... is that it? I mean, we all know that the Conservative ideas cupboard is pretty bare, but really?
(Of course, what it really is is a crude attempt to put SKS on the spot. Which it might, but at the price of emphasising Sunak's Stingy Squillionaire image.)
Hasn't Starmer already pledged not to scrap the 2 child benefit cap? The cupboard is pretty bare but I don't think Rishi is going to find much by expecting Labour to show a bit of principle or courage.
If you asked AI to write a song in the style of 1980s American grunge influencers, it would probably sound something like this from Chris Morris - different class
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
... is that it? I mean, we all know that the Conservative ideas cupboard is pretty bare, but really?
(Of course, what it really is is a crude attempt to put SKS on the spot. Which it might, but at the price of emphasising Sunak's Stingy Squillionaire image.)
"And the union workhouses - are they still in operation?"
It was the Liberals who introduced the workhouses.
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 1h Steve Bannon calls for the removal of Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House: “Mike Johnson must go just like Kevin McCarthy.”
Democrats should do the right thing and save Mike Johnson from a motion to vacate.
... is that it? I mean, we all know that the Conservative ideas cupboard is pretty bare, but really?
(Of course, what it really is is a crude attempt to put SKS on the spot. Which it might, but at the price of emphasising Sunak's Stingy Squillionaire image.)
I was watching the wonderful race across the world this evening, with the children. They were in Hiroshima. Got me thinking about places known to most people only for tragedies. It must be strange to live in one.
Locherby, Dunblane, Hungerford, Soham, Omagh, Sandy Hook, Beslan, Srebrenica, Treblinka, Aberfan, Bûcha, Halabja, Ghouta, Abu Ghraib, Bhopal, and so on.
The impact of news reporting on the global consciousness I suppose.
I was watching the wonderful race across the world this evening, with the children. They were in Hiroshima. Got me thinking about places known to most people only for tragedies. It must be strange to live in one.
Locherby, Dunblane, Hungerford, Soham, Omagh, Sandy Hook, Beslan, Srebrenica, Treblinka, Aberfan, Bûcha, Halabja, Ghouta, Abu Ghraib, Bhopal, and so on.
The impact of news reporting on the global consciousness I suppose.
... is that it? I mean, we all know that the Conservative ideas cupboard is pretty bare, but really?
(Of course, what it really is is a crude attempt to put SKS on the spot. Which it might, but at the price of emphasising Sunak's Stingy Squillionaire image.)
Sadly so. It's a performatively cruel, illogical and counter-productive policy that should have no place in proper politics.
The long run cost to the state and the economy of a kid that's grown up in poverty is probably far higher than the cost of benefits for third and subsequent children. Also of course if you discourage people from having children, you can't complain about immigration. But fear of the poor breeding is deep in the Tory DNA.
My middle lad just told me Captain Spok or something (his spelling) is at a Comic Con that my lad has wandered into 2 minutes from his girlfriend's house in Ohio. Turns out it's William Shatner, some Dukes of Hazzard and the first female R2D2. Ole Kirk wants 270 bucks for a photo and autograph. My lad is more interested in the Pokemon resellers.
Take the Shatner. He's in his 90's now and it'll only go up when he dies. Nobody cares about the Dukes of Hazzard. Christine Galey (R2D2 inhabitant) has some time to go yet.
I don't think it is $270 for a signed photo of William Shatner, but $270 for a signed photo of twistedfirestopper3's son with William Shatner. I could be wrong but I think that is the deal that keeps minor sci-fi actors (and WS) from Carey Street for years, indeed decades.
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
Heck of a big leap between your second and third paragraphs there.
If you asked AI to write a song in the style of 1980s American grunge influencers, it would probably sound something like this from Chris Morris - different class
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
I agree with a lot of what you say and you are entitled to your opinion but I was having a drink last night with a friend of my daughter's who is transgender. She has been living as a woman for several years now. She has a bust, She is genetically and biologically male (at least originally) but is clearly happier living as a woman. Whilst respecting your viewpoint I see no reason to disrespect her existence, her desire for female pronouns and her view of herself. Live and let live I say, provided loopholes are not created to put women at risk.
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
My middle lad just told me Captain Spok or something (his spelling) is at a Comic Con that my lad has wandered into 2 minutes from his girlfriend's house in Ohio. Turns out it's William Shatner, some Dukes of Hazzard and the first female R2D2. Ole Kirk wants 270 bucks for a photo and autograph. My lad is more interested in the Pokemon resellers.
Take the Shatner. He's in his 90's now and it'll only go up when he dies. Nobody cares about the Dukes of Hazzard. Christine Galey (R2D2 inhabitant) has some time to go yet.
Dave Prowse once stayed at a local hotel run by a fellow primary school pupil's family. I was STRONGLY of the opinion that the Green Cross Code guy wasn't Darth Vader.
A few days later I was presented with a 'pamphlet' with Dave Prowse's picture on one side, Darth Vaders on the other. And in the middle a hand-written note saying 'Dave Prowse IS Darth Vader' with his signature underneath.
Here's an interesting detail: "The effort to send the Ukraine bill back to committee failed, 88-336." So there were Republicans (24, probably) who were willing to make it sure is passed today, as long as they can say they voted against it.
The headline doesn’t look good for Rayner although hard to know if the so called claim is on the document or just was mentioned to the neighbour.
Today's "scandal" is Rayner asked a neighbour of the other house to witness the deed transfer for the house she may or may not have a CGT liability on. When you can nominate any or none of these houses as your principal residence, and where if Rayner had nominated this residence as her principal one as the Mail claims (and is outraged by), Rayner would in that case definitely not have to pay any tax on it.
If you asked AI to write a song in the style of 1980s American grunge influencers, it would probably sound something like this from Chris Morris - different class
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
I agree with a lot of what you say and you are entitled to your opinion but I was having a drink last night with a friend of my daughter's who is transgender. She has been living as a woman for several years now. She has a bust, She is genetically and biologically male (at least originally) but is clearly happier living as a woman. Whilst respecting your viewpoint I see no reason to disrespect her existence, her desire for female pronouns and her view of herself. Live and let live I say, provided loopholes are not created to put women at risk.
