Oh for goodness sake! Could the Tory leadership race get any dumber? It’s not the Equality Act that’s the problem! 🤦♀️ It acknowledges the biological reality of sex as Scotland’s Supreme Court held recently thanx to @ForWomenScot
Let's choose. He is either - a) an idiot b) badly informed c) well-informed but pandering to the gallery d) panicking e) using this issue to attack equalities law more generally.
The possibility of (e) worries me, especially given the nonsense Suella Braverman has been coming out with. Yet even now the Labour Party cannot be relied on to protect womens' rights or the rights of troubled children to have the best possible medical care.
Is it beyond them to get advice from well-informed equalities lawyers?
I did tell you that your anti-trans activism would rebound on you Cyclefree in exactly this way, with a rolling back of all the advances made for women and other minorities in the C20th but you wouldn’t have it.
What a pile of fat hairy bollocks
The truth is often unpalatable, I agree.
You’re literally claiming that the right to vote will be taken away from women. Get a grip
Well, I wouldn’t put that past some of the people involved, sure. But the most recent stuff will go first, if they get their way.
My personal belief is that Cyclefree et al have been used by people with a much wider agenda: They don’t give a stuff about trans people particularly, (I mean, they believe them to be degenerate perverts who have rejected God’s mercy, but they hardly limit that attitude to trans people...) they’re really after the unrolling of the liberal project. Gay rights, women’s rights, the whole lot.
I am quite certain that there are people with precisely that agenda. Especially in the US. And groups in Europe too.
But the problem we have - and I genuinely wish you would engage with it rather than dismissing it - is this: TRAs also have an agenda and it is very explicitly and openly to replace sex with gender and to limit or remove existing rights for women. Stonewall, for instance, has openly called for the single sex exemptions in the Equality Act to be removed, for the offence of rape by deception to be removed. These proposals and self-ID will diminish the position of women, not simply in relation to single sex spaces but in relation to equal pay (the use of a comparator is rendered meaningless if self-ID is permitted). Abolition of one of the crimes of rape is in no sense a progressive cause.
Your position seems to be that women should not campaign against this but accept it because otherwise they might possibly give succour to some right-wing groups. It assumes that Stonewall and others supporting their stance are progressive because they say they are. I judge them on what they advocate. And there is nothing progressive about what they are advocating.
So why should women not campaign against something that will harm them?That is an absurd and immoral view IMO. And, frankly, sexist because it is saying - whether you mean to or not - that women should never put their interests first.
My position is that you & people like you are taking sides in a culture war that will rebound on you in ways that you will find deeply unconformable if you “win”.
Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it & more besides.
It's a case of deciding issues on their merits. It's a false choice to say that either one must be on the side of trans activists or on the side of the hard right of the US Republican party.
Otherwise it is simply “Shut up and sit at the back of the bus.”
The argument that “X is supported by bad people, therefore X cannot be supported” is ignorant shit.
The Nazis were anti-smoking. Should we all get a 60 a day habit to prove our moral purity?
Totally, but OTOH it is not a sign of intelligent free thinking to pay no regard whatsoever to the type of people who agree or disagree with you on a topic. Eg if lots of palpable bigots are on the same side as you on an issue it merits a think about why this is. If having done so you remain happy with your position, fine, but to not bother with that step at all is vice not virtue. It's like skipping due diligence before buying something.
Perhaps. But then you are tthering your moral position to ugliest exponents of an idea....
The blanket idea that "You must think x to be progressive" is as much garbage as "You must think x to be a loyal follower of the Kaiser*".
Among other things, some groups play the game of maliciously supporting causes and candidates.
*The Kaiser did tell one funny joke. Some say that this balanced out the whole WWI thing.
You're not doing that. As explained you're doing due diligence.
And yes I've already agreed - and I still agree - that "you must think X to be progressive" is nonsense.
You should do due diligence on all your ideas - especially the ones that all “the right people” support.
Consider. In a society not far from ours in time, location and kinship, there was a Great Moral Question. Everyone said answer A was right. A few lunatics fought against it there - most of the opposition cane from outside the society in question.
A noted follower of B held public meetings to provoke riots. He killed with his own hands a number of protestors. He even wrote a pamphlet about how best to kill someone with a knife…. His name was Cassius Clay.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
Could she take the Tory party with her is the question. At one time I'd have thought not, but Boris managed to make the party of law and order an apologist organization for criminality, so who knows?
No chance. Tory drug policy is decided by Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre, and they would never support it.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
Until about 10 years ago these difficult issues weren't politicised in the way they are today. We need to return to that state of affairs in my opinion.
