PM.
It's certainly a bet. Would you really suggest it? I'm not doing so, but 1.20 seems a better back than lay.

Yes was on already laying 1.16, just taken a bit more to 1.22. Also put some up at 1.15 on the alternative Rishi leader at next GE market.

Sunak is terrible and it will be obvious to all sides of the Tory party. I think if he tries to go past the May local elections he is a very significant chance to be replaced after that ends in disaster, at least 1 in 3.

So at a minimum something like

10% chance of Sunak May or earlier
60% chance Sunak later
30% chance of new PM before Starmer

Also get Sunak/Starmer health/scandals and Tory GE win for free beyond that.

My view fair price is closer to 1.45. The market is "wrong" imo because it is absurd to replace to him. But it will be increasingly obvious that it is also absurd not to replace him too, so something will have to give.

Harper · February 7

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.

Virtually any leadercwould fail at present. Next watch Starmer fail.

algarkirk · February 7

MoonRabbit said:

algarkirk said:
Slightly think the Tories will do better in Wellingborough than expected. Outside chance of a surprise.
Labour could fail in both. There were two newspaper visits to Wellingborough over the weekend, both saying that Labour feel it’s tight there. The one in the Observer/Guardian suggested it might be very tight. Is that Labour just trying to get voters not to take Labour win for granted and turn out for it. And I have already called Kingswood a Labour loss as green voters will vote green in Bristol in this election and the GE, labour will probably only lose just the one of their current MPs there, Debonaire but struggle to take Tory seats like this with a large green vote sticking to Green.

Thanks. Interesting. I would think Kingswood is certain Labour, and Wellingborough a 75% chance.

Rochdale is worth watching. Labour are given an approx 80% chance. Could be value there?

Omnium · February 7

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.

I've been reflecting a little on your reply, and I think you're quite right. It doesn't add up, and smoke and mirrors represent no answer.

This is a serious challenge for Labour, and I think it's almost impossible that they can address it. It's just a bigger Liam Byrne note.

SouthamObserver · February 7

When talking specifically about Brianna, didn't Sunak refer to her as a girl/woman? If so, he was right to do so but how does it sit with what he said previously?

DougSeal · February 7

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.
There is no evidence that says trans people are higher risk than cis people. But there is evidence that biological males, whether trans or cis, are higher risk. That is the problem we have to wrestle with. Some people, a tiny minority, abuse self-ID. A tiny, miniscule, number of people, but ignoring their existence doesn't help.
Right - so trans people aren’t the issue, the issue is cis people perhaps pretending to be trans? Cool. So - what’s the alternative to self ID? Everyone carrying a card with their birth sex on it at all times? Genital inspections before going into a toilet? Self ID is the norm because it is the only practicable thing to do; you can’t just say “only trans people have to carry x card or document” because anyone who looks not femme or masc enough for society then gets called trans and won’t be able to prove it either. So the answer is - deal with people who abuse people in environments where that’s a higher risk - no matter who they are.

So we wait until someone is abused and deal with the abuser after? Right.

The problem is that we have your solution already. In England providers of sex-segregated services to deny access to transgender people on a case-by-case basis of "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim". This is decried as "trasnphobic" for no good reason I can see.

148grss · February 7

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

Malmesbury said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
That “men are a risk at all times” is the reason for a lot of safeguarding rules. And for the existence of women only spaces.
I mean, it isn’t, even if it’s a good enough framework to start from. But, again, transpeople are not the same category as cis men. So do we have evidence that suggests trans people should be considered a higher risk? No.
There is no evidence that says trans people are higher risk than cis people. But there is evidence that biological males, whether trans or cis, are higher risk. That is the problem we have to wrestle with. Some people, a tiny minority, abuse self-ID. A tiny, miniscule, number of people, but ignoring their existence doesn't help.
Right - so trans people aren’t the issue, the issue is cis people perhaps pretending to be trans? Cool. So - what’s the alternative to self ID? Everyone carrying a card with their birth sex on it at all times? Genital inspections before going into a toilet? Self ID is the norm because it is the only practicable thing to do; you can’t just say “only trans people have to carry x card or document” because anyone who looks not femme or masc enough for society then gets called trans and won’t be able to prove it either. So the answer is - deal with people who abuse people in environments where that’s a higher risk - no matter who they are.
So you're arguing against single-sex spaces on principle?

No, not at all - I have said I think the rationale against excluding cis men from certain spaces can be backed up by evidence. But transpeople are not cis men. How does one enforce single sex spaces now? Based on self ID and if there is a belief someone is going to be an issue - for example an abusive cis lesbian would not be allowed into the shelter her partner is staying in. So if someone turns up and is one of these apparent cis men pretending to be a trans woman you can still assess if they are a risk or not.

