Seattle Times - Bob’s Your Uncle: 2 Bob Fergusons withdraw from WA governor’s race
The state’s longtime attorney general is now the lone Bob Ferguson in the race for governor after two people with the same name withdrew from the race Monday. . . .
Their entrance into the race, orchestrated by conservative activist Glen Morgan, had raised legal and logistical questions, but the drama subsided Monday when the other Bobs dropped out under what they said was pressure from Bob Ferguson, the Democratic front-runner in the race.
The attorney general on Monday had urged the two to pull out by a 5 p.m. deadline for candidates to withdraw, or else risk felony charges. Flanked by supporters at Kerry Park in Queen Anne in the morning, Ferguson said his campaign had sent cease-and-desist letters to the other Bob Fergusons over the weekend.
State statute says that it is a felony for a person to file for an election with a surname similar to a person who has already filed for the same office “and whose political reputation is widely known, with intent to confuse and mislead the electors by capitalizing on the public reputation of the candidate who had previously filed.”
A statement posted on the website Neighbors for Bob Ferguson PAC, attributed to Robert Ferguson, an Army veteran in Graham, said the candidate was “faced with harassment and legal action if I did not withdraw from the race.” . . .
The second Bob Ferguson, a retired state employee from Yakima, withdrew later on Monday. In a statement to The Seattle Times, he said his “dream” had been “destroyed.” . . .
Ferguson — the attorney general — said Monday that he didn’t want the other two Bobs to be prosecuted and that he held “no ill will” toward them. He said he suspected they did not know the “legal implications” of their actions at the time they filed for election. . . .
Two of Ferguson’s leading rivals in the Aug. 6 primary, Republican Dave Reichert and Democrat Mark Mullet, criticized the three-Bobs strategy in statements Monday.
“In all nine of my previous campaigns, I have won without any games or antics such as these,” said Reichert, a former congressman and King County sheriff. “I don’t support any effort to deceive the voters of Washington state.”
Mullet, a state senator, agreed the other Fergusons should drop out, calling it an “illegal sideshow” that would confused voters and threaten democracy.
However, Semi Bird, a Republican and former Richland School Board member running for governor, said Ferguson’s “whining” was disingenuous . . .
SSI - Personally think that Bob Ferguson the AG was wrong - at least politically and possibly legally - in threatening legal action to urge the other Bob Fergusons out of the 2024 governors race. Given that the AG is the state's top legal officer and enforcer. And especially since being listed on the August primary ballot as "Bob Ferguson (Attorney General)" would have helped HIM cut through the clutter of 30 (now 28) gubernatorial candidates.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
1) I don’t think it is inherently divisive and 2) because LGBTQ+ people are treated differently in the society we live in, both now and historically, for not being cis het and we need a way to discuss that.
Okay. Question relating to the next UK general election.
Which seat will see the first Labour gain declared on the night, and what will different margins of victory say about the likely final result?
At this point I would go with Darlington. Labour need a 5.0% swing so should fall. I have a feeling that Darlington will have a smaller swing to Labour than the national average - the town's benefited more than most from leveling-up and the Tory MP seems sane. For that reason a 10% swing in Darlington would show Labour on course for a 100 seat majority.
Darlington (and to a lesser extent Bury North) is an interesting one, because the boundary changes are relatively small, so we'd be more confident in the swing relative to the notional result.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.
I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
Gore Vidal insisted until the day he died that there was no such thing as homosexual people, there were only homosexual activities.
From imperfect memory Vidal held to the PH paper test strip of sexuality, 7 rough points where eg 1 was Liberace and 7 John Wayne. Mind you those Hollywood types got up to all sorts, especially when advancing their careers, so who knows about the Duke.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
Gore Vidal insisted until the day he died that there was no such thing as homosexual people, there were only homosexual activities.
From imperfect memory Vidal held to the PH paper test strip of sexuality, 7 rough points where eg 1 was Liberace and 7 John Wayne. Mind you those Hollywood types got up to all sorts, especially when advancing their careers, so who knows about the Duke.
If it was a PH scale, where are the negative values?
Okay. Question relating to the next UK general election.
