I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
I have just returned from hospital and seen Greater Manchester police are investigating Rayner over her registration for election purposes
I couldn't understand why it was said they were investigating her CGT liabilities as that is a HMRC matter so at least we now know why the police are involved
I have no idea how this will pan out but at least it should be resolved one way or another
Fantastic work by James Daly! This would be a massive scalp for the Conservatives. There could be a custodial sentence at the end of this rainbow. It's about time, with all the political corruption that has gone on over the last 5 years!
I rather like Angela Rayner. She's a big brassy northern slapper, Bet Lynch without the pints. Parliament needs more of them.
I am not sure any female contributors would approve of "she's a big brassy northern slapper".
What's the weather like today in Jurassic World?
Ah your poor middle class sensitivities. Never work in France you wont survive.
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
Chess has two categories of tournaments, open and women’s. Yes there was an argument last year about trans women entering the women’s events.
IIRC actually most sports have this structure, even where no women compete such as golf and tennis, as well as where they do such as darts, equestrian, motorsport.
But WHY was there an argument about a trans woman entering a woman chess competition? I’m not trying to be silly or ignorant but this is where I start to get lost.
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
Indeed. If Rayner has broken electoral registration law, which has yet to be determined, it wouldn’t pass a threshold for prosecution as far as I can see from reading about the case. This is all just weak sauce.
Rishi Sunak has twice been fined by the police for breaking the law and he didn’t resign. The idea that this is a resigning matter for Rayner… I’m not remotely convinced.
It seems spurious to me. Does your main residence for electoral purposes have to be the same as your main residence for tax purposes?
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
Indeed. If Rayner has broken electoral registration law, which has yet to be determined, it wouldn’t pass a threshold for prosecution as far as I can see from reading about the case. This is all just weak sauce.
Rishi Sunak has twice been fined by the police for breaking the law and he didn’t resign. The idea that this is a resigning matter for Rayner… I’m not remotely convinced.
It seems spurious to me. Does your main residence for electoral purposes have to be the same as your main residence for tax purposes?
One thinks of those candidates who suddenly have a house in the constituency but abandon it after the election.
One thing I find disturbing about the gender debate is those who say that "gender is a societal construct" as a positive for then saying anyone can be the female gender if they please.
Gender if it is real, is a real thing, not a construct.
What is a construct is gender stereotypes and stereotypes are a bad thing we're supposed to be moving past, not reinforcing.
To suggest a man who meets a female stereotype is a woman (or vice-versa) is discriminatory and demeaning to all concerned.
If by gender you mean stereotypes, then we should say gender does not exist, only harmful stereotypes do and its time to move past them, not enforce them.
There are quite a number of people here that think gender is a construct as you say and doesn't really exist. We had one of those posts just earlier today.
Can we scientifically prove gender exists?
Horse, just because something is a construct doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
No but we have had people here say gender doesn’t exist. It’s a legitimate debate.
Regardless of who benefits or loses electorally from these rules, they are a crime against democracy that risk creating a deep well of anger among disenfranchised voters, further poisoning our politics and suppressing participation in the democratic process. The Tories should rot in hell for it.
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I do not trust them to decide what my human rights should be. A party that deliberately seeks to restrict the right to vote is not one that should ever have control over something so fundamental.
Most other countries require identification to vote. It is entirely reasonable.
The anger is confected by the left because they believe that they benefit from the current set up.
The countries that require identification to vote also have ID cards - name me one country that insists of ID for voting that doesn't have an ID card...
You are conflating two entirely separate things.
Protecting the integrity of the ballot is important. It is certainly more convenient if you have a national ID card, but not having one doesn’t undermine the importance of doing so
Except, as explained in my post earlier, we don't need to because it is a law that is very rarely broken and on the rare occasion it is it has no impact because it is pretty much impossible to vote much more than once and to do so is very silly because you stand a very very high chance of getting caught and going to prison because of the difficulty of doing so and getting away with it. Yet it disenfranchises many many many more people to enforce an id.
On the same logic you might as well post a policeman outside every house to prevent burglary. We don't because it is out of proportion to the crime.
Whereas postal vote fraud is exceptionally easy, much more difficult to spot and can be done with large numbers so impacting the result.
I have been in this election game a long time. I have only ever come across someone pretending to be someone else in a polling station once and they got caught. It is obvious if it happens because people complain they have lost their vote. When that happens it is invariably because an adjacent line on the register has been crossed through in the polling station.
Postal voting fraud however is endemic. It would also be useful for the parties. I am aware of it happening for the 3 main parties and usually it has been done without the party organisation being aware but organised by the candidate.
Indeed. I cannot believe people are still defending this madness.
It's a means to voter suppression, pure and simple. Let's just be clear about that and call it what it is.
So the Electoral Commission wants to suppress voting? Really?
Depends a bit on what question they were asked.
Does having an ID requirement provide reassurance that personation isn't happening? Sure.
Is that the biggest issue? Almost certainly not. See postal voting.
Does the version of Voter ID the government have implemented make election outcomes more or less reliable? I don't think anyone has checked, but I suspect the harm of differential difficulty of voting is worse than the problem of fake in-person votes.
As always, the art is in asking the correct question. Get that right, and you can get whatever answer you want.
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
Chess has two categories of tournaments, open and women’s. Yes there was an argument last year about trans women entering the women’s events.
IIRC actually most sports have this structure, even where no women compete such as golf and tennis, as well as where they do such as darts, equestrian, motorsport.
But WHY was there an argument about a trans woman entering a woman chess competition? I’m not trying to be silly or ignorant but this is where I start to get lost.
A cross dressing man has been winning some womens darts competitions too.
I have just returned from hospital and seen Greater Manchester police are investigating Rayner over her registration for election purposes
I couldn't understand why it was said they were investigating her CGT liabilities as that is a HMRC matter so at least we now know why the police are involved
I have no idea how this will pan out but at least it should be resolved one way or another
Fantastic work by James Daly! This would be a massive scalp for the Conservatives. There could be a custodial sentence at the end of this rainbow. It's about time, with all the political corruption that has gone on over the last 5 years!
Broken, sleazy Labour on the slide!
Imagine what Labour’s polling lead would be like if it wasn’t being dragged down by the Rayner story?
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
Then where should trans people go?
The open category, same as any other sport.
Women can play in the open category, they're not barred.
I remember playing chess for my primary school in tournaments against both boys and girls.
(I wasn't that great, though - best haul was 3/6 victories!)
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
Indeed. If Rayner has broken electoral registration law, which has yet to be determined, it wouldn’t pass a threshold for prosecution as far as I can see from reading about the case. This is all just weak sauce.
Rishi Sunak has twice been fined by the police for breaking the law and he didn’t resign. The idea that this is a resigning matter for Rayner… I’m not remotely convinced.
It seems spurious to me. Does your main residence for electoral purposes have to be the same as your main residence for tax purposes?
So we've given up on tax avoidance and now moved onto something else.
Greater Manchester police's investigation is separate and it will look into whether she registered the wrong property on the electoral roll.
Also, not a great look for a politician if they have broken electoral law.
Correct. But anyone can trigger a police investigation against anyone else, so it means precisely nothing. I was investigated for joking about what an Al Quaeda-run BBC schedule would look like ("Xena Warrior Housewife"...) - a mischievous right-wing group alleged this was racist incitement (because Al Quaeda is foreign, innit), and it took two years for the police to get around to looking at it and deciding there was no case. During that time, the group was able to say I was "under police investigation". It's a tired old trick, and the correct response is to respond politely to the police and otherwise ignore it - don't give it oxygen.
I probably shouldn't chuckle at that joke, Nick, but I did.
This reminds me of Jeremy Vine's April fool last week.
He runs a 360 camera on his cycle helmet, and winds up the twitter !"$%^s who think it's a drone.
He did a vid on April 1st pretending his drone had been attacked by a bird of prey, and he was (allegedly) reported to both the Met and the RSPCA.