Anyway - I'm almost home from my commute and do not wish to make a hypocrite of myself by saying Leon should live his life rather than be here when he has the option to enjoy the world when I am now free of work and the bus.

Ghedebrav · February 7

algarkirk said:

MoonRabbit said:

algarkirk said:
Slightly think the Tories will do better in Wellingborough than expected. Outside chance of a surprise.
Labour could fail in both. There were two newspaper visits to Wellingborough over the weekend, both saying that Labour feel it’s tight there. The one in the Observer/Guardian suggested it might be very tight. Is that Labour just trying to get voters not to take Labour win for granted and turn out for it. And I have already called Kingswood a Labour loss as green voters will vote green in Bristol in this election and the GE, labour will probably only lose just the one of their current MPs there, Debonaire but struggle to take Tory seats like this with a large green vote sticking to Green.
Thanks. Interesting. I would think Kingswood is certain Labour, and Wellingborough a 75% chance.

Still really weird that Bone's partner has been selected as candidate. No idea if that helps or hinders.

Harper · February 7

Omnium said:

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.
I've been reflecting a little on your reply, and I think you're quite right. It doesn't add up, and smoke and mirrors represent no answer.

This is a serious challenge for Labour, and I think it's almost impossible that they can address it. It's just a bigger Liam Byrne note.

Sadly we are in for years of chaos now.

noneoftheabove · February 7

Ghedebrav said:

algarkirk said:

MoonRabbit said:

algarkirk said:
Slightly think the Tories will do better in Wellingborough than expected. Outside chance of a surprise.
Labour could fail in both. There were two newspaper visits to Wellingborough over the weekend, both saying that Labour feel it’s tight there. The one in the Observer/Guardian suggested it might be very tight. Is that Labour just trying to get voters not to take Labour win for granted and turn out for it. And I have already called Kingswood a Labour loss as green voters will vote green in Bristol in this election and the GE, labour will probably only lose just the one of their current MPs there, Debonaire but struggle to take Tory seats like this with a large green vote sticking to Green.
Thanks. Interesting. I would think Kingswood is certain Labour, and Wellingborough a 75% chance.
Still really weird that Bone's partner has been selected as candidate. No idea if that helps or hinders.

What does the local rag make of that?

viewcode · February 7

williamglenn said:
You're the one motte and baileying the whole thing. You've been presented with examples of people who present as transwomen who clearly do pose a significant risk. How can you tell the difference between them and someone who wouldn't hurt a fly?

I am not @148grss but I have an answer to that

The difference between somebody who wants to switch for ill-intent, and those who do not, is subjective: without mind-reading we cannot detect this objectively before the fact (afterwards is different)
Given this requirement for subjective decisions, and (as this is now in the political milieu) the requirement for political oversight, the solution is obvious. A committee
The mechanism for one (the Gender Recognition Panel) already exists, and requires expert input from doctors. It can be beefed up (removal of recognition on bad behavior, oversight by the Home Secretary, background check etc) to minimise the fears of those who fear rape/assault/murder and prevent the system from being gamed by the malevolent.

This system, suitably modified, would work and is clever, wise, and quietly wonderful. It will therefore be ignored by all.

williamglenn · February 7

Harper said:

Omnium said:

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.
I've been reflecting a little on your reply, and I think you're quite right. It doesn't add up, and smoke and mirrors represent no answer.

This is a serious challenge for Labour, and I think it's almost impossible that they can address it. It's just a bigger Liam Byrne note.
Sadly we are in for years of chaos now.

Looking on the bright side, we might still become a safe haven compared with the US and mainland Europe.

algarkirk · February 7

Harper said:

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.
Virtually any leadercwould fail at present. Next watch Starmer fail.

Any Tory leader is going to fail at the moment, they can't avoid the baggage of 2010 onwards. Starmer will of course fail in the sense that the problems he inherits are not quickly surmountable; but he doesn't have the baggage - and 2008 was a long time ago.

So what he can do is turn a glass half empty into a glass half full, address the grown ups among the voters, tell us a plan, remind us there is no money, get on with the EU better, be more competent (that should not be hard), abolish war and poverty and get a settlement in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine and tell Trump where to go.

nico679 · February 7

Sunak made a trans joke

noneoftheabove said:

Ghedebrav said:

algarkirk said:

MoonRabbit said:

algarkirk said:
Slightly think the Tories will do better in Wellingborough than expected. Outside chance of a surprise.
Labour could fail in both. There were two newspaper visits to Wellingborough over the weekend, both saying that Labour feel it’s tight there. The one in the Observer/Guardian suggested it might be very tight. Is that Labour just trying to get voters not to take Labour win for granted and turn out for it. And I have already called Kingswood a Labour loss as green voters will vote green in Bristol in this election and the GE, labour will probably only lose just the one of their current MPs there, Debonaire but struggle to take Tory seats like this with a large green vote sticking to Green.
Thanks. Interesting. I would think Kingswood is certain Labour, and Wellingborough a 75% chance.
Still really weird that Bone's partner has been selected as candidate. No idea if that helps or hinders.
What does the local rag make of that?