It is hard to see how the genie goes back in the bottle.
It is why I caution the view that the next election is lost for the Tories purely because of the economic disaster we’re seeing.
Identity and cultural issues do matter and the more entrenched people get into their positions the more this is going to be harder to unwind.
I don't see any UK polling suggesting it is a top issue for many people. I fully respect that it is a top issue for some people and governments have to deal with all issues, whether the bulk of the electorate cares much about them or not. But for it to be an election campaign decider, one would expect polling suggesting people prioritised such issues more than they currently do.
It’s a potent wedge issue.
At on some level, people expect the government not to be funding what looks to be quite odd medical experiments on vulnerable teenagers.
What is your evidence that it is a potent wedge issue? If it is so potent, surely some sort of polling would pick that up. Do you have any examples of polling you're drawing on here?
I don’t think it’s been deployed in an actual campaign yet, although it has in the US.
I don’t think people put it above “cost of living” etc, but look at the heat it inspires on here.
My theory is that high-income people who don't feel cost of living, and don't get offended by people from European or other heritages, are easier to get worked up over trans.
I don’t think so.
I think gender identity is so primal than pretty much everyone can get worked up about it if they’re exposed to the “right” narrative.
It doesn't seem to generate the same heat in other European countries.
The great Trans-Terf war actually started in Britain and was a largely British affair until very recently. We have now exported it successfully - yay go us - to the States, and we're trying to launch it in the Australian market. I strongly suspect the French are blocking this particular British Woke Insanity at Calais
I'm not quite sure WHY it is a distinctively British product
Yes, odd. Here and the US, basically. Flopped in Oz as CHB was noting.
Several countries are more liberal than we are on transgender rights yet there isn't the fevered backlash against that Woke Insanity (you) or Reasonable Reforms (me) that we see here in the UK.
One important reason it didn't work in Australia is because of compulsory voting. Cultural issues such as this cannot be used to drive up the voter turnout of your own side, because everybody is already turning up to vote.
The other thing is that the Australian Labor Party is more socially conservative compared to the US Democrats and possibly also UK Labour. The reason is that more left-wing voters tend to vote for the Australian Greens, who are a very strong 3rd party (roughly as strong as the Lib Dems in the UK).
The damaging revelations of the Jan. 6 committee hearings are fueling skepticism among Senate Republicans that former President Trump can win the GOP nomination in 2024 or even run for another term in the White House.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
The culture war in the UK has only recently become a heated ‘war’ - or so it feels - because until a few years ago the *progressive left* won every battle with barely a shot fired. They simply conquered. It wasn’t a war
It’s only now that the ‘progressives’ have moved on to truly suspicious, objectionable causes - transgender toddlers, all whites are racist - that people have said Enough. And they are fighting back. And it really is a war
Of course it wasn't a war. Section 28 wasn't Thatcher bigotry, it was just a woke myth.
Given the concept of “transgender toddlers” etc, it is now quite easy to see how the Thatcher government kneejerked itself into introducing Section 28.
I have new “appreciation” for how people like Harriet Harman ended up pretty much unwittingly supporting the pro-paedophile lobby of the 70s, too.
I don't see a big difference between transgender toddlers and Christian or Muslim toddlers. It is a shorthand for the parent's beliefs and intentions.
Gender is not a matter of “faith”.
In a way it is. There's no rational basis to believe someone can be in the 'wrong' body.
That's the same as saying the concept of gender is irrational. It's meaningful only if it can differ (in an individual) from biological sex. If it can't it means gender is null and void for all practical purposes hence so is the notion of transgender. I reckon this view is quite widely held.
I don't think it's the same. Even if you accept the theory of gender as something socially constructed, it doesn't automatically follow that someone who identifies as the opposite gender to their biological sex literally is a man/woman trapped in a woman/man's body.
Kind of does though. "Trapped in wrong body" is code for "My sex is different to my gender."
If the concept of gender is meaningful it follows it is different to sex. If it isn't we don't need the term.
And if the 2 things are different a person can have their sex and gender misaligned - ie be trapped in the wrong body.
This is only irrational to somebody who thinks the concept of gender is irrational.
Arguably it's the other way round. If you see social gender and biological sex as two independent things, then even if they are misaligned, your body is your body; you are you.
If you say that someone has the 'wrong' body then you're actually denying that gender is separable from sex.
"Wrong body" in this context doesn't mean a denial of sex on birth. This remains a fact but it doesn't match gender. So, a transgender person is "trapped" in a body which differs from their gender. I'd only see irrationality there if I thought the whole notion of gender as something different to sex was irrational. Eg like Cookie does. And you too maybe?