The Rayner kerfuffle is good news for Labour. The Tories have a real problem with the "red queen". Northern, woman, intelligent, authentic. Everything they hate. So they are focusing all their fire on her over utter trivia, which provides the political cover to go back over all of their non-trivial corruption. Which is all over social media at the moment.
So the Heil, GBeebies et al attack Rayner to the approval of the remaining 14 Tory voters whilst Facebook and TwiX churns out loads of Tory corruption stuff because what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.
"the Heil, GBeebies"
No offence RP, but do you actually think statements like that are going to look good for you if you get elected.? I think it will bite you in the arse which would be a shame.
Its parody. The right wing media is self-parody. The Mail supported the Nazis - historical fact - and promote all kinds of guff today. GB News is not news - and now has OFCOM on their case because Tory politician interviewing Tory politician giving unfiltered Tory propaganda is not news.
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
One thing I find disturbing about the gender debate is those who say that "gender is a societal construct" as a positive for then saying anyone can be the female gender if they please.
Gender if it is real, is a real thing, not a construct.
What is a construct is gender stereotypes and stereotypes are a bad thing we're supposed to be moving past, not reinforcing.
To suggest a man who meets a female stereotype is a woman (or vice-versa) is discriminatory and demeaning to all concerned.
If by gender you mean stereotypes, then we should say gender does not exist, only harmful stereotypes do and its time to move past them, not enforce them.
There are quite a number of people here that think gender is a construct as you say and doesn't really exist. We had one of those posts just earlier today.
Can we scientifically prove gender exists?
Hold on, just because something is a construct doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Ethnicity is a construct. Religion is a construct.
And anyone engaging in racial, religious, or ethnic stereotyping is a dinosaur who should be called out.
So why is anyone positively endorsing gender stereotyping?
I have just returned from hospital and seen Greater Manchester police are investigating Rayner over her registration for election purposes
I couldn't understand why it was said they were investigating her CGT liabilities as that is a HMRC matter so at least we now know why the police are involved
I have no idea how this will pan out but at least it should be resolved one way or another
Fantastic work by James Daly! This would be a massive scalp for the Conservatives. There could be a custodial sentence at the end of this rainbow. It's about time, with all the political corruption that has gone on over the last 5 years!
I rather like Angela Rayner. She's a big brassy northern slapper, Bet Lynch without the pints. Parliament needs more of them.
I am not sure any female contributors would approve of "she's a big brassy northern slapper".
What's the weather like today in Jurassic World?
Ah your poor middle class sensitivities. Never work in France you wont survive.
You're assuming that those politer than you are wimps.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
Its a perfectly respectable position.
Rowling, Stock, Cyclefree etc are real women, they were born women, they are women.
A man who transitions to "become" a woman may be a transwoman but they're not a real woman. They'll never be.
That's not dehumanising. They're a real human. For all intents and purposes, unless it violates safeguarding, they can be treated as women, but the distinction still needs to exist.
Competitive female sport for example should belong to real women. A transwoman should never be entitled to play in
Your four-category schema (cis woman, cis man, trans woman, trans man) is coherent. It just doesn't fit into the British two-category schema (woman, man). Trying to crowbar the one into the other is the cause of many of the problems.
(It occurs to me that this could be solved by a lookup table. Which is probably not the conclusion you were expecting )
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
Mel Stride could leave a legacy, beyond merely having been a ministerial Buggins, were he to sort out the blatant injustice of the manner in which his department treats those who make inadvertent mistakes (involving often trivial sums of money) when claiming carers' allowance.
As this story illustrates, this draconian and unjust policy likely doesn't even save the government money.
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
Chess has two categories of tournaments, open and women’s. Yes there was an argument last year about trans women entering the women’s events.
IIRC actually most sports have this structure, even where no women compete such as golf and tennis, as well as where they do such as darts, equestrian, motorsport.
But WHY was there an argument about a trans woman entering a woman chess competition? I’m not trying to be silly or ignorant but this is where I start to get lost.
A cross dressing man has been winning some womens darts competitions too.
The way you seem to trivialise things makes me think “you’re losing me”.
If somebody has had surgery as an adult and they are now identifying as a woman, are you saying they have to go in the male/open competition for chess? Really?
I have just returned from hospital and seen Greater Manchester police are investigating Rayner over her registration for election purposes
I couldn't understand why it was said they were investigating her CGT liabilities as that is a HMRC matter so at least we now know why the police are involved
I have no idea how this will pan out but at least it should be resolved one way or another
Fantastic work by James Daly! This would be a massive scalp for the Conservatives. There could be a custodial sentence at the end of this rainbow. It's about time, with all the political corruption that has gone on over the last 5 years!
Broken, sleazy Labour on the slide!
There is a magnificent irony if Rayner ends up in Holloway whilst Johnson's PPE friends can enjoy their ill gotten gains.
One thing I find disturbing about the gender debate is those who say that "gender is a societal construct" as a positive for then saying anyone can be the female gender if they please.
Gender if it is real, is a real thing, not a construct.
What is a construct is gender stereotypes and stereotypes are a bad thing we're supposed to be moving past, not reinforcing.
To suggest a man who meets a female stereotype is a woman (or vice-versa) is discriminatory and demeaning to all concerned.
If by gender you mean stereotypes, then we should say gender does not exist, only harmful stereotypes do and its time to move past them, not enforce them.
There are quite a number of people here that think gender is a construct as you say and doesn't really exist. We had one of those posts just earlier today.
Can we scientifically prove gender exists?
Hold on, just because something is a construct doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Ethnicity is a construct. Religion is a construct.
And anyone engaging in racial, religious, or ethnic stereotyping is a dinosaur who should be called out.
So why is anyone positively endorsing gender stereotyping?
I’m not endorsing gender stereotyping and agree in part with the point you were making. However, I was noting that really existing and being a construct are not antonyms.
I also note that we make laws around religion and ethnicity, notably anti-discrimination laws, so something that is constructed can clearly have a legal reality to it.
The Rayner kerfuffle is good news for Labour. The Tories have a real problem with the "red queen". Northern, woman, intelligent, authentic. Everything they hate. So they are focusing all their fire on her over utter trivia, which provides the political cover to go back over all of their non-trivial corruption. Which is all over social media at the moment.
So the Heil, GBeebies et al attack Rayner to the approval of the remaining 14 Tory voters whilst Facebook and TwiX churns out loads of Tory corruption stuff because what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.
"the Heil, GBeebies"
No offence RP, but do you actually think statements like that are going to look good for you if you get elected.? I think it will bite you in the arse which would be a shame.
Its parody. The right wing media is self-parody. The Mail supported the Nazis - historical fact - and promote all kinds of guff today. GB News is not news - and now has OFCOM on their case because Tory politician interviewing Tory politician giving unfiltered Tory propaganda is not news.
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
Regardless of who benefits or loses electorally from these rules, they are a crime against democracy that risk creating a deep well of anger among disenfranchised voters, further poisoning our politics and suppressing participation in the democratic process. The Tories should rot in hell for it.
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I do not trust them to decide what my human rights should be. A party that deliberately seeks to restrict the right to vote is not one that should ever have control over something so fundamental.
Most other countries require identification to vote. It is entirely reasonable.
The anger is confected by the left because they believe that they benefit from the current set up.
The countries that require identification to vote also have ID cards - name me one country that insists of ID for voting that doesn't have an ID card...
You are conflating two entirely separate things.
Protecting the integrity of the ballot is important. It is certainly more convenient if you have a national ID card, but not having one doesn’t undermine the importance of doing so
Except, as explained in my post earlier, we don't need to because it is a law that is very rarely broken and on the rare occasion it is it has no impact because it is pretty much impossible to vote much more than once and to do so is very silly because you stand a very very high chance of getting caught and going to prison because of the difficulty of doing so and getting away with it. Yet it disenfranchises many many many more people to enforce an id.