I think it’s insulting to the constituents . It looks like she’s just fronting the campaign for her partner .

Ghedebrav · February 7

Harper said:

Omnium said:

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.
I've been reflecting a little on your reply, and I think you're quite right. It doesn't add up, and smoke and mirrors represent no answer.

This is a serious challenge for Labour, and I think it's almost impossible that they can address it. It's just a bigger Liam Byrne note.
Sadly we are in for years of chaos now.

With Ed Miliband?

Taz · February 7

SouthamObserver said:
When talking specifically about Brianna, didn't Sunak refer to her as a girl/woman? If so, he was right to do so but how does it sit with what he said previously?

Whatever side of the debate you are this is just good manners. If someone wishes to be referred to by whatever pronouns people should respect that. I certainly do.

It’s common courtesy on an individual basis.

Taz · February 7

noneoftheabove said:

Ghedebrav said:

algarkirk said:

MoonRabbit said:

algarkirk said:
Slightly think the Tories will do better in Wellingborough than expected. Outside chance of a surprise.
Labour could fail in both. There were two newspaper visits to Wellingborough over the weekend, both saying that Labour feel it’s tight there. The one in the Observer/Guardian suggested it might be very tight. Is that Labour just trying to get voters not to take Labour win for granted and turn out for it. And I have already called Kingswood a Labour loss as green voters will vote green in Bristol in this election and the GE, labour will probably only lose just the one of their current MPs there, Debonaire but struggle to take Tory seats like this with a large green vote sticking to Green.
Thanks. Interesting. I would think Kingswood is certain Labour, and Wellingborough a 75% chance.
Still really weird that Bone's partner has been selected as candidate. No idea if that helps or hinders.
What does the local rag make of that?

Arrold !!

Harper · February 7

EU now threatening a travel ban on Tucker Carlson/

https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/1755285352711909595?s=20

NickyBreakspear · February 7

Ghedebrav said:

Harper said:

Omnium said:

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.
I've been reflecting a little on your reply, and I think you're quite right. It doesn't add up, and smoke and mirrors represent no answer.

This is a serious challenge for Labour, and I think it's almost impossible that they can address it. It's just a bigger Liam Byrne note.
Sadly we are in for years of chaos now.
With Ed Miliband?

Yes as Secretary of State for Net Zero.

algarkirk · February 7

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.

Good argument; don't agree. It is in no future leader's interest to inherit the mantle now. All the decent candidates (supposing there were any) will wait it out. They then won't have the baggage of being a failed PM, losing an election etc. The Clark damp squib is sufficient evidence.

Omnium · February 7

Harper said:

Omnium said:

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.
I've been reflecting a little on your reply, and I think you're quite right. It doesn't add up, and smoke and mirrors represent no answer.

This is a serious challenge for Labour, and I think it's almost impossible that they can address it. It's just a bigger Liam Byrne note.
Sadly we are in for years of chaos now.

Well I'm not sure about chaos, but ahead certainly lies an adjustment as to expectations of the state.

maxh · February 7

Phil said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
It’s the old “members of the targeted out-group who do <despicable thing> are clearly emblematic of the group as a whole whereas members of my in-group who do <despicable thing> are obviously exceptions who don’t reflect our core values” thing repurposed for the culture war du jour.

This sums it up perfectly in my view.

AlsoLei · February 7

noneoftheabove said:
Phantom thread related rather than this one, but Sunak went badly wrong in the first five seconds of his answer well before the controversial bit. Grinning inanely whilst boasting about waiting lists coming down. It is a message that is key but just cannot be delivered with tiggerish enthusiasm and no empathy.

The takeaway for me is not really the controversy but a re-enforcement of my view that Sunak is really really bad at being PM and will get hammered in a campaign. Therefore, sorry Brenda, but we shall have two new PMs this year.

How do we get there from here, though?

In the past, Tory splits were fairly straightforward - wet vs dry, pro-Europe vs sceptic, moderniser vs core values, anti-Brexit vs pro, populism vs managerialism.

But now the party's split at least five or six ways, and the fracture lines run all over the map. Why risk an abbreviated contest that would risk leaving the wrong faction on top after the election? Better to put up with an incompetent-but-biddable Sunak for now, and have a proper deathmatch leadership election next year.