The issue isn't about transgender people deserving respect, or the right to live in safety and dignity, which they are certainly entitled to. The issue is whether they should enjoy carte blanche to suborn vulnerable children to their cause, as 'activists' increasingly demand.
Fifty years after the timely demise of The Black and White Minstrel Show mainstream media, including the allegedly woke BBC, are surprisingly receptive to transvestite entertainment under the guise of 'drag this' or 'drag that'. Are feminists not even slightly concerned about this grotesque misrepresentation of their sex and its effect on the development of young people?
If you asked AI to write a song in the style of 1980s American grunge influencers, it would probably sound something like this from Chris Morris - different class
J K Rowling tweeting that Dr Hilary Cass feels she can no longer safely travel on public transport. Jeez.
Just incredible how this irrational trans ideology has taken hold. A deadly mixture of woke and identity politics.
Had a long discussion last night with my 21yo youngest daughter. She is at Edinburgh Uni and told me that a lot of her friends think emotions and feelings are more important than facts when making decisions - lived experience is more valid than measurable outcomes or the law. What on earth have we done in educating that generation? Social media has done so much damage.
The new CEO of NPR in the US has explicitly said that seeking the truth is a problem:
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.”
I can top that. The then US President got much of the country to believe he hadn’t lost an election that, in truth, he had lost.
Hillary Clinton got much of the country to believe that she was legitimate winner in 2016 too.
She and Liz Truss would get on.
To be fair she got almost 3m more votes than the Orange One. She just didn’t win enough States.
Shoulda woulda coulda.
She lost. And she's learnt nothing from it, even today.
She lost because of the system. As Attlee did in 1951. And as he did, accepted it. Doesn’t mean it’s a fair system, or a good one.
She lost because she was a shit candidate.
There's no dressing that up.
Can I suggest a compromise?
She lost because it was an unfair system *and* she was a shit candidate?
Well, it's a system designed for electing a President of the United States of America, which is a federation of those same States- hence the electoral college electing the President via weighted delegates from each State.
It's not a unitary state so winning the popular vote means nothing unless you win the electoral college too.
Smaller states have disproportionally more electors per capita than the larger states.
That's a deliberate decision to prevent the small states being overly dominated by the large ones. It's a feature of the design. Everyone knows that is part of the rules.
The popular vote is good for bragging rights and in terms of measuring the size of a victory, but the system is decided on electoral college votes.
The other thing to say about this - and it shouldn't really need to be said among this group of voting system nerds - is that there's no such thing as a perfect electoral system. It's been proved mathematically that it isn't possible for any voting system to satisfy all the properties that you might want a perfect voting system to have.
So in choosing a voting system you have to choose which properties are most important to you. And then everyone has to agree that the choice made is legitimate.
A voting system will fail if too many voters no longer see it as legitimate - which might come to be the case if Republicans repeatedly win the electoral college while losing the popular vote - but could also be the case if one side were able to force through a change without the consent of the other.
There may be no such thing as a perfect electoral system. But there is such a thing as a voting system that is obviously shit, has no merits whatsoever,, and is only there for complicated historical reasons and because vested interests don't want to change it. Eg the current way of electing the US president. Probably why no other country in the world has a similar system.
Even that dodo Trump said called the Electoral College "a disaster for a democracy... a total sham and a travesty"
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
I agree with a lot of what you say and you are entitled to your opinion but I was having a drink last night with a friend of my daughter's who is transgender. She has been living as a woman for several years now. She has a bust, She is genetically and biologically male (at least originally) but is clearly happier living as a woman. Whilst respecting your viewpoint I see no reason to disrespect her existence, her desire for female pronouns and her view of herself. Live and let live I say, provided loopholes are not created to put women at risk.
The issue isn't about transgender people deserving respect, or the right to live in safety and dignity, which they are certainly entitled to. The issue is whether they should enjoy carte blanche to suborn vulnerable children to their cause, as 'activists' increasingly demand.
Fifty years after the timely demise of The Black and White Minstrel Show mainstream media, including the allegedly woke BBC, are surprisingly receptive to transvestite entertainment under the guise of 'drag this' or 'drag that'. Are feminists not even slightly concerned about this grotesque misrepresentation of their sex and its effect on the development of young people?
If you are proposing the banning of Mrs Brown’s Boys you have my vote. Appalling programme. The issue about how teens with dysmorphia are treated is an entirely different question. I have been very clear that this has been a medical scandal and needs to be stopped. But that still doesn’t mean that people should not have their gender respected, provided the rights of others, specifically women, are respected too.
See I identify with the hermit here, however the article is wrong in so many ways.
Yes I don't go down my local like my father did every night. But then when he did he just talked to the same 6 or 7 people every night. I on the other hand talk with about 100 people round the world on a weekly basis varying from usa, several european states, the uk in various localities, australia, china, russia even. This year I expect visits from people from the us and holland of these friends and have been invited to northern ireland for a long weekend which I plan to take up.
Yet somehow I am the social hermit rather that the person who meets the same people week in week out, yeah that guy with that study can sit on one of leons flinty toys and bounce on it. He sounds like my father its not a real friendship if you dont meet face to face in a pub what a twat
Never mind what some stupid bastard scribbles in a review in the Spectator to get through his word allowance, or maybe he shares a publisher or agent with the author whose book he's reviewing, or will do in the future.
The hikikomori phenomenon is interesting. You are not a hikikomori. A hikikomori doesn't meet people IRL.
J K Rowling tweeting that Dr Hilary Cass feels she can no longer safely travel on public transport. Jeez.
Just incredible how this irrational trans ideology has taken hold. A deadly mixture of woke and identity politics.
Had a long discussion last night with my 21yo youngest daughter. She is at Edinburgh Uni and told me that a lot of her friends think emotions and feelings are more important than facts when making decisions - lived experience is more valid than measurable outcomes or the law. What on earth have we done in educating that generation? Social media has done so much damage.
The new CEO of NPR in the US has explicitly said that seeking the truth is a problem:
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.”
I can top that. The then US President got much of the country to believe he hadn’t lost an election that, in truth, he had lost.
Hillary Clinton got much of the country to believe that she was legitimate winner in 2016 too.
She and Liz Truss would get on.
To be fair she got almost 3m more votes than the Orange One. She just didn’t win enough States.
Shoulda woulda coulda.
She lost. And she's learnt nothing from it, even today.