On the same logic you might as well post a policeman outside every house to prevent burglary. We don't because it is out of proportion to the crime.
Whereas postal vote fraud is exceptionally easy, much more difficult to spot and can be done with large numbers so impacting the result.
I have been in this election game a long time. I have only ever come across someone pretending to be someone else in a polling station once and they got caught. It is obvious if it happens because people complain they have lost their vote. When that happens it is invariably because an adjacent line on the register has been crossed through in the polling station.
Postal voting fraud however is endemic. It would also be useful for the parties. I am aware of it happening for the 3 main parties and usually it has been done without the party organisation being aware but organised by the candidate.
Indeed. I cannot believe people are still defending this madness.
It's a means to voter suppression, pure and simple. Let's just be clear about that and call it what it is.
So the Electoral Commission wants to suppress voting? Really?
Indeed. I’m not a far of hyperbolic political language in general, but describing things such as individual voter registration and ID card requirements as voter suppression or gerrymandering is totally disengenuous.
The suggestions both came from the Electoral Commission, as a result of a number of court cases, with one judge famously declaring that the election of Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets was like “Something out of a banana republic”.
I am, unusually on this board, a fan of Jacob Rees-Mogg, but think that he spoke out of turn on this subject.
I do also agree that over-extended postal voting is now the larger issue to tackle, and that it’s not being tackled because it’s not in the interests of the politicians to tackle it. The Conservatives have ignored the issue when in power, and Labour will likely ignore it when in power as well. It’ll probably need more court cases and more suggestions from the EC, that ends up with one party or another committing to it in their manifesto.
The Rayner kerfuffle is good news for Labour. The Tories have a real problem with the "red queen". Northern, woman, intelligent, authentic. Everything they hate. So they are focusing all their fire on her over utter trivia, which provides the political cover to go back over all of their non-trivial corruption. Which is all over social media at the moment.
So the Heil, GBeebies et al attack Rayner to the approval of the remaining 14 Tory voters whilst Facebook and TwiX churns out loads of Tory corruption stuff because what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.
"the Heil, GBeebies"
No offence RP, but do you actually think statements like that are going to look good for you if you get elected.? I think it will bite you in the arse which would be a shame.
Its parody. The right wing media is self-parody. The Mail supported the Nazis - historical fact - and promote all kinds of guff today. GB News is not news - and now has OFCOM on their case because Tory politician interviewing Tory politician giving unfiltered Tory propaganda is not news.
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
I have no idea how GBNews gets away with it but then it seems LBC and David Lammy are being investigated by Ofcom
The Rayner kerfuffle is good news for Labour. The Tories have a real problem with the "red queen". Northern, woman, intelligent, authentic. Everything they hate. So they are focusing all their fire on her over utter trivia, which provides the political cover to go back over all of their non-trivial corruption. Which is all over social media at the moment.
So the Heil, GBeebies et al attack Rayner to the approval of the remaining 14 Tory voters whilst Facebook and TwiX churns out loads of Tory corruption stuff because what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.
"the Heil, GBeebies"
No offence RP, but do you actually think statements like that are going to look good for you if you get elected.? I think it will bite you in the arse which would be a shame.
Its parody. The right wing media is self-parody. The Mail supported the Nazis - historical fact - and promote all kinds of guff today. GB News is not news - and now has OFCOM on their case because Tory politician interviewing Tory politician giving unfiltered Tory propaganda is not news.
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
PB has the luxury of
Nick P Labour - retired Aaron Bell Conservative - sitting Rochdale LibDem - prospective.
I never saw Nick or Aaron drift in to "parody". Im afraid if youre aiming for a serious job you need to act the part. Unless of course BoJo is your role model.
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
Then where should trans people go?
The open category, same as any other sport.
Women can play in the open category, they're not barred.
What do you mean by "open"? There is no open category in chess, it's men and women.
Women can play in the "men's" chess tournaments (see: Queen's Gambit) as the Hungarian Judit Pulgar has done since she was 14.
If you're arguing there should be no women's chess tournaments, then say so, but if there is a reason to have women's tournaments then leave them be.
I can’t see how sex based competitions in chess can make any difference.
So what you are saying is that men’s category should be renamed open. That’s pretty much what I think too.
That's how it is. There is no men's category in chess, all tournaments ex specific female ones are open to all but there are specific female tournaments.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
Its a perfectly respectable position.
Rowling, Stock, Cyclefree etc are real women, they were born women, they are women.
A man who transitions to "become" a woman may be a transwoman but they're not a real woman. They'll never be.
That's not dehumanising. They're a real human. For all intents and purposes, unless it violates safeguarding, they can be treated as women, but the distinction still needs to exist.
Competitive female sport for example should belong to real women. A transwoman should never be entitled to play in
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
If you don't believe in gender it surely follows that you don't believe that changing it, surgery or not, seld-id or not, is valid or meaningful. But we have provided, with the GRA, a route for a person to do this and for it to be legally recognised. How to square that?
There's a bit of sleight of hand at play.
First people insist that gender and sex are two completely different concepts, and so, of course, one can change your gender because gender is a social construct and has nothing to do with sex.
But, then, these same people, then conflate gender with sex and insist that a change of gender must be treated exactly as a change in sex, with all that entails in terms of prisons, sex-based safeguarding and equality law, etc.
So which is it? Are gender and sex two different things, and a person can have a legally-recognised gender that is different to their sex, and it is legitimate to settle some things in society on the basis of sex rather than gender? Or are the two different words for the same thing, and if someone has changed their gender they must be treated as having changed their sex, in all ways?
(a pedant writes: people who have a gender recognition certificate are allowed to change the sex on their birth certificate. So legally a person in the UK who has a GRC recognising their change of gender can also change their sex. I think this is where the concept of "legal sex" comes from)
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
Glad to hear you are taking all of this excitement with calm!
What truly bemuses me about Raynergate is that the Tories don't understand that the deeper they probe the worse they look.
Polls show that most voters see politics - and specifically the Tory party / government - as corrupt. Endless scandals over very large amounts of money. Peerages and gongs openly being sold. PPE money accidentally deposited in Tory pockets. So from this position of propriety they have decided to go into bat over £1,500 of alleged CGT which HMRC have already said isn't due. Which reopens the floodgates of people on social media highlighting the real (Tory) scandals.
I genuinely don't get it. People in glass houses are told not to throw stones. And yet here are the Tories being showered with glass whilst people encourage them to throw more stones.
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
Chess has two categories of tournaments, open and women’s. Yes there was an argument last year about trans women entering the women’s events.
IIRC actually most sports have this structure, even where no women compete such as golf and tennis, as well as where they do such as darts, equestrian, motorsport.
But WHY was there an argument about a trans woman entering a woman chess competition? I’m not trying to be silly or ignorant but this is where I start to get lost.
A cross dressing man has been winning some womens darts competitions too.
The way you seem to trivialise things makes me think “you’re losing me”.
If somebody has had surgery as an adult and they are now identifying as a woman, are you saying they have to go in the male/open competition for chess? Really?
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
Chess has two categories of tournaments, open and women’s. Yes there was an argument last year about trans women entering the women’s events.
IIRC actually most sports have this structure, even where no women compete such as golf and tennis, as well as where they do such as darts, equestrian, motorsport.
But WHY was there an argument about a trans woman entering a woman chess competition? I’m not trying to be silly or ignorant but this is where I start to get lost.
A cross dressing man has been winning some womens darts competitions too.
The way you seem to trivialise things makes me think “you’re losing me”.
If somebody has had surgery as an adult and they are now identifying as a woman, are you saying they have to go in the male/open competition for chess? Really?
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
Glad to hear you are taking all of this excitement with calm!
What truly bemuses me about Raynergate is that the Tories don't understand that the deeper they probe the worse they look.