Sandpit · February 7

Harper said:
EU now threatening a travel ban on Tucker Carlson/

https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/1755285352711909595?s=20

Good to see their true sevles come out occasionally. EU, the most liberal and progressive place in the world, except for when we ban journalists we don’t like.

Stuartinromford · February 7

algarkirk said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
Good argument; don't agree. It is in no future leader's interest to inherit the mantle now. All the decent candidates (supposing there were any) will wait it out. They then won't have the baggage of being a failed PM, losing an election etc. The Clark damp squib is sufficient evidence.

True for anyone who thinks they have a future in the Conservative party in 2025.

So... if there is to be a non-Rishi candidate, there are two possible sources.

One is a sort of Michael Howard, thinking "I expect I'll lose, but steadying the ship is a final duty in public life." And who knows? Miracles may happen. See May or Gove nominated by acclamation.

The other is someone high profile who is out if the Conservatives continue down this path, but survives if they can haul themselves back to 200 seats or so. PM 4 PM, Part 3?

Neither of them is likely, and I still expect the battered remains of Rishi Sunak to lead the Conservatives to a really bad defeat, probably in December. But we may be entering "eliminate the impossible and what remains is the truth" territory.

williamglenn · February 7

maxh said:

Phil said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
It’s the old “members of the targeted out-group who do <despicable thing> are clearly emblematic of the group as a whole whereas members of my in-group who do <despicable thing> are obviously exceptions who don’t reflect our core values” thing repurposed for the culture war du jour.
This sums it up perfectly in my view.

It's not a question of demonising an out-group but of whether the baseline should be based on biology or ideology. The argument is not that transwomen pose a greater risk than normal biological males, simply that biology cannot be ignored.

carnforth · February 7

SouthamObserver said:
When talking specifically about Brianna, didn't Sunak refer to her as a girl/woman? If so, he was right to do so but how does it sit with what he said previously?

I will happily use whatever pronouns and name someone wants, out of politeness. But pretending, in my head, that they are actually a woman? Can't make the leap.

Not sure there's a contradiction there, whether I'm right or wrong about the second half.

MattW · February 7

Harper said:
EU now threatening a travel ban on Tucker Carlson/

https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/1755285352711909595?s=20

Parody account?

Just the name sounds like something out of Private Eye:

"Eva Vlaardingerbroek"

TimS · February 7

Sandpit said:

Harper said:
EU now threatening a travel ban on Tucker Carlson/

https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/1755285352711909595?s=20
Good to see their true sevles come out occasionally. EU, the most liberal and progressive place in the world, except for when we ban journalists we don’t like.

Far better to let him travel there but then just ignore him in restaurants and shops and “misunderstand” his food orders.

Andy_JS · February 7

Kingswood will probably be a big win for Labour. Wellingborough will be a bit closer.

williamglenn · February 7

TimS said:

Sandpit said:

Harper said:
EU now threatening a travel ban on Tucker Carlson/

https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/1755285352711909595?s=20
Good to see their true sevles come out occasionally. EU, the most liberal and progressive place in the world, except for when we ban journalists we don’t like.
Far better to let him travel there but then just ignore him in restaurants and shops and “misunderstand” his food orders.

He went to the Russian replacement for McDonalds and they asked him, “Do you want lies with that?”

kinabalu · February 7

noneoftheabove said:

Omnium said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
I'm sure it's traditional here that Betting Posts suggest a bet!
Lay Starmer next PM.

Oh please no. I've slowly, patiently built up a very nice position on that. Treated it like a savings account.

MattW · February 7

I'm having trouble tracking the proposed PB punchups and not-punchups today.

I did spot Doug the Seal vs Leon the 7th Generation vs someone the Flounce, and I'm wondering which one is Ronnie Pickering?

https://youtu.be/r0dcv6GKNNw?t=56

Carnyx · February 7

SouthamObserver said:
When talking specifically about Brianna, didn't Sunak refer to her as a girl/woman? If so, he was right to do so but how does it sit with what he said previously?

But so did SKS, which makes Mr Sunak's (and Ms Braverman's) words even odder. To put it politely.

kinabalu · February 7

Harper said:

Omnium said:

148grss said:

Omnium said:
Why is Sunak failing?

In principle he should be doing well. He's not a nutter, he took over at a point where everyone wanted him to do well, and he's no fool. Oddly it has to be on the latter point that he's falling short - he is being a fool - at least by Westminster standards. The shiny consensus politician has to get his guns out if he has any hope of being regarded with any respect.