If something is 'wrong' in that configuration, why is it the body and not the psyche? And if nothing is wrong, why is the progressive approach to change the person's body to bring it into conformity with social expectations, rather than to change social attitudes to gender roles?
Answer my question maybe before posing more for me?
Not sure why you think it is such a gotcha. It's a very difficult concept. I assume you don't identify it as physical. If it is mental, are there any other mental qualities which are as binary, boolean either/or as this? Can't think of any. Why can't we just talk about people who to a greater or lesser extent would like to be the other sex, to the extent that is possible?
No gotchas. It's more that old Wills has a habit of just throwing out the questions and it's unbalanced if you don't make him answer some himself.
My understanding of Gender Dysphoria is that it's feeling of distress that your birth sex doesn't match your gender. M or F being overwhelmingly the main categories.
As for your question, ok, but how is that different or better to how we are talking about it?
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
Er, you think Genghis Khan was a parlour pinko anyway.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Watch that MAGA speech by Kari Lake. She is incredibly good: a natural-born populist politician. She whips up the crowd, and they love her right back
Frightening
"Thrilling" is what I think at least a part of you means?
Yes. Hitler could also be thrilling. He was a great orator in his own florid way. And yet I manage to hold this opinion without being a Nazi, and while wishing Hitler had never existed
Another speaker I find thrilling is the young Hugo Chavez. He has the same quality as Kari Lake: he commands your attention and it is difficult to look away. This is pure charisma. It is rare. Pay attention when you see it
I've watched speeches by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Stalin's style was similar to that of a BBC announcer: "This is the news." Hitler is the one who stands out. What distinguished his style of public speaking was that he spoke as if he was in great emotional pain. His speeches were practically shamanic. Lenin was between the other two. His style was similar to Hitler's, but he operated at a far lower level of skill and intensity. Comparing the two speakers would be like comparing a county-level athlete with a world champion.
Agreed, Hugo Chavez's 1994 speech in Havana was a masterpiece. But I don't know of any speech in the last 50 years by anyone that could top his "por ahora" speech of 1992.
Hitler is TOO flamboyant and hyperbolic for British tastes. But it clearly resonated with a lot of Germans. As Susan Sontag said (IIRC) "he brought Germany to orgasm with his speeches". And it is almost literally true. If you see footage of a famous Hitler speech, the people in the crowd look at him with bright, wet eyes, mesmerised, thrilled, moved, even aroused
Chavez is an intriguing contrast. He's nothing like Hitler but just as "good". That quiet hypnotic intensity. He is erudite without being pompous, his emotions are profound rather than raw
I can't think of a single British politician since Churchill with these skills: great oratory combined with great charisma. Obama could be excellent at his best but again not at this world class standard
It is unfortunate that these talents often seem to be gifted to demagogues rather than democrats
I would say the party leader who has been the best speaker since Churchill was Kinnock. God knows I was no more left wing as a child than I am now, but I always thought he performed his art well. The Welsh accent too - best speaking accent for the job, I'd say. Most British accents, at least some of the audience will take against you immediately. Less so with Welsh. Less so also with NE English, Highland Scots and SW English, though I'd say Welsh is more persuasive.
Kinnock was a powerful speaker in small doses and as long as he kept control of himself.
Watch that MAGA speech by Kari Lake. She is incredibly good: a natural-born populist politician. She whips up the crowd, and they love her right back
Frightening
"Thrilling" is what I think at least a part of you means?
Yes. Hitler could also be thrilling. He was a great orator in his own florid way. And yet I manage to hold this opinion without being a Nazi, and while wishing Hitler had never existed
Another speaker I find thrilling is the young Hugo Chavez. He has the same quality as Kari Lake: he commands your attention and it is difficult to look away. This is pure charisma. It is rare. Pay attention when you see it
I've watched speeches by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Stalin's style was similar to that of a BBC announcer: "This is the news." Hitler is the one who stands out. What distinguished his style of public speaking was that he spoke as if he was in great emotional pain. His speeches were practically shamanic. Lenin was between the other two. His style was similar to Hitler's, but he operated at a far lower level of skill and intensity. Comparing the two speakers would be like comparing a county-level athlete with a world champion.
Agreed, Hugo Chavez's 1994 speech in Havana was a masterpiece. But I don't know of any speech in the last 50 years by anyone that could top his "por ahora" speech of 1992.