Which seat will see the first Labour gain declared on the night, and what will different margins of victory say about the likely final result?
Maybe Nuneaton or Blyth Valley.
I like Nuneaton as a choice - there's some history there, it was an important declaration as the 2015 results unfolded. It's also one of the seats where the boundaries are entirely unchanged, but I think quite a few of the others suggested will declare earlier.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.
I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
Of course they are. Countries are social constructs - the othering of foreigner’s is a product of a society prioritising a construct of a “citizen” or “subject” above someone outside of that (which is why very often you will see people who value the construct of the nation say “why don’t you go live elsewhere” when people criticise said nation or “they should be deported” when even citizens commit certain crimes, because a citizen is a prioritised subject within society).
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
Is there any characteristic of humanity that is truly binary and not a spectrum, even if that spectrum is highly weighted at one or both ends? In ye olden days, it was simple: men and women were well-defined, as were their roles, and the spectrum either had to hide or were ignored. Like, say, homosexuals.
Even in biology: amazingly, 1 in 500-1000 babies are born with six fingers on one hand. A friend of mine apparently has three nipples. 1-2% of people are intersex (depending on how that is defined). etc, etc.
In the last few decades, these differences - the spectrum - have become more accepted. My female redheaded German friend with three nipples will not be burnt at a stake (well, regarded, at least) as a witch. Gay people are ignored as unremarkable - IMV the best result.
I see little in this discussion that trans people (*) are not just another part of a mental/physical spectrum. They've always existed, and always will.
(*) 'Trans' itself is a spectrum term, from transvestite to transsexual.
Your intersex numbers are pretty misleading, I think.
Most biologists define sex by gametes. See this piece by Professor Richard Dawkins.
Sex is a true binary. It all started with the evolution of anisogamy – sexual reproduction where the gametes are of two discontinuous sizes: macrogametes or eggs, and microgametes or sperm. The difference is huge. You could pack 15,000 sperm into one human egg. When two individuals jointly invest in a baby, and one invests 15,000 times as much as the other, you might say that she (see how pronouns creep in unannounced) has made a greater commitment to the partnership.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.
I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
Of course they are. Countries are social constructs - the othering of foreigner’s is a product of a society prioritising a construct of a “citizen” or “subject” above someone outside of that (which is why very often you will see people who value the construct of the nation say “why don’t you go live elsewhere” when people criticise said nation or “they should be deported” when even citizens commit certain crimes, because a citizen is a prioritised subject within society).
You have hoist yourself by your own petard. The category of "LGBTQ+ people" defines certain people as special and others the rest.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
I'll have to disagree. The act of categorisation (especially a binary categorisation - irony) does not in and of itself imply that one is a norm and the other not.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
I'll have to disagree. The act of categorisation (especially a binary categorisation - irony) does not in and of itself imply that one is a norm and the other not.
You're failing to understand my point. That's not what I'm arguing at all.
It's not the act of categorisation in general that implies that one is a norm and the other not, but this form of categorisation in particular. Ask yourself why 'bi' is on the LGBTQ+ side and not the 'cis het' side.
Okay. Question relating to the next UK general election.
Which seat will see the first Labour gain declared on the night, and what will different margins of victory say about the likely final result?
Too hard for me, but much more interesting.
Also interesting:
Biden’s EV tariffs Kwarteng’s interview on “Leading” Today’s very poor productivity numbers. What we should read into Sunak’s speech if anything. Caulfield’s conspiracy-mongering.
Or a more philosophical question. Is Israel an apartheid state and if it is (almost certainly) should all Labour members who have been expelled for saying so be reinstated?
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
Is there any characteristic of humanity that is truly binary and not a spectrum, even if that spectrum is highly weighted at one or both ends? In ye olden days, it was simple: men and women were well-defined, as were their roles, and the spectrum either had to hide or were ignored. Like, say, homosexuals.
Even in biology: amazingly, 1 in 500-1000 babies are born with six fingers on one hand. A friend of mine apparently has three nipples. 1-2% of people are intersex (depending on how that is defined). etc, etc.