I don't think he will.
He’s failing because the economic consensus cannot deal with the issues that the country is facing; and his attempts at culture war shit aren’t enough to mask that.
I've been reflecting a little on your reply, and I think you're quite right. It doesn't add up, and smoke and mirrors represent no answer.

This is a serious challenge for Labour, and I think it's almost impossible that they can address it. It's just a bigger Liam Byrne note.
Sadly we are in for years of chaos now.

You're doing rather well. Am I right?

Ghedebrav · February 7

AlsoLei said:

noneoftheabove said:
Phantom thread related rather than this one, but Sunak went badly wrong in the first five seconds of his answer well before the controversial bit. Grinning inanely whilst boasting about waiting lists coming down. It is a message that is key but just cannot be delivered with tiggerish enthusiasm and no empathy.

The takeaway for me is not really the controversy but a re-enforcement of my view that Sunak is really really bad at being PM and will get hammered in a campaign. Therefore, sorry Brenda, but we shall have two new PMs this year.
How do we get there from here, though?

In the past, Tory splits were fairly straightforward - wet vs dry, pro-Europe vs sceptic, moderniser vs core values, anti-Brexit vs pro, populism vs managerialism.

But now the party's split at least five or six ways, and the fracture lines run all over the map. Why risk an abbreviated contest that would risk leaving the wrong faction on top after the election? Better to put up with an incompetent-but-biddable Sunak for now, and have a proper deathmatch leadership election next year.

I certainly wouldn't rule out a VONC and subsequent leadership contest, especially if the locals are particularly bad (they may well be). But there are only fruitcakes and loons; half the parliamentary party is retiring (including much of the not-mental wing) and will be eyeing directorships and after-dinner jobs - will they have have the stomach to fight a Braverman coronation, or just think 'fuck it, I'm out, let them burn their own house down'?

Tough times to be a Tory.

Ghedebrav · February 7

MattW said:
I'm having trouble tracking the proposed PB punchups and not-punchups today.

I did spot Doug the Seal vs Leon the 7th Generation vs someone the Flounce, and I'm wondering which one is Ronnie Pickering?

https://youtu.be/r0dcv6GKNNw?t=56

Who?

viewcode · February 7

Ghedebrav said:

MattW said:
I'm having trouble tracking the proposed PB punchups and not-punchups today.

I did spot Doug the Seal vs Leon the 7th Generation vs someone the Flounce, and I'm wondering which one is Ronnie Pickering?

https://youtu.be/r0dcv6GKNNw?t=56
Who?

RONNIE PICKERING

TimS · February 7

Carnyx said:

SouthamObserver said:
When talking specifically about Brianna, didn't Sunak refer to her as a girl/woman? If so, he was right to do so but how does it sit with what he said previously?
But so did SKS, which makes Mr Sunak's (and Ms Braverman's) words even odder. To put it politely.

I’m just catching up on today’s news and do I read correctly that he made a “humorous” jibe about SKS and trans women while the mother of Brianna was in the gallery? Good god, what an idiot

kinabalu · February 7

williamglenn said:

maxh said:

Phil said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

LostPassword said:

148grss said:

DougSeal said:

148grss said:

turbotubbs said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

148grss said:

Taz said:

Scott_xP said:
FFS

@alexwickham

Replying to @alexwickhamPM’s spokesperson doubles down on Sunak’s trans joke in front of Esther Ghey — declines to apologise — defends it as “legitimate”
Yes, it is legitimate but that is no defence. He should really apologise. It was tactless and insensitive. Show some ruddy empathy for once, Sunak, you great twit.
I mean, there is zero difference between you and him right now. It isn't legitimate, it's a transphobic dogwhistle aimed at giving people like you red meat. Just because it makes your political position look like it's only held by heartless ghouls because he happened to say it in front on a dead girl's mother are you any way annoyed he said it.
It is perfectly legitimate and there is a debate to be had.

Yes, I am annoyed at the tactless way in which he said it and his doubling down.

Doesn't mean the issue is not one that needs addressing and the concerns of women listening to.

What's the debate? Do trans people exist, and are they a threat to womanhood? Fuck that debate - they exist, and no they aren't.
No, that is not the debate. That is you, most eloquently too, deciding what the debate is then dismissing it.

Very very few people deny the existence of Trans People. Certainly no one on here irrespective of their position on the debate.
So what is the debate? Spell it out for me. When Rishi Sunak says SKS doesn't know "if a woman is a woman and if a man is a man" what legitimate point in said debate is he making?
Its legitimate to ask questions. If you can accept that some people feel that the body they inhabit is not the same gender that they feel they are, then the idea of 'trans' is born. Fine. But people get worried by the idea that a murderer or rapist with a male body can proclaim that they are actually a trans woman and thus should be incarcerated in a womans prison. Especially if said person still has male genitalia.