Hitler is TOO flamboyant and hyperbolic for British tastes. But it clearly resonated with a lot of Germans. As Susan Sontag said (IIRC) "he brought Germany to orgasm with his speeches". And it is almost literally true. If you see footage of a famous Hitler speech, the people in the crowd look at him with bright, wet eyes, mesmerised, thrilled, moved, even aroused
Chavez is an intriguing contrast. He's nothing like Hitler but just as "good". That quiet hypnotic intensity. He is erudite without being pompous, his emotions are profound rather than raw
I can't think of a single British politician since Churchill with these skills: great oratory combined with great charisma. Obama could be excellent at his best but again not at this world class standard
It is unfortunate that these talents often seem to be gifted to demagogues rather than democrats
I would say the party leader who has been the best speaker since Churchill was Kinnock. God knows I was no more left wing as a child than I am now, but I always thought he performed his art well. The Welsh accent too - best speaking accent for the job, I'd say. Most British accents, at least some of the audience will take against you immediately. Less so with Welsh. Less so also with NE English, Highland Scots and SW English, though I'd say Welsh is more persuasive.
Yes, Kinnock was the best senior British politician in the postwar era - as an orator
I've just been reading some websites that rank the best political speakers of all time and, bizarrely, Thatcher appears on a few lists. This is surely wrong. They are confusing political importance with skilful oratory. Thatcher was competent: sometimes stilted, sometimes grand, but never brilliant
She did however do one outstanding, unforgettable speech: to the party the day after the Brighton Bomb, which tried to kill her (and came horribly close)
It is outstanding because she did it at all. A few hours later. With total calmness and aplomb
Watching this as a layabout student was when I realised she had REAL greatness in her, and was going to change the country for good, and for the better. I remember the moment distinctly
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
Watch that MAGA speech by Kari Lake. She is incredibly good: a natural-born populist politician. She whips up the crowd, and they love her right back
Frightening
"Thrilling" is what I think at least a part of you means?
Yes. Hitler could also be thrilling. He was a great orator in his own florid way. And yet I manage to hold this opinion without being a Nazi, and while wishing Hitler had never existed
Another speaker I find thrilling is the young Hugo Chavez. He has the same quality as Kari Lake: he commands your attention and it is difficult to look away. This is pure charisma. It is rare. Pay attention when you see it
I've watched speeches by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Stalin's style was similar to that of a BBC announcer: "This is the news." Hitler is the one who stands out. What distinguished his style of public speaking was that he spoke as if he was in great emotional pain. His speeches were practically shamanic. Lenin was between the other two. His style was similar to Hitler's, but he operated at a far lower level of skill and intensity. Comparing the two speakers would be like comparing a county-level athlete with a world champion.
Agreed, Hugo Chavez's 1994 speech in Havana was a masterpiece. But I don't know of any speech in the last 50 years by anyone that could top his "por ahora" speech of 1992.
Hitler is TOO flamboyant and hyperbolic for British tastes. But it clearly resonated with a lot of Germans. As Susan Sontag said (IIRC) "he brought Germany to orgasm with his speeches". And it is almost literally true. If you see footage of a famous Hitler speech, the people in the crowd look at him with bright, wet eyes, mesmerised, thrilled, moved, even aroused
Chavez is an intriguing contrast. He's nothing like Hitler but just as "good". That quiet hypnotic intensity. He is erudite without being pompous, his emotions are profound rather than raw
I can't think of a single British politician since Churchill with these skills: great oratory combined with great charisma. Obama could be excellent at his best but again not at this world class standard
It is unfortunate that these talents often seem to be gifted to demagogues rather than democrats
I would say the party leader who has been the best speaker since Churchill was Kinnock. God knows I was no more left wing as a child than I am now, but I always thought he performed his art well. The Welsh accent too - best speaking accent for the job, I'd say. Most British accents, at least some of the audience will take against you immediately. Less so with Welsh. Less so also with NE English, Highland Scots and SW English, though I'd say Welsh is more persuasive.
Kinnock was a powerful speaker in small doses and as long as he kept control of himself.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
The latter isn't common knowledge (though neither is 'peggate' actual knowledge, but you know what I mean). I still don't know what happened in Finland, though I can make a relatively educated guess.
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
The culture war in the UK has only recently become a heated ‘war’ - or so it feels - because until a few years ago the *progressive left* won every battle with barely a shot fired. They simply conquered. It wasn’t a war
It’s only now that the ‘progressives’ have moved on to truly suspicious, objectionable causes - transgender toddlers, all whites are racist - that people have said Enough. And they are fighting back. And it really is a war
Of course it wasn't a war. Section 28 wasn't Thatcher bigotry, it was just a woke myth.