Polls show that most voters see politics - and specifically the Tory party / government - as corrupt. Endless scandals over very large amounts of money. Peerages and gongs openly being sold. PPE money accidentally deposited in Tory pockets. So from this position of propriety they have decided to go into bat over £1,500 of alleged CGT which HMRC have already said isn't due. Which reopens the floodgates of people on social media highlighting the real (Tory) scandals.
I genuinely don't get it. People in glass houses are told not to throw stones. And yet here are the Tories being showered with glass whilst people encourage them to throw more stones.
You may be right and it is a non story, but turn it round and Labour would be having a field day
Regardless of who benefits or loses electorally from these rules, they are a crime against democracy that risk creating a deep well of anger among disenfranchised voters, further poisoning our politics and suppressing participation in the democratic process. The Tories should rot in hell for it.
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I do not trust them to decide what my human rights should be. A party that deliberately seeks to restrict the right to vote is not one that should ever have control over something so fundamental.
Most other countries require identification to vote. It is entirely reasonable.
The anger is confected by the left because they believe that they benefit from the current set up.
The countries that require identification to vote also have ID cards - name me one country that insists of ID for voting that doesn't have an ID card...
You are conflating two entirely separate things.
Protecting the integrity of the ballot is important. It is certainly more convenient if you have a national ID card, but not having one doesn’t undermine the importance of doing so
Except, as explained in my post earlier, we don't need to because it is a law that is very rarely broken and on the rare occasion it is it has no impact because it is pretty much impossible to vote much more than once and to do so is very silly because you stand a very very high chance of getting caught and going to prison because of the difficulty of doing so and getting away with it. Yet it disenfranchises many many many more people to enforce an id.
On the same logic you might as well post a policeman outside every house to prevent burglary. We don't because it is out of proportion to the crime.
Whereas postal vote fraud is exceptionally easy, much more difficult to spot and can be done with large numbers so impacting the result.
I have been in this election game a long time. I have only ever come across someone pretending to be someone else in a polling station once and they got caught. It is obvious if it happens because people complain they have lost their vote. When that happens it is invariably because an adjacent line on the register has been crossed through in the polling station.
Postal voting fraud however is endemic. It would also be useful for the parties. I am aware of it happening for the 3 main parties and usually it has been done without the party organisation being aware but organised by the candidate.
Integrity of the ballot is about being seen to be protected
That’s why the electoral commission recommended the introduction of voter ID
The reality has always been in person voting has been robust and resilient. Postal voting not so much, and that has remained unhindered.
Democracy is far more compromised if 50,000 to 70,000 are deprived of a rightful vote on the gerrymandered whim of an incumbent party than a couple of dodgy voters over a decade of elections. 50,000 to 70,000 votes in an FPTP system could mean the difference between a Conservative wipeout and a Conservative Government.
I guess the Electoral Commission didn’t need to do an extensive study and report then before drawing their conclusions?
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
Its a perfectly respectable position.
Rowling, Stock, Cyclefree etc are real women, they were born women, they are women.
A man who transitions to "become" a woman may be a transwoman but they're not a real woman. They'll never be.
That's not dehumanising. They're a real human. For all intents and purposes, unless it violates safeguarding, they can be treated as women, but the distinction still needs to exist.
Competitive female sport for example should belong to real women. A transwoman should never be entitled to play in
Your four-category schema (cis woman, cis man, trans woman, trans man) is coherent. It just doesn't fit into the British two-category schema (woman, man). Trying to crowbar the one into the other is the cause of many of the problems.
(It occurs to me that this could be solved by a lookup table. Which is probably not the conclusion you were expecting )
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
I don't believe they were allowed to vote in the EU Referendum.
The problem here is the Conservatives are gaming the voting system. Not only can Conservative expats vote, the party can chose an appropriate marginal for them. In reality they are supposed to use a linked constituency.
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
It is indeed a tough world where the standards have become so extreme you can't just randomly send out a few dick pics and allow yourself to get blackmailed into trying to set up your colleagues without Labour having a go.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
Why can members of the Commonwealth vote but EU citizens cannot? What exactly is the difference?
No disrespect to you but you've chosen to leave so in my view you've given up the right to vote.
Your line of thinking in terms of expat voting is far more consistent with the idea that anyone living here, former citizen or otherwise should be able to vote. So I'd accept that if EU citizens living here could also vote.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Then why should EU citizens living here get to vote?
Shouldn't your logic be that all foreigners living here get to vote?
Why should we treat someone from France different to someone from Japan? If they live here, they live here surely?
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Specific women's championship, U20 and so on also exist.
I don't see anything wrong with how its currently setup.
Indeed. There’s a lady grandmaster Judit Polgar, who famously never entered the women’s events. Her rating would have made her #1 woman for a couple of decades, but she figured there was no point in winning all the time and not improving her game.
Oh, and they’re currently playing the world championship qualifying tournaments at the moment, both for open and women’s categories. Known as “The Candidates”, the winners get to challenge the current champions.
The Rayner kerfuffle is good news for Labour. The Tories have a real problem with the "red queen". Northern, woman, intelligent, authentic. Everything they hate. So they are focusing all their fire on her over utter trivia, which provides the political cover to go back over all of their non-trivial corruption. Which is all over social media at the moment.
So the Heil, GBeebies et al attack Rayner to the approval of the remaining 14 Tory voters whilst Facebook and TwiX churns out loads of Tory corruption stuff because what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.
"the Heil, GBeebies"
No offence RP, but do you actually think statements like that are going to look good for you if you get elected.? I think it will bite you in the arse which would be a shame.
Its parody. The right wing media is self-parody. The Mail supported the Nazis - historical fact - and promote all kinds of guff today. GB News is not news - and now has OFCOM on their case because Tory politician interviewing Tory politician giving unfiltered Tory propaganda is not news.
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
Why can members of the Commonwealth vote but EU citizens cannot? What exactly is the difference?
No disrespect to you but you've chosen to leave so in my view you've given up the right to vote.
Your line of thinking in terms of expat voting is far more consistent with the idea that anyone living here, former citizen or otherwise should be able to vote. So I'd accept that if EU citizens living here could also vote.
Because of the legacy of considering all Commonwealth nations as our subjects.
Maybe that legacy should be ended, but why would you introduce more discrimination?
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Then why should EU citizens living here get to vote?
Shouldn't your logic be that all foreigners living here get to vote?
Why should we treat someone from France different to someone from Japan? If they live here, they live here surely?
Correct, all foreigners living here should get a vote, I'd say if you've lived here for over some period of time, say two years, you can vote.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
Why can members of the Commonwealth vote but EU citizens cannot? What exactly is the difference?
No disrespect to you but you've chosen to leave so in my view you've given up the right to vote.
Your line of thinking in terms of expat voting is far more consistent with the idea that anyone living here, former citizen or otherwise should be able to vote. So I'd accept that if EU citizens living here could also vote.
Because of the legacy of considering all Commonwealth nations as our subjects.
Maybe that legacy should be ended, but why would you introduce more discrimination?
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
Although residence is sometimes used for local elections. My French/Norwegian friend has a vote in the mayoral election. He's thinking about going for Susan Hall.
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
Glad to hear you are taking all of this excitement with calm!
What truly bemuses me about Raynergate is that the Tories don't understand that the deeper they probe the worse they look.
Polls show that most voters see politics - and specifically the Tory party / government - as corrupt. Endless scandals over very large amounts of money. Peerages and gongs openly being sold. PPE money accidentally deposited in Tory pockets. So from this position of propriety they have decided to go into bat over £1,500 of alleged CGT which HMRC have already said isn't due. Which reopens the floodgates of people on social media highlighting the real (Tory) scandals.
I genuinely don't get it. People in glass houses are told not to throw stones. And yet here are the Tories being showered with glass whilst people encourage them to throw more stones.
I can see the theory- if Party X is up to their necks in sleaze, their only hope is to say that everyone else is just as bad. That's both electorally and in terms of internal peace of mind. It might not work, but it is their only hope.