She lost because of the system. As Attlee did in 1951. And as he did, accepted it. Doesn’t mean it’s a fair system, or a good one.
She lost because she was a shit candidate.
There's no dressing that up.
Can I suggest a compromise?
She lost because it was an unfair system *and* she was a shit candidate?
Well, it's a system designed for electing a President of the United States of America, which is a federation of those same States- hence the electoral college electing the President via weighted delegates from each State.
It's not a unitary state so winning the popular vote means nothing unless you win the electoral college too.
Smaller states have disproportionally more electors per capita than the larger states.
That's a deliberate decision to prevent the small states being overly dominated by the large ones. It's a feature of the design. Everyone knows that is part of the rules.
The popular vote is good for bragging rights and in terms of measuring the size of a victory, but the system is decided on electoral college votes.
The other thing to say about this - and it shouldn't really need to be said among this group of voting system nerds - is that there's no such thing as a perfect electoral system. It's been proved mathematically that it isn't possible for any voting system to satisfy all the properties that you might want a perfect voting system to have.
So in choosing a voting system you have to choose which properties are most important to you. And then everyone has to agree that the choice made is legitimate.
A voting system will fail if too many voters no longer see it as legitimate - which might come to be the case if Republicans repeatedly win the electoral college while losing the popular vote - but could also be the case if one side were able to force through a change without the consent of the other.
There may be no such thing as a perfect electoral system. But there is such a thing as a voting system that is obviously shit, has no merits whatsoever,, and is only there for complicated historical reasons and because vested interests don't want to change it. Eg the current way of electing the US president. Probably why no other country in the world has a similar system.
Even that dodo Trump said called the Electoral College "a disaster for a democracy... a total sham and a travesty"
And everyone in politics should understand that you win and lose elections on the system that is put in front of you and that your campaign should adapt accordingly.
UK Conservative strategists understood that perfectly in 2015. Hillary, in narrowly losing fly over States she was rather too keen on flying over rather than visiting, didn't in 2016. (I'm not saying that Trump understood this much better, but Hillary's campaign committed the fatal error).
0.6C at the vineyard with 6 hours of cooling to come. Only a matter of time before it goes negative and wipes out this years harvest before it’s started.
0.6C at the vineyard with 6 hours of cooling to come. Only a matter of time before it goes negative and wipes out this years harvest before it’s started.
I take it vines in England aren't valuable enough for covering with protective ice or lighting little stoves as they do in France?
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
Given that there are now roughly equal numbers of FTM as MTF transgender people, it seems only fair to see how the inverse sounds:
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a man, a member of the male sex. No woman can ever become a member of the male sex. So no woman has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about women being able to be men. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "manhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the male sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the males of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the female sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, masculinism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
I agree with a lot of what you say and you are entitled to your opinion but I was having a drink last night with a friend of my daughter's who is transgender. She has been living as a woman for several years now. She has a bust, She is genetically and biologically male (at least originally) but is clearly happier living as a woman. Whilst respecting your viewpoint I see no reason to disrespect her existence, her desire for female pronouns and her view of herself. Live and let live I say, provided loopholes are not created to put women at risk.
The issue isn't about transgender people deserving respect, or the right to live in safety and dignity, which they are certainly entitled to. The issue is whether they should enjoy carte blanche to suborn vulnerable children to their cause, as 'activists' increasingly demand.
The problem has been Trans activists demanding unfettered access to women’s spaces - including rape crisis centres - and mediocre male athletes claiming to be women and competing as such.
The losers in this have been the castrated and sterilised vulnerable children who would otherwise have grown out of their dysphoria, or gone on to further medical intervention when they had the maturity to make a fully informed decision. Also women who no longer seek help from rape crisis centres because they don’t want to meet men, or no longer exercise in “women only” spaces because of their religion. And women athletes denied recognition - and in the US college scholarships.
The whole edifice is built on a lie - that you can change sex, and that children doing so will solve all their problems. Hence the ferocity and mendacity of the Trans Activists attacks on Cass. Notably almost all natal males who now identify as women. The aggression shows who they really are - men.
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
I agree with a lot of what you say and you are entitled to your opinion but I was having a drink last night with a friend of my daughter's who is transgender. She has been living as a woman for several years now. She has a bust, She is genetically and biologically male (at least originally) but is clearly happier living as a woman. Whilst respecting your viewpoint I see no reason to disrespect her existence, her desire for female pronouns and her view of herself. Live and let live I say, provided loopholes are not created to put women at risk.
The issue isn't about transgender people deserving respect, or the right to live in safety and dignity, which they are certainly entitled to. The issue is whether they should enjoy carte blanche to suborn vulnerable children to their cause, as 'activists' increasingly demand.
Fifty years after the timely demise of The Black and White Minstrel Show mainstream media, including the allegedly woke BBC, are surprisingly receptive to transvestite entertainment under the guise of 'drag this' or 'drag that'. Are feminists not even slightly concerned about this grotesque misrepresentation of their sex and its effect on the development of young people?
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Why should women go first?
That's not how to troll. A proper troll might observe that as all sailors know, women are the jonahs who cause ships to sink in the first place and therefore shouldn't be allowed on them.
And for reasons I trust I don't have to explain, it's most cost-effective when culling to cull the female population between zero and 45. Otherwise you're more likely to get a temporary dip only.
J K Rowling tweeting that Dr Hilary Cass feels she can no longer safely travel on public transport. Jeez.
Just incredible how this irrational trans ideology has taken hold. A deadly mixture of woke and identity politics.
Had a long discussion last night with my 21yo youngest daughter. She is at Edinburgh Uni and told me that a lot of her friends think emotions and feelings are more important than facts when making decisions - lived experience is more valid than measurable outcomes or the law. What on earth have we done in educating that generation? Social media has done so much damage.
The new CEO of NPR in the US has explicitly said that seeking the truth is a problem:
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.”
I can top that. The then US President got much of the country to believe he hadn’t lost an election that, in truth, he had lost.
Hillary Clinton got much of the country to believe that she was legitimate winner in 2016 too.
She and Liz Truss would get on.
To be fair she got almost 3m more votes than the Orange One. She just didn’t win enough States.
Shoulda woulda coulda.
She lost. And she's learnt nothing from it, even today.