In the last few decades, these differences - the spectrum - have become more accepted. My female redheaded German friend with three nipples will not be burnt at a stake (well, regarded, at least) as a witch. Gay people are ignored as unremarkable - IMV the best result.
I see little in this discussion that trans people (*) are not just another part of a mental/physical spectrum. They've always existed, and always will.
(*) 'Trans' itself is a spectrum term, from transvestite to transsexual.
Your intersex numbers are pretty misleading, I think.
Most biologists define sex by gametes. See this piece by Professor Richard Dawkins.
Sex is a true binary. It all started with the evolution of anisogamy – sexual reproduction where the gametes are of two discontinuous sizes: macrogametes or eggs, and microgametes or sperm. The difference is huge. You could pack 15,000 sperm into one human egg. When two individuals jointly invest in a baby, and one invests 15,000 times as much as the other, you might say that she (see how pronouns creep in unannounced) has made a greater commitment to the partnership.
Which sorta backs up my point that everything is a spectrum. Including intersex...
No. The entire point of Dawkins’ piece is that sex is one of the very few truly binary things in biology. Whether you or I agree, it’s an excellent piece that is worth reading.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
And like I said yesterday - I have no idea what that has to do with anything. He says he is a straight man who has had sexual experiences with members of the same sex. Fine - many straight people do that. Many gay people have sex with people of the opposite sex - it doesn’t make them less gay. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make with this line of thought.
So if a straight man has a multi-year gay relationship, it doesn't make them any less straight?
It makes him human. I've always believed the timeline view of sexuality. We all fall somewhere along timeline and it is fluid and movable. Makes perfect sense.
Okay. Question relating to the next UK general election.
Which seat will see the first Labour gain declared on the night, and what will different margins of victory say about the likely final result?
Too hard for me, but much more interesting.
Also interesting:
Biden’s EV tariffs Kwarteng’s interview on “Leading” Today’s very poor productivity numbers. What we should read into Sunak’s speech if anything. Caulfield’s conspiracy-mongering.
Blyth Valley was the earliest-declaring (23:33) Conservative seat at the last election, with a majority of only 712 over Labour, so that would be a good shout - but I forgot about the boundary changes, which complicates things.
Now I need to find notional results for the new boundaries.
I think Blyth Valley (or it's replacement) is a good call, it's likely they'll try to stay in the race to declare early as is often the case with first declaration winner's. Looks like a definite Lab gain with newer boundaries, by how much and swing being the things to watch obviously.
I've for a long time been of the thought of a smaller Lab maj on the night, 30-40 range. But given the lamentable and unrelenting bad, very bad Tory numbers and poor results in the various elections I'm thinking it's going to be much worse than I first thought...
Does this apply to any other demographic, Landon? Do I get to be black if I like Motown and fancy myself in cornrows? What if I claim the authentic me has always been black and that you're being racist to me? Would that be OK, or would you find it ludicrous and deeply offensive?
Stonewall are back in front of an Employment Tribunal today for trying to get a black lesbian barrister fired.
To be fair, constant derailing without ever participating in the flow of conversation doesn't really seem much like debate to me.
Which is exactly Rowling’s complaint, that those of differing viewpoints to her own don’t want to actually debate with her, they want her to shut up and go away.
JKR doesn't debate anyone when anyone tries to engage with her tweets so for her to complain that people don't want to debate her seems dishonest.
See this thread:
You’ve asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes….
Which is not a 'debate'; it's a position platform.
" I do not, however, believe that surgeries and cross-sex hormones literally turn a person into the opposite sex, nor do I believe in the idea that each of us has a nebulous ‘gender identity’ that may or might not match our sexed bodies. "
Which is where, having known a few trans people, I think she's *very* wrong.
You are as entitled to your belief as Rowling is to hers.
The issue has been the TRA absolutist position and the consequences that would have for women’s rights, and sports, to take two examples.
There is no conflict between the rights of women and the ability for trans people to live their life in peace. Transwomen have, for example, had access to single sex spaces all my life (and probably all of your life) using only self ID and it has not been a systemic issue. There may be the odd case of an issue here and there, as there is over any large enough number of human interactions, but there is no evidence of ciswomen being systemically harmed by the inclusion of transwomen in their spaces.