It doesn't help that the "under investigation" currency is so devalued. It's so easy to make and publicise complaints that are, at best, one step up from vexatious. And Ofcom, the police or whoever can't just say "that's a silly nothing." They have to investigate, and they have to say so.
"Let the one without sin cast the first stone" is an excellent principle for life, but not practical politics. It's also a neat thing to reflect on- how can you invoke the idea without it boomeranging it onto yourself?
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
Glad to hear you are taking all of this excitement with calm!
What truly bemuses me about Raynergate is that the Tories don't understand that the deeper they probe the worse they look.
Polls show that most voters see politics - and specifically the Tory party / government - as corrupt. Endless scandals over very large amounts of money. Peerages and gongs openly being sold. PPE money accidentally deposited in Tory pockets. So from this position of propriety they have decided to go into bat over £1,500 of alleged CGT which HMRC have already said isn't due. Which reopens the floodgates of people on social media highlighting the real (Tory) scandals.
I genuinely don't get it. People in glass houses are told not to throw stones. And yet here are the Tories being showered with glass whilst people encourage them to throw more stones.
You may be right and it is a non story, but turn it round and Labour would be having a field day
It is called politics
They wouldn't even bother, with all the far, far more substantial Tory targets.
But I forget, Ms Rayner is seen as a proletarian who didn't go to Oxford, so they think she's getting uppity.
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
I was going to comment, the Tory who got the Police to re-investigate SKS should have been fined for wasting Police time.
That was Ric Holden, who is quite a piece of work. But it took the heat off Boris-Rishi cake gate. It got Big G very excited too!
Nothing gets me excited - indeed I need to look after my pacemaker
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
Glad to hear you are taking all of this excitement with calm!
What truly bemuses me about Raynergate is that the Tories don't understand that the deeper they probe the worse they look.
Polls show that most voters see politics - and specifically the Tory party / government - as corrupt. Endless scandals over very large amounts of money. Peerages and gongs openly being sold. PPE money accidentally deposited in Tory pockets. So from this position of propriety they have decided to go into bat over £1,500 of alleged CGT which HMRC have already said isn't due. Which reopens the floodgates of people on social media highlighting the real (Tory) scandals.
I genuinely don't get it. People in glass houses are told not to throw stones. And yet here are the Tories being showered with glass whilst people encourage them to throw more stones.
Which reminds me, isn't it about time we heard an update on Baroness Mone and her husband? (Absolute peanuts compared to Ange's appalling treatment of the British taxpayer, of course).
Boris Johnson lied and lied and lied for decades, he got away with it for ages. If Rayner has lied, I am sure the Tory press will give her the same treatment. Right? Right?
(If she has lied/broken the law, she should resign, obviously.)
Boris Johnson lied and lied and lied for decades, he got away with it for ages. If Rayner has lied, I am sure the Tory press will give her the same treatment. Right? Right?
(If she has lied/broken the law, she should resign, obviously.)
Not sure what point you're trying to make. Boris got fired time and time again.
We knew that, when we voted for him, as even a repeatedly-fired liar was a better candidate in 2019 than Jeremy Corbyn.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
Although residence is sometimes used for local elections. My French/Norwegian friend has a vote in the mayoral election. He's thinking about going for Susan Hall.
Yes, local elections often have wider residence criteria.
IIRC there are a number of reciprocal agreements in place between countries with regard to enfranchisement of foreign citizen residents, this is the case with RoI and certain Commonweath countries for national elections, for the obvious historic reasons, and was the case with the EU for local elections when the UK were members.
Boris Johnson lied and lied and lied for decades, he got away with it for ages. If Rayner has lied, I am sure the Tory press will give her the same treatment. Right? Right?
(If she has lied/broken the law, she should resign, obviously.)
Not sure what point you're trying to make. Boris got fired time and time again.
We knew that, when we voted for him, as even a repeatedly-fired liar was a better candidate in 2019 than Jeremy Corbyn.
I think both candidates were as terrible as each other - but for different reasons.
Regardless of who benefits or loses electorally from these rules, they are a crime against democracy that risk creating a deep well of anger among disenfranchised voters, further poisoning our politics and suppressing participation in the democratic process. The Tories should rot in hell for it.
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I do not trust them to decide what my human rights should be. A party that deliberately seeks to restrict the right to vote is not one that should ever have control over something so fundamental.
Most other countries require identification to vote. It is entirely reasonable.
The anger is confected by the left because they believe that they benefit from the current set up.
The countries that require identification to vote also have ID cards - name me one country that insists of ID for voting that doesn't have an ID card...
You are conflating two entirely separate things.
Protecting the integrity of the ballot is important. It is certainly more convenient if you have a national ID card, but not having one doesn’t undermine the importance of doing so
Except, as explained in my post earlier, we don't need to because it is a law that is very rarely broken and on the rare occasion it is it has no impact because it is pretty much impossible to vote much more than once and to do so is very silly because you stand a very very high chance of getting caught and going to prison because of the difficulty of doing so and getting away with it. Yet it disenfranchises many many many more people to enforce an id.
On the same logic you might as well post a policeman outside every house to prevent burglary. We don't because it is out of proportion to the crime.
Whereas postal vote fraud is exceptionally easy, much more difficult to spot and can be done with large numbers so impacting the result.
I have been in this election game a long time. I have only ever come across someone pretending to be someone else in a polling station once and they got caught. It is obvious if it happens because people complain they have lost their vote. When that happens it is invariably because an adjacent line on the register has been crossed through in the polling station.
Postal voting fraud however is endemic. It would also be useful for the parties. I am aware of it happening for the 3 main parties and usually it has been done without the party organisation being aware but organised by the candidate.
Integrity of the ballot is about being seen to be protected
That’s why the electoral commission recommended the introduction of voter ID
The reality has always been in person voting has been robust and resilient. Postal voting not so much, and that has remained unhindered.
Democracy is far more compromised if 50,000 to 70,000 are deprived of a rightful vote on the gerrymandered whim of an incumbent party than a couple of dodgy voters over a decade of elections. 50,000 to 70,000 votes in an FPTP system could mean the difference between a Conservative wipeout and a Conservative Government.
I guess the Electoral Commission didn’t need to do an extensive study and report then before drawing their conclusions?
We should just rely on your assertions
Don't rely on my assertions. What about your mate JRM?
Boris Johnson lied and lied and lied for decades, he got away with it for ages. If Rayner has lied, I am sure the Tory press will give her the same treatment. Right? Right?
(If she has lied/broken the law, she should resign, obviously.)
Boris Johnson lied and lied and lied for decades, he got away with it for ages. If Rayner has lied, I am sure the Tory press will give her the same treatment. Right? Right?
(If she has lied/broken the law, she should resign, obviously.)
The Rayner kerfuffle is good news for Labour. The Tories have a real problem with the "red queen". Northern, woman, intelligent, authentic. Everything they hate. So they are focusing all their fire on her over utter trivia, which provides the political cover to go back over all of their non-trivial corruption. Which is all over social media at the moment.
So the Heil, GBeebies et al attack Rayner to the approval of the remaining 14 Tory voters whilst Facebook and TwiX churns out loads of Tory corruption stuff because what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.
"the Heil, GBeebies"
No offence RP, but do you actually think statements like that are going to look good for you if you get elected.? I think it will bite you in the arse which would be a shame.
Its parody. The right wing media is self-parody. The Mail supported the Nazis - historical fact - and promote all kinds of guff today. GB News is not news - and now has OFCOM on their case because Tory politician interviewing Tory politician giving unfiltered Tory propaganda is not news.
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
What about The Mirror and The Express?
The Mirror supported the Nazis too iirc.
Indeed.
Problematic support wanders through the history of various papers. Editorials on slavery (and/or the American Civil War) come to mind.
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
The Westminster Parliament was simultaneously the Parliament of the UK and the Parliament of the Empire. This is where the "no taxation without representation" thing came from.
Consequently Imperial subjects resident in the UK could vote in Parliamentary elections.