She lost because of the system. As Attlee did in 1951. And as he did, accepted it. Doesn’t mean it’s a fair system, or a good one.
She lost because she was a shit candidate.
There's no dressing that up.
Can I suggest a compromise?
She lost because it was an unfair system *and* she was a shit candidate?
Well, it's a system designed for electing a President of the United States of America, which is a federation of those same States- hence the electoral college electing the President via weighted delegates from each State.
It's not a unitary state so winning the popular vote means nothing unless you win the electoral college too.
Smaller states have disproportionally more electors per capita than the larger states.
That's a deliberate decision to prevent the small states being overly dominated by the large ones. It's a feature of the design. Everyone knows that is part of the rules.
The popular vote is good for bragging rights and in terms of measuring the size of a victory, but the system is decided on electoral college votes.
There's a practical benefit to the electoral college in the current environment which is that no state can rig the election by more than the electoral votes held by that state.
Swing state by definition have a lot of voters from either side. As a result their statehouses are either split between the parties or have a lot of members who represent people who vote for the other party. Likewise their supreme courts aren't usually under strong partisan control of one side. The result is that it's quite hard to make a swing state rig their elections, although you can tinker at the margins.
This isn't true of a one-party state. If one side has full, permanent control of every lever of power there's nothing to force them to honestly count the votes cast for the other side. That doesn't matter with the electoral college because they were going to cast all their electoral votes for their favoured party anyhow, but once you're counting the national popular vote it matters whether you have honest elections in every state, and there isn't really a system in place to ensure this.
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
I agree with a lot of what you say and you are entitled to your opinion but I was having a drink last night with a friend of my daughter's who is transgender. She has been living as a woman for several years now. She has a bust, She is genetically and biologically male (at least originally) but is clearly happier living as a woman. Whilst respecting your viewpoint I see no reason to disrespect her existence, her desire for female pronouns and her view of herself. Live and let live I say, provided loopholes are not created to put women at risk.
The issue isn't about transgender people deserving respect, or the right to live in safety and dignity, which they are certainly entitled to. The issue is whether they should enjoy carte blanche to suborn vulnerable children to their cause, as 'activists' increasingly demand.
The problem has been Trans activists demanding unfettered access to women’s spaces - including rape crisis centres - and mediocre male athletes claiming to be women and competing as such.
The losers in this have been the castrated and sterilised vulnerable children who would otherwise have grown out of their dysphoria, or gone on to further medical intervention when they had the maturity to make a fully informed decision. Also women who no longer seek help from rape crisis centres because they don’t want to meet men, or no longer exercise in “women only” spaces because of their religion. And women athletes denied recognition - and in the US college scholarships.
The whole edifice is built on a lie - that you can change sex, and that children doing so will solve all their problems. Hence the ferocity and mendacity of the Trans Activists attacks on Cass. Notably almost all natal males who now identify as women. The aggression shows who they really are - men.
Brass Eye was so good. Still stands up now. The paedophile special was extremely controversial with a labour minister at the time condemning it then revealing she’d not seen it.
Somewhat more cheering. The restoration of Notre Dame, highly impressive and rather moving
Now do the rest of the western world
Have they taken down the scaffolding from the Flèche yet or does it still look like the whole stock of scaffold poles in France:
Does the Mayor of Paris have shares in a scaffolder? I bet he would if it was still Chirac.
It's an interesting comparison to when it was being built (which was 1853). It was taken down after the previous one not being maintained properly by the Revolutionary generation and their predecessors.
It's amazing how much of history only exists in the mind of the tourist !
My middle lad just told me Captain Spok or something (his spelling) is at a Comic Con that my lad has wandered into 2 minutes from his girlfriend's house in Ohio. Turns out it's William Shatner, some Dukes of Hazzard and the first female R2D2. Ole Kirk wants 270 bucks for a photo and autograph. My lad is more interested in the Pokemon resellers.
Take the Shatner. He's in his 90's now and it'll only go up when he dies. Nobody cares about the Dukes of Hazzard. Christine Galey (R2D2 inhabitant) has some time to go yet.
I don't think it is $270 for a signed photo of William Shatner, but $270 for a signed photo of twistedfirestopper3's son with William Shatner. I could be wrong but I think that is the deal that keeps minor sci-fi actors (and WS) from Carey Street for years, indeed decades.
He will get a very big payment indeed just for showing up to a convention. Even fairly minor characters in popular series can get thousands.
Again the trans debate rears it head...for such a niche issue it touches a lot of nerves.
FWIW...I think the likes of Rowling and our own Cyclefree are old school feminists who just hate the idea that men want to take ownership of their gender. And it really winds them up. For The Right it presents a golden opportunity to attack Liberals (aka Wokes) because most people on the doorstep think it's odd that some people want to change their gender. And the Trans community just get really angry and feel violated that other people are making very personal judgements on something that is fundamentally important to them.
My own view is that we all should out of this debate. People's choice of gender is entirely up to them, their families and health care professionals if treatments are required. It's got no place in political discourse.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
I agree with a lot of what you say and you are entitled to your opinion but I was having a drink last night with a friend of my daughter's who is transgender. She has been living as a woman for several years now. She has a bust, She is genetically and biologically male (at least originally) but is clearly happier living as a woman. Whilst respecting your viewpoint I see no reason to disrespect her existence, her desire for female pronouns and her view of herself. Live and let live I say, provided loopholes are not created to put women at risk.
The issue isn't about transgender people deserving respect, or the right to live in safety and dignity, which they are certainly entitled to. The issue is whether they should enjoy carte blanche to suborn vulnerable children to their cause, as 'activists' increasingly demand.
Fifty years after the timely demise of The Black and White Minstrel Show mainstream media, including the allegedly woke BBC, are surprisingly receptive to transvestite entertainment under the guise of 'drag this' or 'drag that'. Are feminists not even slightly concerned about this grotesque misrepresentation of their sex and its effect on the development of young people?
"Reform’s success is a mirage. Even a Canada-style Tory wipeout won’t change that Nobody disagrees with their basic list of policies…
Nobody ?
What is their “basic list of policies” then ?
Their literature says:
Lower taxes Net zero immigration Cheaper energy Zero waiting lists
And this is squared with reality how, exactly?
ReFUK and reality have never been close acquaintances.