What absolute bollox ( pardon the pun ). You are definitely eihter a comedian or not right in the head.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
And like I said yesterday - I have no idea what that has to do with anything. He says he is a straight man who has had sexual experiences with members of the same sex. Fine - many straight people do that. Many gay people have sex with people of the opposite sex - it doesn’t make them less gay. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make with this line of thought.
So if a straight man has a multi-year gay relationship, it doesn't make them any less straight?
It makes him human. I've always believed the timeline view of sexuality. We all fall somewhere along timeline and it is fluid and movable. Makes perfect sense.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
And like I said yesterday - I have no idea what that has to do with anything. He says he is a straight man who has had sexual experiences with members of the same sex. Fine - many straight people do that. Many gay people have sex with people of the opposite sex - it doesn’t make them less gay. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make with this line of thought.
So if a straight man has a multi-year gay relationship, it doesn't make them any less straight?
It makes him human. I've always believed the timeline view of sexuality. We all fall somewhere along timeline and it is fluid and movable. Makes perfect sense.
Another halfwit has joined up
Possibly, but one who has manners, unlike yourself.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.
For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
Is there any characteristic of humanity that is truly binary and not a spectrum, even if that spectrum is highly weighted at one or both ends? In ye olden days, it was simple: men and women were well-defined, as were their roles, and the spectrum either had to hide or were ignored. Like, say, homosexuals.
Even in biology: amazingly, 1 in 500-1000 babies are born with six fingers on one hand. A friend of mine apparently has three nipples. 1-2% of people are intersex (depending on how that is defined). etc, etc.
In the last few decades, these differences - the spectrum - have become more accepted. My female redheaded German friend with three nipples will not be burnt at a stake (well, regarded, at least) as a witch. Gay people are ignored as unremarkable - IMV the best result.
I see little in this discussion that trans people (*) are not just another part of a mental/physical spectrum. They've always existed, and always will.
(*) 'Trans' itself is a spectrum term, from transvestite to transsexual.
Your intersex numbers are pretty misleading, I think.
Most biologists define sex by gametes. See this piece by Professor Richard Dawkins.
Sex is a true binary. It all started with the evolution of anisogamy – sexual reproduction where the gametes are of two discontinuous sizes: macrogametes or eggs, and microgametes or sperm. The difference is huge. You could pack 15,000 sperm into one human egg. When two individuals jointly invest in a baby, and one invests 15,000 times as much as the other, you might say that she (see how pronouns creep in unannounced) has made a greater commitment to the partnership.
Which sorta backs up my point that everything is a spectrum. Including intersex...
No. The entire point of Dawkins’ piece is that sex is one of the very few truly binary things in biology. Whether you or I agree, it’s an excellent piece that is worth reading.
I agree that it's worth reading. I disagree that it proves his point.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
And like I said yesterday - I have no idea what that has to do with anything. He says he is a straight man who has had sexual experiences with members of the same sex. Fine - many straight people do that. Many gay people have sex with people of the opposite sex - it doesn’t make them less gay. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make with this line of thought.
So if a straight man has a multi-year gay relationship, it doesn't make them any less straight?
It makes him human. I've always believed the timeline view of sexuality. We all fall somewhere along timeline and it is fluid and movable. Makes perfect sense.
Another halfwit has joined up
Possibly, but one who has manners, unlike yourself.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
And like I said yesterday - I have no idea what that has to do with anything. He says he is a straight man who has had sexual experiences with members of the same sex. Fine - many straight people do that. Many gay people have sex with people of the opposite sex - it doesn’t make them less gay. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make with this line of thought.
So if a straight man has a multi-year gay relationship, it doesn't make them any less straight?
It makes him human. I've always believed the timeline view of sexuality. We all fall somewhere along timeline and it is fluid and movable. Makes perfect sense.
Another halfwit has joined up
Possibly, but one who has manners, unlike yourself.
A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.
Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.
But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.
On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?
Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?
Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:
What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?
Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?
It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.