As the concepts of "The United Kingdom" and "The British Empire" separated, the Westminster Parliament gradually became UK only. But the rights of Imperial subjects, later Commonwealth citizens, remained.
I have just returned from hospital and seen Greater Manchester police are investigating Rayner over her registration for election purposes
I couldn't understand why it was said they were investigating her CGT liabilities as that is a HMRC matter so at least we now know why the police are involved
I have no idea how this will pan out but at least it should be resolved one way or another
Fantastic work by James Daly! This would be a massive scalp for the Conservatives. There could be a custodial sentence at the end of this rainbow. It's about time, with all the political corruption that has gone on over the last 5 years!
Broken, sleazy Labour on the slide!
There is a magnificent irony if Rayner ends up in Holloway whilst Johnson's PPE friends can enjoy their ill gotten gains.
Michelle Mone still seems to have plenty of questions to answer. I hope it’s not been swept under the carpet.
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
I was having just that conversation with a French friend last week. They’re a little upset about the Seine being too dirty for the swimming, but what they’re absolutely terrified of is a terrorist attack on the Olympics.
There’s plenty of domestic and foreign sources of trouble out there at the moment, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to pull off something close to a venue. The security forces must be having one hell of a job to try and understand the situation well enough to stop something. It only needs a few idiots with large knives, doesn’t necessarily have to be something on the scale of the Bataclan massacre or the recent copycat in Moscow.
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
I would allow EU nationals here to vote in elections too.
Why? If they want to vote they can become citizens
Why can people that leave the UK for a long period vote in our elections then?
It’s all to do with whether they are a member of the demos.
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If you live here you should be able to have control over things that happen here. If you don’t live here, you give it up.
Almost all countries use citizenship, rather than residence, as the qualifying criteria for the right to vote in national elections.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
The Westminster Parliament was simultaneously the Parliament of the UK and the Parliament of the Empire. This is where the "no taxation without representation" thing came from.
Consequently Imperial subjects resident in the UK could vote in Parliamentary elections.
As the concepts of "The United Kingdom" and "The British Empire" separated, the Westminster Parliament gradually became UK only. But the rights of Imperial subjects, later Commonwealth citizens, remained.
I am being very helpful today. But I have work to do. In my absence please try not to make too many mistakes and I'll correct those I can when I return. Play well, children.
The Rayner kerfuffle is good news for Labour. The Tories have a real problem with the "red queen". Northern, woman, intelligent, authentic. Everything they hate. So they are focusing all their fire on her over utter trivia, which provides the political cover to go back over all of their non-trivial corruption. Which is all over social media at the moment.
So the Heil, GBeebies et al attack Rayner to the approval of the remaining 14 Tory voters whilst Facebook and TwiX churns out loads of Tory corruption stuff because what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.
"the Heil, GBeebies"
No offence RP, but do you actually think statements like that are going to look good for you if you get elected.? I think it will bite you in the arse which would be a shame.
Its parody. The right wing media is self-parody. The Mail supported the Nazis - historical fact - and promote all kinds of guff today. GB News is not news - and now has OFCOM on their case because Tory politician interviewing Tory politician giving unfiltered Tory propaganda is not news.
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
What about The Mirror and The Express?
The Mirror supported the Nazis too iirc.
When it was owned by the Fascist supporting Rothermere, and it went left when bought by Bartholemew. Tabloids reflect the views of their owners, it’s not exactly rocket science.
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
I was having just that conversation with a French friend last week. They’re a little upset about the Seine being too dirty for the swimming, but what they’re absolutely terrified of is a terrorist attack on the Olympics.
There’s plenty of domestic and foreign sources of trouble out there at the moment, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to pull off something close to a venue. The security forces must be having one hell of a job to try and understand the situation well enough to stop something.
Indeed. It’s probably the worst moment to hold an Olympics since WW2 in terms of global security. And France is not a police state like China which can staple people in apartments
I feel for them, and I don’t often say that about the French
In today's YouGov "Wrong to Leave" is up to 20% among respondents willing to admit that they voted Leave, and 57% overall. Only 33% say "Right to Leave".
This is particularly notable because the unweighted sample has 837 Remain voters to 768 Leave, suggesting that there are a number of former Leave voters who have managed to convince themselves they voted otherwise - this "false recall" effect is quite common when there's a change of view like this. People's shame and regret means that they lie to themselves.
If this number increases further over time it will eventually have political consequences.
Boris Johnson lied and lied and lied for decades, he got away with it for ages. If Rayner has lied, I am sure the Tory press will give her the same treatment. Right? Right?
(If she has lied/broken the law, she should resign, obviously.)
She should go anyway regardless of guilt/innocence and truth/falsehood. Her handling of whatever the fuck this is looks as shifty as fuck. SKS doesn't need a they-are-all-the-same narrative developing and suppressing turnout.
When it was owned by the Fascist supporting Rothermere, and it went left when bought by Bartholemew. Tabloids reflect the views of their owners, it’s not exactly rocket science.
In today's YouGov "Wrong to Leave" is up to 20% among respondents willing to admit that they voted Leave, and 57% overall. Only 33% say "Right to Leave".
This is particularly notable because the unweighted sample has 837 Remain voters to 768 Leave, suggesting that there are a number of former Leave voters who have managed to convince themselves they voted otherwise - this "false recall" effect is quite common when there's a change of view like this. People's shame and regret means that they lie to themselves.
If this number increases further over time it will eventually have political consequences.
I think Labour's polling team is keeping a keen eye on the EU polling. They will find what they perceive to be the right time and they will tack towards it for electoral advantage.
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
The flounce is fucking falling apart.
I deflounced two days ago. Do keep up
Deflounced is an interesting word requiring a definition.
On a different note, there was a horrible knife attack in Bordeaux yesterday. An Afghan asylum seeker stabbed two people brutally, killing one, injuring the other, before being shot dead by police. All on horrific video if you want to see. NSFW
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
I was having just that conversation with a French friend last week. They’re a little upset about the Seine being too dirty for the swimming, but what they’re absolutely terrified of is a terrorist attack on the Olympics.
There’s plenty of domestic and foreign sources of trouble out there at the moment, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to pull off something close to a venue. The security forces must be having one hell of a job to try and understand the situation well enough to stop something. It only needs a few idiots with large knives, doesn’t necessarily have to be something on the scale of the Bataclan massacre or the recent copycat in Moscow.
They need more ex-murderers armed with narwhal tusks. Obviously.
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
Indeed. If Rayner has broken electoral registration law, which has yet to be determined, it wouldn’t pass a threshold for prosecution as far as I can see from reading about the case. This is all just weak sauce.
Rishi Sunak has twice been fined by the police for breaking the law and he didn’t resign. The idea that this is a resigning matter for Rayner… I’m not remotely convinced.
It seems spurious to me. Does your main residence for electoral purposes have to be the same as your main residence for tax purposes?
London house prices are bad, but if someone is quoting you £200-300bn for a house, I would suggest changing your estate agent.
This is a variation on the classic "Brownfield Sites" skit. As in, if every brownfield site had a tower block on it, then we don't need to build anything else.
It's avoidance of the issue of building anything on a nice green field.
@StillWaters in response to your point on the other thread that when people have medically transitioned they are not really women. That is the position of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock.
Its a perfectly respectable position.
Rowling, Stock, Cyclefree etc are real women, they were born women, they are women.
A man who transitions to "become" a woman may be a transwoman but they're not a real woman. They'll never be.
That's not dehumanising. They're a real human. For all intents and purposes, unless it violates safeguarding, they can be treated as women, but the distinction still needs to exist.
Competitive female sport for example should belong to real women. A transwoman should never be entitled to play in
While the substance of what you say is correct, I would use the term "sex" rather than "real woman" because that could be used by some in a way which is insulting. And, having seen the insults hurled at women (including me - and by some on this forum) I think it best to try and avoid this.