Their policies have always been the wishlist for the hard of thinking.
We probably should be thankful that Nigel Farage is their leader because when these people vote alongside the rest of the population you end with with Brexit and then Bozo the clown and the following Governments.
I'm actually surprised by how many Republican representatives did the right thing and voted for the Ukraine package.
I guess the question needed to be forced.
You shouldn’t be. There was a reason that the ultras were threatening Mike Johnson over *allowing a vote*.
There's probably an overall majority bipartisan support for quite a number of things which are not brought to a vote, though usually not quite so large a majority as on Ukraine.
Effectively maybe a dozen MAGA representatives have had a veto on almost all legislation since the last congressional election.
Somewhat more cheering. The restoration of Notre Dame, highly impressive and rather moving
Now do the rest of the western world
Have they taken down the scaffolding from the Flèche yet or does it still look like the whole stock of scaffold poles in France:
Does the Mayor of Paris have shares in a scaffolder? I bet he would if it was still Chirac.
It's an interesting comparison to when it was being built (which was 1853). It was taken down after the previous one not being maintained properly by the Revolutionary generation and their predecessors.
It's amazing how much of history only exists in the mind of the tourist !
There's an interesting contrast with scaffolding on UK church spires. Here there is much less of a diagonal emphasis, however I think that the main factor is that new construction of a spire (and hence the need for self-supporting scaffolding) is very rare - I can't find a recent photograph.
The photo below is of the repair of the spire of St Wulfram, Grantham, which is the same height as Notre-Dame (275ft vs 315ft) and where they had to rebuild the top 40 feet completely.
The most recent UK cathedral project would be the 2005 completion of the crossing tower to ~the original design at St Edmundsbury, but that is a tower. The most recent new spire on a UK CofE cathedral was the 80ft spire at Coventry, but that was installed in one piece by a helicopter in 1962.
The RCs may have a more recent project.
Interestingly I can't even find a fire where a major spire on a UK church was burnt down, though statistics say there must be one or two.
St Mark's church in Hamilton Terrace, St John's Wood, was gutted by fire in 2023 but the spire survived.
J K Rowling tweeting that Dr Hilary Cass feels she can no longer safely travel on public transport. Jeez.
Just incredible how this irrational trans ideology has taken hold. A deadly mixture of woke and identity politics.
Had a long discussion last night with my 21yo youngest daughter. She is at Edinburgh Uni and told me that a lot of her friends think emotions and feelings are more important than facts when making decisions - lived experience is more valid than measurable outcomes or the law. What on earth have we done in educating that generation? Social media has done so much damage.
The new CEO of NPR in the US has explicitly said that seeking the truth is a problem:
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.”
I can top that. The then US President got much of the country to believe he hadn’t lost an election that, in truth, he had lost.
Hillary Clinton got much of the country to believe that she was legitimate winner in 2016 too.
She and Liz Truss would get on.
To be fair she got almost 3m more votes than the Orange One. She just didn’t win enough States.
Shoulda woulda coulda.
She lost. And she's learnt nothing from it, even today.
She lost because of the system. As Attlee did in 1951. And as he did, accepted it. Doesn’t mean it’s a fair system, or a good one.
She lost because she was a shit candidate.
There's no dressing that up.
Can I suggest a compromise?
She lost because it was an unfair system *and* she was a shit candidate?
Well, it's a system designed for electing a President of the United States of America, which is a federation of those same States- hence the electoral college electing the President via weighted delegates from each State.
It's not a unitary state so winning the popular vote means nothing unless you win the electoral college too.
Smaller states have disproportionally more electors per capita than the larger states.
That's a deliberate decision to prevent the small states being overly dominated by the large ones. It's a feature of the design. Everyone knows that is part of the rules.
The popular vote is good for bragging rights and in terms of measuring the size of a victory, but the system is decided on electoral college votes.
The other thing to say about this - and it shouldn't really need to be said among this group of voting system nerds - is that there's no such thing as a perfect electoral system. It's been proved mathematically that it isn't possible for any voting system to satisfy all the properties that you might want a perfect voting system to have.
So in choosing a voting system you have to choose which properties are most important to you. And then everyone has to agree that the choice made is legitimate.
A voting system will fail if too many voters no longer see it as legitimate - which might come to be the case if Republicans repeatedly win the electoral college while losing the popular vote - but could also be the case if one side were able to force through a change without the consent of the other.
There may be no such thing as a perfect electoral system. But there is such a thing as a voting system that is obviously shit, has no merits whatsoever,, and is only there for complicated historical reasons and because vested interests don't want to change it. Eg the current way of electing the US president. Probably why no other country in the world has a similar system.
Even that dodo Trump said called the Electoral College "a disaster for a democracy... a total sham and a travesty"
And everyone in politics should understand that you win and lose elections on the system that is put in front of you and that your campaign should adapt accordingly.
UK Conservative strategists understood that perfectly in 2015. Hillary, in narrowly losing fly over States she was rather too keen on flying over rather than visiting, didn't in 2016. (I'm not saying that Trump understood this much better, but Hillary's campaign committed the fatal error).
It seems unlikely Clinton was unaware of the electoral college. More likely she wrongly assumed she was going to win states like Wisconsin.
And the fact that Biden in 2020 managed a bigger swing nationally than in Wisconsin suggests there were other factors.
Spectator interview with Alan Dershowitz, who is defending some Trumpite positions amongst the other things he argues - particularly around his skepticism/content for the current legal actions holding Trump to account.
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Actually they didn’t.
“Women and children first” was a reaction to some notorious late 19th Cent. shipwrecks where nearly all the survivors were able bodied men. In one or two cases, nearly all crew.
"Reform’s success is a mirage. Even a Canada-style Tory wipeout won’t change that Nobody disagrees with their basic list of policies…
Nobody ?
What is their “basic list of policies” then ?
Their literature says:
Lower taxes Net zero immigration Cheaper energy Zero waiting lists
And this is squared with reality how, exactly?
ReFUK and reality have never been close acquaintances.
Their policies have always been the wishlist for the hard of thinking.
We probably should be thankful that Nigel Farage is their leader because when these people vote alongside the rest of the population you end with with Brexit and then Bozo the clown and the following Governments.
I thought Richard Tice was their leader? Have they changed yet again?