So its not trans people under attack. Its the potential for abuse of the idea of being trans.

I also worry about the confusion of the teenage years and whether some adults abuse confused children by trying to convince them that they are trans, when in a few years the child might realise that they were gay. or something else entirely.

Then there is the throwaway line that if you can be transgender, why can you not be transrace? I.e. a black man in a white mans body. Asking for a friend.*

*Ok, its Tim Westwood, but you get the idea.
So let's deal with the last first - there is no scientific, historic or anthropological evidence of a significant number of people sincerely claiming to be transracial. And before we get on to similar false analogies like people with anorexia or people who want to cut off a limb - with those people there is no evidence of a self affirming treatment helping them; with trans people there is.

As to the "confused teen" thing - that's essentially a polite way of saying what people used to say about all gay people - that we're out there trying to recruit kids because we're a brainwashing cult, etc. Teenage years are, indeed, the time when people explore their identity. If children present with gender dysphoria before puberty or during puberty, they may be given hormone blockers. This allows a child to not experience the puberty that is giving them dysphoria and come to understand if they want to transition or go through a cis puberty. Pretty much all of the evidence suggests that most people who do that continue (the one study that has a high rate of "desistance" includes a large number of children who would now not meet the clinical criteria for dysphoria, and the data was also gathered in a really garbage way). Satisfaction with surgeries and hormone treatments are in the high 90% - this is above basically any other medical procedure that people do, including things like abortion (and carrying a baby to full term) as well as knee surgery. That the satisfaction rate is so high is a testament to how much gate keeping is already in place.

The issue of trans people in the criminal system is pretty moot - they are so rare that they are literally dealt with on a case by case basis in this country. If there is a concern about abuse in prisons, which there should be because it is endemic, and women's prisons specifically, where it should be because prison guards assaulting prisoners is pretty common there too, then deal with the environment of abuse. It isn't a trans issue; most abuse in prison is done by cis people to cis people.
So you think that abuse by trans prisoners on other prisoners doesn’t matter? You really are a nasty piece of work aren’t you? Anyone who doesn’t meet your standards of ideological purity can just rot. The problem with your type is you care nothing for humanity only ideology. In the last 48 hours you’ve wished ill on a cancer patient and decided that we should ignore certain types of abuse in prisons. You really have more in common with Faragists than genuine left wing people. You are no socialist.
Did I say ignore abuse, or did I say "deal with all kinds of abuse, especially the kind of abuse that is the overwhelming majority of cases"? It's ya'll who harp on about women's rights and protecting women and so on and such when it comes to trans people and then are crickets for literally everything else that impacts women.
The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students. This is a risk-based assessment, and not a judgement that every individual male is an abuser. Self-IDing as trans should still leave a person in this same, risk-based, group.

That's all it is.
I mean I would argue that if that was true about cis men (and I’m trying to think of what possible situations you’re referring to that cis men are not allowed to do blanket as policy on safeguarding grounds) that would be based on evidence on significant likelihood of harm caused by cis men. So do you have any proof or evidence that transpeople present that same level of risk - or do you just feel they should because you think they’re ikky?
Lots of blanket things applied to men. I'm thinking of, say, residential school trips. And, of course, the divide between people in incarceration.

I was once detained by the MoD plod with three women at an anti-nuclear action, and the police refused to put us all in a cell together, despite the three women not wanting me to be left alone.

The point is that the decision wasn't made because of any assessment of my risk as an individual, but because I was part of a relevant risk group. I think that, in all the ways that matter for safeguarding, someone who self-IDs as trans, but has the biological sex of a man, should still be treated as male for safeguarding purposes.

That isn't a judgement about trans people, any more than the MoD plod decision was a judgement about me, but that the relevant risk group is defined biologically, rather than through self-declaration.

I self-ID as a man who is completely physically harmless, for example, but that doesn't get me a pass on safeguarding rules.
Okay - so wth is this about?

“The approach we take for child safeguarding is to exclude all men from certain tasks, because of the risk posed to female students.”

Is this just in reference to like school trips? Because, again, I would say what does the data say - do trans people present the same risk as the gender they identify with or as the gender they are assigned at birth? Because all the data I’ve seen has said the latter - transwomen are more alike to cis women when it comes to crime stats, both victims of and perpetrators of. Interestingly transmen are also more alike to cis women; as are nonbinary people. Almost as if male criminality isn’t biological but sociological.
What do you make of a case like this?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13050211/Transgender-TikTok-star-sexually-abused-two-kids-South-Australia.html

A TikTok star amassed thousands of followers claiming to be a 'proud trans woman' - but she was really a paedophile using her new identity as a 'mask', her victims have told a court.