A man can never - even with surgery - become a member of the female sex. And since sex is relevant in so many situations - sport, safeguarding etc - a transitioned man has to be regarded as a member of the male sex. But for social purposes - like @Leon's friend, Julia - there is no reason why he can't live, dress, call himself however he wants etc. How his friends and family respond is up to them but it is not a matter of compulsion. You cannot force others to share your own views about yourself and it is the height of narcissism to think that you can or should.
Gender to me is no different to a soul. It is some undefinable essence that some people believe in and others don't. Far too much of what people call "gender" seems to me to be no more than stereotypes and it is bizarre to me that so many on the gender side seem so intent on reinforcing very old-fashioned stereotypes.
But I do not believe in gender. I am of the female sex. Discrimination has happened to me because of my sex. Sexual assault has happened to me because of my sex. It happens to every woman because of her sex. My health, how my body develops and ages is affected by my sex.There is no getting away from that. Women cannot identify out of their sex. If we could we'd all be earning 40% more and having our bullshit treated with undeserved respect.
Men are of the male sex - and since sex matters in so many situations - there are very good reasons why separation on the basis of sex has to happen in those situations. And why clear language about sex matters. It is absurd that anyone thinks otherwise.
And - let me absolutely blunt here - any man who seeks to breach a woman's boundaries against her consent, whatever his reasons, is a predator, has the mentality of a predator. It is a giant red flag. "No means no" and, no, women do not have to justify this.
The vast majority of men claiming to be women do not make surgical or hormonal changes. They are men - whatever they wear - because - and does this really need saying again? - womanhood is a reality not a costume.
As for Rowling she has put her money where her mouth is and financed a female only rape refuge in Edinburgh - Beira Place - after the utterly disgraceful behaviour by Rape Crisis and its cheating boss.
If you don't believe in gender it surely follows that you don't believe that changing it, surgery or not, seld-id or not, is valid or meaningful. But we have provided, with the GRA, a route for a person to do this and for it to be legally recognised. How to square that?
There's a bit of sleight of hand at play.
First people insist that gender and sex are two completely different concepts, and so, of course, one can change your gender because gender is a social construct and has nothing to do with sex.
But, then, these same people, then conflate gender with sex and insist that a change of gender must be treated exactly as a change in sex, with all that entails in terms of prisons, sex-based safeguarding and equality law, etc.
So which is it? Are gender and sex two different things, and a person can have a legally-recognised gender that is different to their sex, and it is legitimate to settle some things in society on the basis of sex rather than gender? Or are the two different words for the same thing, and if someone has changed their gender they must be treated as having changed their sex, in all ways?
My opinion? Gender is different to birth sex. It's an identity concept whereas birth sex is physical. You can't change your birth sex (it's a historical fact) and for most people that's not a problem because it accords with their gender identity. For a small minority it is a problem. They feel female in a male body or male in a female one. This causes distress which can be alleviated by transitioning and living their lives as female born men or male born women. The Gender Recognition Act provides a route for people to do this, validating their identity and giving it legal recognition.
The legal fiction should be followed so long as it doesn't violate safeguarding.
Competitive sport for instance, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
Similarly rape centres etc, even if someone has a certificate, they're not a member of the female sex.
The GRA may need amending to reflect that in my view, if its too broadbrush, but it seems a reasonable compromise.
Treat anyone with a certificate as their new sex, unless it matters for safeguarding reasons (and single sex sport for instance I'd count as a safeguarding reason).
On sports, I think it's best left to the individual bodies.
To take a silly example, I can't believe anyone would have an issue with a trans woman competing in female chess?
I can't see a reason to have single sex chess.
But if single sex chess exists, then it should remain single sex.
My opinion? Gender is different to birth sex. It's an identity concept whereas birth sex is physical. You can't change your birth sex (it's a historical fact) and for most people that's not a problem because it accords with their gender identity. For a small minority it is a problem. They feel female in a male body or male in a female one. This causes distress which can be alleviated by transitioning and living their lives as female born men or male born women. The Gender Recognition Act provides a route for people to do this, validating their identity and giving it legal recognition.
This is pretty much where I am. I think sex and gender are different - and to be fair most people I know trans or otherwise agree with this.
My question was more about the existence of "gender" which some here have said doesn't exist. I can't really buy into that because what is it that people who feel they are born into the wrong body "feel"? What is that thing?
London house prices are bad, but if someone is quoting you £200-300bn for a house, I would suggest changing your estate agent.
This is a variation on the classic "Brownfield Sites" skit. As in, if every brownfield site had a tower block on it, then we don't need to build anything else.
It's avoidance of the issue of building anything on a nice green field.
This is not so true any more. London prices have, in general, either flatlined or actually declined for years
It’s getting to the stage where you could almost call them ‘cheap’, in terms of living in a great world city. eg the other day @SouthamObserver was surprised at how LITTLE you would have to pay for a nice two bed in Hampstead, which must be one of the most desirable urban districts in the world
I have no idea about the Rayner case, but one thing I am aware of (having been involved in an election case [as a witness I hasten to add for the prosecution]) is that the police are fed up to the back teeth of people being reported to them for petty stuff for electioneering purposes. This has the consequence that when something is serious it often gets ignored by the police (at least initially) as being 'not this crap again'.
My view is the police should start charging people with wasting police time to get rid of the dross that is thrown at them by all parties particularly at election time such that when a proper election offence is committed it is not lost in the dross.
I would also like to add that the election laws need updating. They are a mess. Not enough time to list out here.
Indeed. If Rayner has broken electoral registration law, which has yet to be determined, it wouldn’t pass a threshold for prosecution as far as I can see from reading about the case. This is all just weak sauce.
Rishi Sunak has twice been fined by the police for breaking the law and he didn’t resign. The idea that this is a resigning matter for Rayner… I’m not remotely convinced.
It seems spurious to me. Does your main residence for electoral purposes have to be the same as your main residence for tax purposes?
no
There is not even a main residence for electoral purposes. It is perfectly acceptable to be registered in multiple places as long as you only vote once (in national and London elections, others you can vote more than once). You can be registered places other than your main home as long as you have a reasonable connection to the property.
Unless she has voted twice, which afaik no one has even suggested, it is a complete non issue and utter waste of police time.
London house prices are bad, but if someone is quoting you £200-300bn for a house, I would suggest changing your estate agent.
This is a variation on the classic "Brownfield Sites" skit. As in, if every brownfield site had a tower block on it, then we don't need to build anything else.
It's avoidance of the issue of building anything on a nice green field.
This is not so true any more. London prices have, in general, either flatlined or actually declined for years
It’s getting to the stage where you could almost call them ‘cheap’, in terms of living in a great world city. eg the other day @SouthamObserver was surprised at how LITTLE you would have to pay for a nice two bed in Hampstead, which must be one of the most desirable urban districts in the world
They have barely held flat (ha) for the market for flats - because of the vast number of flats being built.
As to how little - the prices, say for flats in Acton, put them out of the reach of nearly anyone entering the property market.
Comments
Mind you on Rayner, it would seem to be a minor story but only if she had not demanded such high standards from conservative politicians, and she and many others in Labour will see increasing scrutiny as they close in on power
Does having an ID requirement provide reassurance that personation isn't happening? Sure.
Is that the biggest issue? Almost certainly not. See postal voting.
Does the version of Voter ID the government have implemented make election outcomes more or less reliable? I don't think anyone has checked, but I suspect the harm of differential difficulty of voting is worse than the problem of fake in-person votes.
As always, the art is in asking the correct question. Get that right, and you can get whatever answer you want.
(I wasn't that great, though - best haul was 3/6 victories!)
He runs a 360 camera on his cycle helmet, and winds up the twitter !"$%^s who think it's a drone.
He did a vid on April 1st pretending his drone had been attacked by a bird of prey, and he was (allegedly) reported to both the Met and the RSPCA.