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Actually they didn’t.
“Women and children first” was a reaction to some notorious late 19th Cent. shipwrecks where nearly all the survivors were able bodied men. In one or two cases, nearly all crew.
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Actually they didn’t.
“Women and children first” was a reaction to some notorious late 19th Cent. shipwrecks where nearly all the survivors were able bodied men. In one or two cases, nearly all crew.
I'm actually surprised by how many Republican representatives did the right thing and voted for the Ukraine package.
I guess the question needed to be forced.
You shouldn’t be. There was a reason that the ultras were threatening Mike Johnson over *allowing a vote*.
There's probably an overall majority bipartisan support for quite a number of things which are not brought to a vote, though usually not quite so large a majority as on Ukraine.
Effectively maybe a dozen MAGA representatives have had a veto on almost all legislation since the last congressional election.
There was, of course, a bipartisan bill from the Senate which included both Ukraine aid and funding for the Mexican border.
Democrats would have voted for it; the GOP refused to bring it to the floor. At Trump's behest.
Now they're complaining the Ukraine bill didn't include border measures.
Spectator interview with Alan Dershowitz, who is defending some Trumpite positions amongst the other things he argues - particularly around his skepticism/content for the current legal actions holding Trump to account.
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Actually they didn’t.
“Women and children first” was a reaction to some notorious late 19th Cent. shipwrecks where nearly all the survivors were able bodied men. In one or two cases, nearly all crew.
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Actually they didn’t.
“Women and children first” was a reaction to some notorious late 19th Cent. shipwrecks where nearly all the survivors were able bodied men. In one or two cases, nearly all crew.
And Heineken was something of a fascist myth maker.
According to a previous thread, Raynergate isn't cutting through... but bit by bit, more information emerges. Both Starmer and Reeves have supported Rayner... if she has to go, it could have significant repercussions....
... is that it? I mean, we all know that the Conservative ideas cupboard is pretty bare, but really?
(Of course, what it really is is a crude attempt to put SKS on the spot. Which it might, but at the price of emphasising Sunak's Stingy Squillionaire image.)
"And the union workhouses - are they still in operation?"
It was the Liberals who introduced the workhouses.
No idea about the truth of that, young HY, but public-funded workhouses were a vast improvement on what there was before, under the regime of laissez-faire Conservatives. Destitute people had to sleep in hedgerows, in the gutter or in doorways, or perhaps as sexworkers in brothels - and often died there. You Conservatives look back on those times with nostalgia.
According to a previous thread, Raynergate isn't cutting through... but bit by bit, more information emerges. Both Starmer and Reeves have supported Rayner... if she has to go, it could have significant repercussions....
Of FFS man, get a grip, read the story. This is such barrel scraping bullsh*tl. By "sign the document" they mean "witness Rayner's signature". Which anyone can do. Mine last one was witnessed by the receptionist at my firm, the one before that by my parents' next door neighbour. So this "new evidence" is that Rayner asked a neighbour of her husband (who has already given a statement to the police) to witness a transfer deed. What the f**k does that prove? Why didn't she get someone nearer her main house, they ask? Because she was at her husband's house when she needed the TR1 witnessed maybe?
In fact, paraphrase Ebert, this information doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. It isn't the bottom of the barrel. It isn't below the bottom of the barrel. It doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
They're so pathetically desperate to make this a story, and sensitive that it isn't, that they rebut the Guardian's suggestion that it isn't.
What "repercussions" will this have. Labour will lose the election because of it? Let it go.
J K Rowling tweeting that Dr Hilary Cass feels she can no longer safely travel on public transport. Jeez.
Just incredible how this irrational trans ideology has taken hold. A deadly mixture of woke and identity politics.
Had a long discussion last night with my 21yo youngest daughter. She is at Edinburgh Uni and told me that a lot of her friends think emotions and feelings are more important than facts when making decisions - lived experience is more valid than measurable outcomes or the law. What on earth have we done in educating that generation? Social media has done so much damage.
The new CEO of NPR in the US has explicitly said that seeking the truth is a problem:
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.”
I can top that. The then US President got much of the country to believe he hadn’t lost an election that, in truth, he had lost.
Hillary Clinton got much of the country to believe that she was legitimate winner in 2016 too.
She and Liz Truss would get on.
To be fair she got almost 3m more votes than the Orange One. She just didn’t win enough States.
Shoulda woulda coulda.
She lost. And she's learnt nothing from it, even today.
She lost because of the system. As Attlee did in 1951. And as he did, accepted it. Doesn’t mean it’s a fair system, or a good one.
She lost because she was a shit candidate.
There's no dressing that up.
Can I suggest a compromise?
She lost because it was an unfair system *and* she was a shit candidate?
Well, it's a system designed for electing a President of the United States of America, which is a federation of those same States- hence the electoral college electing the President via weighted delegates from each State.
It's not a unitary state so winning the popular vote means nothing unless you win the electoral college too.
Smaller states have disproportionally more electors per capita than the larger states.
That's a deliberate decision to prevent the small states being overly dominated by the large ones. It's a feature of the design. Everyone knows that is part of the rules.
The popular vote is good for bragging rights and in terms of measuring the size of a victory, but the system is decided on electoral college votes.
There's a practical benefit to the electoral college in the current environment which is that no state can rig the election by more than the electoral votes held by that state.
Swing state by definition have a lot of voters from either side. As a result their statehouses are either split between the parties or have a lot of members who represent people who vote for the other party. Likewise their supreme courts aren't usually under strong partisan control of one side. The result is that it's quite hard to make a swing state rig their elections, although you can tinker at the margins.
This isn't true of a one-party state. If one side has full, permanent control of every lever of power there's nothing to force them to honestly count the votes cast for the other side. That doesn't matter with the electoral college because they were going to cast all their electoral votes for their favoured party anyhow, but once you're counting the national popular vote it matters whether you have honest elections in every state, and there isn't really a system in place to ensure this.
That's an interesting point.
The popular vote winning margin in 2016 was about 3 million votes, and Clinton received more than 6 million votes in the States which had a winning margin for Trump at least as big as Indiana: Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Idaho, Kentucky, South Dakota, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Louisiana, Indiana.
Indiana has Republican supermajorities in its Senate (70-30) and House of Representatives (39-10).