I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
And like I said yesterday - I have no idea what that has to do with anything. He says he is a straight man who has had sexual experiences with members of the same sex. Fine - many straight people do that. Many gay people have sex with people of the opposite sex - it doesn’t make them less gay. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make with this line of thought.
So if a straight man has a multi-year gay relationship, it doesn't make them any less straight?
It makes him human. I've always believed the timeline view of sexuality. We all fall somewhere along timeline and it is fluid and movable. Makes perfect sense.
Another halfwit has joined up
Possibly, but one who has manners, unlike yourself.
What manners, deluded more like.
Apart from your obvious rudeness and throwing around of inane comments you seem unable to understand that this is a comments forum, where ideas and opinions are shared and discussed intelligently. That's the point of it...
Comments
The state’s longtime attorney general is now the lone Bob Ferguson in the race for governor after two people with the same name withdrew from the race Monday. . . .
Their entrance into the race, orchestrated by conservative activist Glen Morgan, had raised legal and logistical questions, but the drama subsided Monday when the other Bobs dropped out under what they said was pressure from Bob Ferguson, the Democratic front-runner in the race.
The attorney general on Monday had urged the two to pull out by a 5 p.m. deadline for candidates to withdraw, or else risk felony charges. Flanked by supporters at Kerry Park in Queen Anne in the morning, Ferguson said his campaign had sent cease-and-desist letters to the other Bob Fergusons over the weekend.
State statute says that it is a felony for a person to file for an election with a surname similar to a person who has already filed for the same office “and whose political reputation is widely known, with intent to confuse and mislead the electors by capitalizing on the public reputation of the candidate who had previously filed.”
A statement posted on the website Neighbors for Bob Ferguson PAC, attributed to Robert Ferguson, an Army veteran in Graham, said the candidate was “faced with harassment and legal action if I did not withdraw from the race.” . . .
The second Bob Ferguson, a retired state employee from Yakima, withdrew later on Monday. In a statement to The Seattle Times, he said his “dream” had been “destroyed.” . . .
Ferguson — the attorney general — said Monday that he didn’t want the other two Bobs to be prosecuted and that he held “no ill will” toward them. He said he suspected they did not know the “legal implications” of their actions at the time they filed for election. . . .
Two of Ferguson’s leading rivals in the Aug. 6 primary, Republican Dave Reichert and Democrat Mark Mullet, criticized the three-Bobs strategy in statements Monday.
“In all nine of my previous campaigns, I have won without any games or antics such as these,” said Reichert, a former congressman and King County sheriff. “I don’t support any effort to deceive the voters of Washington state.”
Mullet, a state senator, agreed the other Fergusons should drop out, calling it an “illegal sideshow” that would confused voters and threaten democracy.
However, Semi Bird, a Republican and former Richland School Board member running for governor, said Ferguson’s “whining” was disingenuous . . .
SSI - Personally think that Bob Ferguson the AG was wrong - at least politically and possibly legally - in threatening legal action to urge the other Bob Fergusons out of the 2024 governors race. Given that the AG is the state's top legal officer and enforcer. And especially since being listed on the August primary ballot as "Bob Ferguson (Attorney General)" would have helped HIM cut through the clutter of 30 (now 28) gubernatorial candidates.
I had walked about 75 feet, when I saw this hummingbird feeding. These little birds are, I should add, exceptionally difficult subjects.
A political question: Should these birds be introduced into parts of Europe to increase biological diversity?
(I reduced the width of the original to 600 pixels, hoping that would look well enough on this web page.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence
Which sorta backs up my point that everything is a spectrum. Including intersex...
A little bit on how small these birds are: Ordinarily, their nests are just large enough to hold a sewing thimble or two eggs.
It's not the act of categorisation in general that implies that one is a norm and the other not, but this form of categorisation in particular. Ask yourself why 'bi' is on the LGBTQ+ side and not the 'cis het' side.
I've for a long time been of the thought of a smaller Lab maj on the night, 30-40 range. But given the lamentable and unrelenting bad, very bad Tory numbers and poor results in the various elections I'm thinking it's going to be much worse than I first thought...