Rachel Queen Burton, 44, repeatedly abused two children before stalking their family and driving them to homelessness, the District Court in Adelaide heard.
I take from it that some people, including people who are trans, do crimes. I haven’t claimed no trans people have done crimes - what I want is evidence that they are disproportionately a risk. Using your logic I could point to a white male tiktoker who has done the same and use that as an argument to say all white men are a risk at all times. That would clearly be a stupid argument.
It’s the old “members of the targeted out-group who do <despicable thing> are clearly emblematic of the group as a whole whereas members of my in-group who do <despicable thing> are obviously exceptions who don’t reflect our core values” thing repurposed for the culture war du jour.
This sums it up perfectly in my view.
It's not a question of demonising an out-group but of whether the baseline should be based on biology or ideology. The argument is not that transwomen pose a greater risk than normal biological males, simply that biology cannot be ignored.

Why do we have the Gender Recognition Act iyo?

Andy_JS · February 7

"Why have so many American leftists spent the last nine years dunking on Donald Trump’s supporters instead of seeking to understand them? With Trump likely to become the Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, it’s a question worth asking."

https://quillette.com/2024/02/07/stop-dunking-on-trump-supporters/

Carnyx · February 7

TimS said:

Carnyx said:

SouthamObserver said:
When talking specifically about Brianna, didn't Sunak refer to her as a girl/woman? If so, he was right to do so but how does it sit with what he said previously?
But so did SKS, which makes Mr Sunak's (and Ms Braverman's) words even odder. To put it politely.
I’m just catching up on today’s news and do I read correctly that he made a “humorous” jibe about SKS and trans women while the mother of Brianna was in the gallery? Good god, what an idiot

Some argument as to whether Ms Ghey was in the room, I gather; but, especially as SKS had referred to Ms Ghey's 'daughter' as I understand it, it didn't come out very well at all.

Taz · February 7

TimS said:

Carnyx said:

SouthamObserver said:
When talking specifically about Brianna, didn't Sunak refer to her as a girl/woman? If so, he was right to do so but how does it sit with what he said previously?
But so did SKS, which makes Mr Sunak's (and Ms Braverman's) words even odder. To put it politely.
I’m just catching up on today’s news and do I read correctly that he made a “humorous” jibe about SKS and trans women while the mother of Brianna was in the gallery? Good god, what an idiot

seems to be contradictory views on social media as to whether or not she was there .

Harper · February 7

MattW said:

Harper said:
EU now threatening a travel ban on Tucker Carlson/

https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/1755285352711909595?s=20
Parody account?

Just the name sounds like something out of Private Eye:

"Eva Vlaardingerbroek"

No shes a real Dutch self styled freedom fighter.

kinabalu · February 7

Andy_JS said:
"Why have so many American leftists spent the last nine years dunking on Donald Trump’s supporters instead of seeking to understand them? With Trump likely to become the Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, it’s a question worth asking."

https://quillette.com/2024/02/07/stop-dunking-on-trump-supporters/

I'd pitch them a deal. Drop the Trump crap and then we'll try and understand you.

Harper · February 7

kinabalu said:

Andy_JS said:
"Why have so many American leftists spent the last nine years dunking on Donald Trump’s supporters instead of seeking to understand them? With Trump likely to become the Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, it’s a question worth asking."

https://quillette.com/2024/02/07/stop-dunking-on-trump-supporters/
I'd pitch them a deal. Drop the Trump crap and then we'll try and understand you.

How can they dump Trump when they believe God sent him.

AlsoLei · February 7

Stuartinromford said:

algarkirk said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
Good argument; don't agree. It is in no future leader's interest to inherit the mantle now. All the decent candidates (supposing there were any) will wait it out. They then won't have the baggage of being a failed PM, losing an election etc. The Clark damp squib is sufficient evidence.

algarkirk said:

MoonRabbit said:
Betting Post. I can now see Sunak sacked by his party before the general election - and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen really quick now in the next week or two. The means the tories will use to be rid of him, is leak evidence they are sitting on, of some way he benefitted financially from decisions made by government he was in - government contracts placed he benefitted from.

And the Conservatives will install someone like Barclay or Tugendhat to salvage what they can from the coming General Election.

This will Abandon Sunak’s plan for May 2nd election, and instead hold on for a late Autumn referendum after conference. If Sunak leads Tories into general election, that can only be May 2nd - the least riskiest day this year for Tories to hold it before all the bad news for government starts to dominate the media, not least making utter mess of Sunak’s pledges to measure progress against meaning Sunak cannot go further than May.