J K Rowling tweeting that Dr Hilary Cass feels she can no longer safely travel on public transport. Jeez.
Just incredible how this irrational trans ideology has taken hold. A deadly mixture of woke and identity politics.
Had a long discussion last night with my 21yo youngest daughter. She is at Edinburgh Uni and told me that a lot of her friends think emotions and feelings are more important than facts when making decisions - lived experience is more valid than measurable outcomes or the law. What on earth have we done in educating that generation? Social media has done so much damage.
It’s great though that Rowling and her pals are really dialling down the emotions and feelz in this debate.
Why the fuck should you call for her to back down when you don't call for the looney wing of the trans ideoligists to stand down? Now if you had called for both then fair enough but you didn't
Touchy little fucker aint you. Insofar as it would make the slightest difference I'm not asking the ridiculous narcissist to do anything, though I daresay she'd enjoy some of the simping on here.
Touchy little fucker because I pointed out the truth here, I didn't support rowling I just said you never criticise the extremists on the other side....go vote for independence most of us south of the border dont want you anymore....oh right you cant because even the scottish hate you
You'll be turning your little weenie anger on the posters highlighting 'a deadly mixture of woke and identity politics' of a damaged generation on the other side shortly I suppose?
Have a pank. You'll feel better.
You been on the vegan venison
I refer you to the post last week.
Stopped being funny over a year ago mate.
still humourless pal, you must be a bundle of laughs down the pub You sound constipated so should heed your own guidance. GFY
Cyclefree - I have been wondering for some time how you would react to this claim from science fiction writer Robert Heinlein: Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression "patriotism." Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words "Patriotism" reads "women and children first!"
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
Actually they didn’t.
“Women and children first” was a reaction to some notorious late 19th Cent. shipwrecks where nearly all the survivors were able bodied men. In one or two cases, nearly all crew.
And Heineken was something of a fascist myth maker.
No he wasn't. He was about as far from fascist as you can get whilst still being right of centre. People who claim hewas a fascist have clearly never read any of his books.
According to a previous thread, Raynergate isn't cutting through... but bit by bit, more information emerges. Both Starmer and Reeves have supported Rayner... if she has to go, it could have significant repercussions....
Of FFS man, get a grip, read the story. This is such barrel scraping bullsh*tl. By "sign the document" they mean "witness Rayner's signature". Which anyone can do. Mine last one was witnessed by the receptionist at my firm, the one before that by my parents' next door neighbour. So this "new evidence" is that Rayner asked a neighbour of her husband (who has already given a statement to the police) to witness a transfer deed. What the f**k does that prove? Why didn't she get someone nearer her main house, they ask? Because she was at her husband's house when she needed the TR1 witnessed maybe?
In fact, paraphrase Ebert, this information doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. It isn't the bottom of the barrel. It isn't below the bottom of the barrel. It doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
They're so pathetically desperate to make this a story, and sensitive that it isn't, that they rebut the Guardian's suggestion that it isn't.
What "repercussions" will this have. Labour will lose the election because of it? Let it go.
Nah. Why let go.. because it obviously worries you. Tories won't win and don't deserve to be in power but we don't want a massive majority.
Comments
The cupboard is pretty bare but I don't think Rishi is going to find much by expecting Labour to show a bit of principle or courage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMH3akt07zs
[Edit: substituted in a video from 1989]
I am a woman, a member of the female sex. No man can ever become a member of the female sex. So no man has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about men being able to be women. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "womanhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the female sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the females of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the male sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, feminism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
Edit: It has a vital place in political discourse when those believing in gender seek to make political and legal changes at the expense and to the disadvantage of women, which is what has been happening in recent years, as any number of legal cases will show.
Though there might be scope for a pro family Conservative party to increase child benefit to increase our declining birthrate in future years, PM Meloni in Italy for instance has pushed measures including 'a cheque for families having a third child, fringe benefits up to €2,000 for families with kids'
https://www.euronews.com/2023/10/21/giorgia-melonis-scorecard-what-has-the-italian-pm-achieved-during-her-first-year-in-govern
The Greatest Book a Politician Ever Wrote
The late Bob Graham’s book is everything politics should be.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/20/bob-graham-political-book-00153402
@RpsAgainstTrump
·
1h
Steve Bannon calls for the removal of Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House: “Mike Johnson must go just like Kevin McCarthy.”
Democrats should do the right thing and save Mike Johnson from a motion to vacate.
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump
Locherby, Dunblane, Hungerford, Soham, Omagh, Sandy Hook, Beslan, Srebrenica, Treblinka, Aberfan, Bûcha, Halabja, Ghouta, Abu Ghraib, Bhopal, and so on.
The impact of news reporting on the global consciousness I suppose.
The headline doesn’t look good for Rayner although hard to know if the so called claim is on the document or just was mentioned to the neighbour.
👀
The first comment's a cracker.
And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not.
(From the second part of his 1973 speech to his old school, the US Naval Academy)
For the record, i agree that women and children first is the right principle for a society, and hope that, if it should ever come to that awful choice, I would do the right thing.
A few days later I was presented with a 'pamphlet' with Dave Prowse's picture on one side, Darth Vaders on the other. And in the middle a hand-written note saying 'Dave Prowse IS Darth Vader' with his signature underneath.
I'm sure he got over it eventually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X53ZSxkQ3Ho
Fifty years after the timely demise of The Black and White Minstrel Show mainstream media, including the allegedly woke BBC, are surprisingly receptive to transvestite entertainment under the guise of 'drag this' or 'drag that'. Are feminists not even slightly concerned about this grotesque misrepresentation of their sex and its effect on the development of young people?
https://youtu.be/fPO76Jlnz6c
Even that dodo Trump said called the Electoral College "a disaster for a democracy... a total sham and a travesty"
https://thehill.com/blogs/twitter-room/other-news/133889-trump-calls-for-revolution-blasts-electoral-college/
The issue about how teens with dysmorphia are treated is an entirely different question. I have been very clear that this has been a medical scandal and needs to be stopped. But that still doesn’t mean that people should not have their gender respected, provided the rights of others, specifically women, are respected too.
https://brass-eye-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Cake_(drug)
https://brass-eye-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Shatner's_Bassoon
UK Conservative strategists understood that perfectly in 2015. Hillary, in narrowly losing fly over States she was rather too keen on flying over rather than visiting, didn't in 2016. (I'm not saying that Trump understood this much better, but Hillary's campaign committed the fatal error).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbq3kc29Tmg
And the Brass Eye classic on the "Paedoph Isles":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUxRglIxAyI#t=4m35s
Do we think the country is ready for her?