Video here.
https://twitter.com/theJeremyVine/status/1774684276480434516
Times Journalist Matthew Stadlen fell for it, and called in a bird of prey expert to find out what it was.
https://twitter.com/MatthewStadlen/status/1774694759023378641
I know the remaining 13 Tory voters dislike having the mirror held up, but I am not going to upset voters by calling out what everyone else can see.
So why is anyone positively endorsing gender stereotyping?
For example, I believe that @Sandpit would like to return to the UK, but rules on income mean that he can’t bring his foreign born wife. It would be wrong to exclude him, as a UK citizen, from voting because of government policy.
If a citizen of an EU country wishes to make the UK their forever home then they can take our citizenship and have the full rights of a citizen.
If somebody has had surgery as an adult and they are now identifying as a woman, are you saying they have to go in the male/open competition for chess? Really?
I also note that we make laws around religion and ethnicity, notably anti-discrimination laws, so something that is constructed can clearly have a legal reality to it.
The suggestions both came from the Electoral Commission, as a result of a number of court cases, with one judge famously declaring that the election of Lutfur Rahman in Tower Hamlets was like “Something out of a banana republic”.
I am, unusually on this board, a fan of Jacob Rees-Mogg, but think that he spoke out of turn on this subject.
I do also agree that over-extended postal voting is now the larger issue to tackle, and that it’s not being tackled because it’s not in the interests of the politicians to tackle it. The Conservatives have ignored the issue when in power, and Labour will likely ignore it when in power as well. It’ll probably need more court cases and more suggestions from the EC, that ends up with one party or another committing to it in their manifesto.
https://news.sky.com/story/ofcom-launches-investigation-into-alleged-rule-breach-by-labours-david-lammy-13110769
Nick P Labour - retired
Aaron Bell Conservative - sitting
Rochdale LibDem - prospective.
I never saw Nick or Aaron drift in to "parody". Im afraid if youre aiming for a serious job you need to act the part. Unless of course BoJo is your role model.
What truly bemuses me about Raynergate is that the Tories don't understand that the deeper they probe the worse they look.
Polls show that most voters see politics - and specifically the Tory party / government - as corrupt. Endless scandals over very large amounts of money. Peerages and gongs openly being sold. PPE money accidentally deposited in Tory pockets. So from this position of propriety they have decided to go into bat over £1,500 of alleged CGT which HMRC have already said isn't due. Which reopens the floodgates of people on social media highlighting the real (Tory) scandals.
I genuinely don't get it. People in glass houses are told not to throw stones. And yet here are the Tories being showered with glass whilst people encourage them to throw more stones.
I’m talking about darts.
180……
For darts, clearly sex can make a difference - I assume - because of physical attributes.
But trans people are not "cross dressing".
It is called politics
I guess the Electoral Commission didn’t need to do an extensive study and report then before drawing their conclusions?
We should just rely on your assertions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship
Specific women's championship, U20 and so on also exist.
I don't see anything wrong with how its currently setup.
As I wrote earlier, it’s lovely out here in Expatsville to see a long line forming outside a country’s embassy, knowing that it’s their polling day.
Yes there was a time when I was trying to return to the UK, but it would have been impossible to bring my wife for two years because they only take UK earnings into account when considering ability to sponsor someone. Our situation (met and married when working abroad) simply falls through the cracks in the immigration system, which appears designed around Asian arranged marriages.
The problem here is the Conservatives are gaming the voting system. Not only can Conservative expats vote, the party can chose an appropriate marginal for them. In reality they are supposed to use a linked constituency.
No disrespect to you but you've chosen to leave so in my view you've given up the right to vote.
Your line of thinking in terms of expat voting is far more consistent with the idea that anyone living here, former citizen or otherwise should be able to vote. So I'd accept that if EU citizens living here could also vote.
Shouldn't your logic be that all foreigners living here get to vote?
Why should we treat someone from France different to someone from Japan? If they live here, they live here surely?
Oh, and they’re currently playing the world championship qualifying tournaments at the moment, both for open and women’s categories. Known as “The Candidates”, the winners get to challenge the current champions.
Maybe that legacy should be ended, but why would you introduce more discrimination?
It doesn't help that the "under investigation" currency is so devalued. It's so easy to make and publicise complaints that are, at best, one step up from vexatious. And Ofcom, the police or whoever can't just say "that's a silly nothing." They have to investigate, and they have to say so.
"Let the one without sin cast the first stone" is an excellent principle for life, but not practical politics. It's also a neat thing to reflect on- how can you invoke the idea without it boomeranging it onto yourself?
But I forget, Ms Rayner is seen as a proletarian who didn't go to Oxford, so they think she's getting uppity.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/12/angela-rayner-tories-targeting-labour-deputy-tax-class-shaming
That’s another 100,000 votes for Le Pen right there. The French authorities must also be terrified of some awful event ruining the Olympics. There are so many bad actors who would love to disrupt it, from islamists to Putin to China to random nutters, of which France has many. And with Schengen they can come from anywhere in Europe
(Absolute peanuts compared to Ange's appalling treatment of the British taxpayer, of course).
(If she has lied/broken the law, she should resign, obviously.)
We knew that, when we voted for him, as even a repeatedly-fired liar was a better candidate in 2019 than Jeremy Corbyn.
IIRC there are a number of reciprocal agreements in place between countries with regard to enfranchisement of foreign citizen residents, this is the case with RoI and certain Commonweath countries for national elections, for the obvious historic reasons, and was the case with the EU for local elections when the UK were members.
This groundbreaking report from
@russellcurtis
confirms what many of us already knew:
We can - and should - be building more in London.
https://x.com/PricedOutUK/status/1777270105497329868
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rees-mogg-voter-id-tories-b2339068.html
Problematic support wanders through the history of various papers. Editorials on slavery (and/or the American Civil War) come to mind.
- The Whitehall Government were simultaneously the Government of the UK and the Government of the Empire. This is why Cabinets included non-Brits, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_War_Cabinet
- The Westminster Parliament was simultaneously the Parliament of the UK and the Parliament of the Empire. This is where the "no taxation without representation" thing came from.
Consequently Imperial subjects resident in the UK could vote in Parliamentary elections.As the concepts of "The United Kingdom" and "The British Empire" separated, the Westminster Parliament gradually became UK only. But the rights of Imperial subjects, later Commonwealth citizens, remained.
There’s plenty of domestic and foreign sources of trouble out there at the moment, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to pull off something close to a venue. The security forces must be having one hell of a job to try and understand the situation well enough to stop something. It only needs a few idiots with large knives, doesn’t necessarily have to be something on the scale of the Bataclan massacre or the recent copycat in Moscow.
NIMBY scum are NIMBY scum regardless of party.
I feel for them, and I don’t often say that about the French
This is particularly notable because the unweighted sample has 837 Remain voters to 768 Leave, suggesting that there are a number of former Leave voters who have managed to convince themselves they voted otherwise - this "false recall" effect is quite common when there's a change of view like this. People's shame and regret means that they lie to themselves.
If this number increases further over time it will eventually have political consequences.
Trump removes wig?
I did see a Hoatzin bird, which some claim is the weirdest bird in the world
https://www.aquaexpeditions.com/blog/amazon/hoatzin-bird-amazon/
This is a variation on the classic "Brownfield Sites" skit. As in, if every brownfield site had a tower block on it, then we don't need to build anything else.
It's avoidance of the issue of building anything on a nice green field.
My question was more about the existence of "gender" which some here have said doesn't exist. I can't really buy into that because what is it that people who feel they are born into the wrong body "feel"? What is that thing?
It’s getting to the stage where you could almost call them ‘cheap’, in terms of living in a great world city. eg the other day @SouthamObserver was surprised at how LITTLE you would have to pay for a nice two bed in Hampstead, which must be one of the most desirable urban districts in the world
Unless she has voted twice, which afaik no one has even suggested, it is a complete non issue and utter waste of police time.
As to how little - the prices, say for flats in Acton, put them out of the reach of nearly anyone entering the property market.