There comes a tipping point, a moment of realisation, that such lunacy another swap out sounds, and yes it does come with a credibility hit - that this is now the least worse option than having Sunak not only as focal point of an election campaign, but you are asking the voters to re-elect Rishi Sunak as Primeminister for the next 5 years - that telling voters to elect Barclay or Tugendhat actually guarantees you more votes and MPs in the General Election, than you would get trying to sell Sunak continuing as Primeminister.
Good argument; don't agree. It is in no future leader's interest to inherit the mantle now. All the decent candidates (supposing there were any) will wait it out. They then won't have the baggage of being a failed PM, losing an election etc. The Clark damp squib is sufficient evidence.
True for anyone who thinks they have a future in the Conservative party in 2025.

So... if there is to be a non-Rishi candidate, there are two possible sources.

One is a sort of Michael Howard, thinking "I expect I'll lose, but steadying the ship is a final duty in public life." And who knows? Miracles may happen. See May or Gove nominated by acclamation.

The other is someone high profile who is out if the Conservatives continue down this path, but survives if they can haul themselves back to 200 seats or so. PM 4 PM, Part 3?

Neither of them is likely, and I still expect the battered remains of Rishi Sunak to lead the Conservatives to a really bad defeat, probably in December. But we may be entering "eliminate the impossible and what remains is the truth" territory.

200 seats is beyond any of the likely candidates, I'd have thought. More like 100-120 seats with Sunak vs 140-160 with A. N. Other.

So that means maybe 60-80 current MPs, allowing for some optimism bias, who might hope that a new leader would help them save their seats. How many are needed to trigger a confidence vote?

Ah, 54. So perhaps doable after all.

But at that point, the risks of the wrong leader being chosen militate against - and that would rule out someone like PM.

You'd have to find someone who you could be sure would hold a new leadership contest after the election, and that would rule out Gove - no-one would trust him not to at least load the dice in favour of a preferred successor.

So it would need to be someone:
a) better at both politics and leadership than Sunak,
b) who isn't standing down at the next election,
c) is neither despised nor deeply distrusted by any of the current major factions, and
d) has a strong sense of duty

Therefore: step forward, Theresa May, our next PM?

I think you'd need to be rather brave to take that bet!

williamglenn · February 7

https://x.com/robdothutton/status/1755273660473004385

OnlyLivingBoy · February 7

Andy_JS said:
"Why have so many American leftists spent the last nine years dunking on Donald Trump’s supporters instead of seeking to understand them? With Trump likely to become the Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, it’s a question worth asking."

https://quillette.com/2024/02/07/stop-dunking-on-trump-supporters/

I love how Trump supporters, who are probably the last people on Earth who would seek to "understand" people they disagreed with, are so desperate to be understood themselves.

algarkirk · February 7

Andy_JS said:
"Why have so many American leftists spent the last nine years dunking on Donald Trump’s supporters instead of seeking to understand them? With Trump likely to become the Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, it’s a question worth asking."

https://quillette.com/2024/02/07/stop-dunking-on-trump-supporters/

I'm not a leftist, but share the struggle to want to understand Trump's supporters until a coherent account can be given, by his supporters, of why someone who tries to rig and overturn elections in a democracy should be given political space. There are millions of them and I have not heard one who is not in some sort of denial.

Fairliered · February 7

Ghedebrav said:

AlsoLei said:

noneoftheabove said:
Phantom thread related rather than this one, but Sunak went badly wrong in the first five seconds of his answer well before the controversial bit. Grinning inanely whilst boasting about waiting lists coming down. It is a message that is key but just cannot be delivered with tiggerish enthusiasm and no empathy.

The takeaway for me is not really the controversy but a re-enforcement of my view that Sunak is really really bad at being PM and will get hammered in a campaign. Therefore, sorry Brenda, but we shall have two new PMs this year.
How do we get there from here, though?

In the past, Tory splits were fairly straightforward - wet vs dry, pro-Europe vs sceptic, moderniser vs core values, anti-Brexit vs pro, populism vs managerialism.

But now the party's split at least five or six ways, and the fracture lines run all over the map. Why risk an abbreviated contest that would risk leaving the wrong faction on top after the election? Better to put up with an incompetent-but-biddable Sunak for now, and have a proper deathmatch leadership election next year.
I certainly wouldn't rule out a VONC and subsequent leadership contest, especially if the locals are particularly bad (they may well be). But there are only fruitcakes and loons; half the parliamentary party is retiring (including much of the not-mental wing) and will be eyeing directorships and after-dinner jobs - will they have have the stomach to fight a Braverman coronation, or just think 'fuck it, I'm out, let them burn their own house down'?

Tough times to be a Tory.

The Tories were wanting to appoint Neil Warnock as caretaker manager until the end of the season, but he’s just signed up with Aberdeen, so is unavailable.

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