Is PB ready?
TRUSS.
I do not have a gender. I do not believe in it. So do not ascribe to me or describe me in the language of a belief I do not share. If others want to believe it, that's up to them and they are free to do so. They are not, of course, free to force me to agree with them or subscribe to or validate their beliefs.
I am a man, a member of the male sex. No woman can ever become a member of the male sex. So no woman has the right to take ownership of my sex, tell me how to describe myself or indeed tell me how to live my life, how I should behave, dress, live, what I can say or how I should say it.
And yet that is precisely what they are seeking to do - by seeking to deny the existence of my sex and its importance. By lying about what it is and by lying about women being able to be men. I object to those lies - to the fundamental dishonesty inherent in this belief that "manhood" is nothing more than a "feeling in a ma's head" or an "identity".
It isn't. Being of the male sex is a material reality from which all sorts of consequences flow for the males of our species from the moment we are born to the day we die. Those consequences flow from our sex. And they are not shared by those of the female sex.
None of this is old-fashioned or, even, masculinism necessarily. It is simply observable fact.
The losers in this have been the castrated and sterilised vulnerable children who would otherwise have grown out of their dysphoria, or gone on to further medical intervention when they had the maturity to make a fully informed decision. Also women who no longer seek help from rape crisis centres because they don’t want to meet men, or no longer exercise in “women only” spaces because of their religion. And women athletes denied recognition - and in the US college scholarships.
The whole edifice is built on a lie - that you can change sex, and that children doing so will solve all their problems. Hence the ferocity and mendacity of the Trans Activists attacks on Cass. Notably almost all natal males who now identify as women. The aggression shows who they really are - men.
Activist Alejandra Caraballo @Esqueer_ has refused to acknowledge her singular role in pushing misinformation about the Cass Review.
Instead, Caraballo falsely accuses me of being an activist working for @SEGM_EBM after I have repeatedly exposed her falsehoods on this subject.
https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1781826480596508989
And for reasons I trust I don't have to explain, it's most cost-effective when culling to cull the female population between zero and 45. Otherwise you're more likely to get a temporary dip only.
Swing state by definition have a lot of voters from either side. As a result their statehouses are either split between the parties or have a lot of members who represent people who vote for the other party. Likewise their supreme courts aren't usually under strong partisan control of one side. The result is that it's quite hard to make a swing state rig their elections, although you can tinker at the margins.
This isn't true of a one-party state. If one side has full, permanent control of every lever of power there's nothing to force them to honestly count the votes cast for the other side. That doesn't matter with the electoral college because they were going to cast all their electoral votes for their favoured party anyhow, but once you're counting the national popular vote it matters whether you have honest elections in every state, and there isn't really a system in place to ensure this.
https://x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1781624847858102527?s=61
https://youtu.be/wVibsNPXBx0?si=pgpfcd80QzKcu45f
Sutcliffe the Musical
https://youtu.be/9pFbzrbzrtE?si=v0wJpvjWBe7l7jPV
Brass Eye was so good. Still stands up now. The paedophile special was extremely controversial with a labour minister at the time condemning it then revealing she’d not seen it.
It's an interesting comparison to when it was being built (which was 1853). It was taken down after the previous one not being maintained properly by the Revolutionary generation and their predecessors.
It's amazing how much of history only exists in the mind of the tourist !
Even fairly minor characters in popular series can get thousands.
We probably should be thankful that Nigel Farage is their leader because when these people vote alongside the rest of the population you end with with Brexit and then Bozo the clown and the following Governments.
Effectively maybe a dozen MAGA representatives have had a veto on almost all legislation since the last congressional election.
The photo below is of the repair of the spire of St Wulfram, Grantham, which is the same height as Notre-Dame (275ft vs 315ft) and where they had to rebuild the top 40 feet completely.
The most recent UK cathedral project would be the 2005 completion of the crossing tower to ~the original design at St Edmundsbury, but that is a tower. The most recent new spire on a UK CofE cathedral was the 80ft spire at Coventry, but that was installed in one piece by a helicopter in 1962.
The RCs may have a more recent project.
Interestingly I can't even find a fire where a major spire on a UK church was burnt down, though statistics say there must be one or two.
St Mark's church in Hamilton Terrace, St John's Wood, was gutted by fire in 2023 but the spire survived.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1781888139117633973?t=bLOVJRtG-tFc-3qDGqa90A&s=19
And the fact that Biden in 2020 managed a bigger swing nationally than in Wisconsin suggests there were other factors.
I'm surprised how soft and compliant the questioning is from Freddy Gray.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeU6w4zUHBo
“Women and children first” was a reaction to some notorious late 19th Cent. shipwrecks where nearly all the survivors were able bodied men. In one or two cases, nearly all crew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_La_Bourgogne
One fire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazar_de_la_Charité
Both French......
Mind you, Noel Coward reportedly preferred the Normandie to the Queen Mary as the French "didn't bother with this women & children first nonsense..."
NEW THREAD
Democrats would have voted for it; the GOP refused to bring it to the floor. At Trump's behest.
Now they're complaining the Ukraine bill didn't include border measures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_(1845)
The house sale document that could nail Angela Rayner https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13331907/house-sale-document-angela-rayner-labour-home.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton
Drip...drip ...drip....
In fact, paraphrase Ebert, this information doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. It isn't the bottom of the barrel. It isn't below the bottom of the barrel. It doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
They're so pathetically desperate to make this a story, and sensitive that it isn't, that they rebut the Guardian's suggestion that it isn't.
What "repercussions" will this have. Labour will lose the election because of it?
Let it go.
The popular vote winning margin in 2016 was about 3 million votes, and Clinton received more than 6 million votes in the States which had a winning margin for Trump at least as big as Indiana: Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Idaho, Kentucky, South Dakota, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Louisiana, Indiana.
Indiana has Republican supermajorities in its Senate (70-30) and House of Representatives (39-10).