Given the concept of “transgender toddlers” etc, it is now quite easy to see how the Thatcher government kneejerked itself into introducing Section 28.
I have new “appreciation” for how people like Harriet Harman ended up pretty much unwittingly supporting the pro-paedophile lobby of the 70s, too.
I don't see a big difference between transgender toddlers and Christian or Muslim toddlers. It is a shorthand for the parent's beliefs and intentions.
Gender is not a matter of “faith”.
In a way it is. There's no rational basis to believe someone can be in the 'wrong' body.
That's the same as saying the concept of gender is irrational. It's meaningful only if it can differ (in an individual) from biological sex. If it can't it means gender is null and void for all practical purposes hence so is the notion of transgender. I reckon this view is quite widely held.
I don't think it's the same. Even if you accept the theory of gender as something socially constructed, it doesn't automatically follow that someone who identifies as the opposite gender to their biological sex literally is a man/woman trapped in a woman/man's body.
Kind of does though. "Trapped in wrong body" is code for "My sex is different to my gender."
If the concept of gender is meaningful it follows it is different to sex. If it isn't we don't need the term.
And if the 2 things are different a person can have their sex and gender misaligned - ie be trapped in the wrong body.
This is only irrational to somebody who thinks the concept of gender is irrational.
Arguably it's the other way round. If you see social gender and biological sex as two independent things, then even if they are misaligned, your body is your body; you are you.
If you say that someone has the 'wrong' body then you're actually denying that gender is separable from sex.
"Wrong body" in this context doesn't mean a denial of sex on birth. This remains a fact but it doesn't match gender. So, a transgender person is "trapped" in a body which differs from their gender. I'd only see irrationality there if I thought the whole notion of gender as something different to sex was irrational. Eg like Cookie does. And you too maybe?
If something is 'wrong' in that configuration, why is it the body and not the psyche? And if nothing is wrong, why is the progressive approach to change the person's body to bring it into conformity with social expectations, rather than to change social attitudes to gender roles?
Indeed, a girl playing with train sets and monster trucks doesn't mean she was born in the wrong sex. It's completely mad that we've got to a stage where these kinds of ideas are being used to perpetrate abuse against children.
Indeed.
And for anyone to suggest that a girl who plays with trains and trucks should really become a boy would indicate they hold some very old fashioned views of the interests of kids.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
Until about 10 years ago these difficult issues weren't politicised in the way they are today. We need to return to that state of affairs in my opinion.
It is hard to see how the genie goes back in the bottle.
It is why I caution the view that the next election is lost for the Tories purely because of the economic disaster we’re seeing.
Identity and cultural issues do matter and the more entrenched people get into their positions the more this is going to be harder to unwind.
I don't see any UK polling suggesting it is a top issue for many people. I fully respect that it is a top issue for some people and governments have to deal with all issues, whether the bulk of the electorate cares much about them or not. But for it to be an election campaign decider, one would expect polling suggesting people prioritised such issues more than they currently do.
It’s a potent wedge issue.
At on some level, people expect the government not to be funding what looks to be quite odd medical experiments on vulnerable teenagers.
What is your evidence that it is a potent wedge issue? If it is so potent, surely some sort of polling would pick that up. Do you have any examples of polling you're drawing on here?
I don’t think it’s been deployed in an actual campaign yet, although it has in the US.
I don’t think people put it above “cost of living” etc, but look at the heat it inspires on here.
My theory is that high-income people who don't feel cost of living, and don't get offended by people from European or other heritages, are easier to get worked up over trans.
I don’t think so.
I think gender identity is so primal than pretty much everyone can get worked up about it if they’re exposed to the “right” narrative.
It doesn't seem to generate the same heat in other European countries.
The great Trans-Terf war actually started in Britain and was a largely British affair until very recently. We have now exported it successfully - yay go us - to the States, and we're trying to launch it in the Australian market. I strongly suspect the French are blocking this particular British Woke Insanity at Calais
I'm not quite sure WHY it is a distinctively British product
Yes, odd. Here and the US, basically. Flopped in Oz as CHB was noting.
Several countries are more liberal than we are on transgender rights yet there isn't the fevered backlash against that Woke Insanity (you) or Reasonable Reforms (me) that we see here in the UK.
One important reason it didn't work in Australia is because of compulsory voting. Cultural issues such as this cannot be used to drive up the voter turnout of your own side, because everybody is already turning up to vote.
The other thing is that the Australian Labor Party is more socially conservative compared to the US Democrats and possibly also UK Labour. The reason is that more left-wing voters tend to vote for the Australian Greens, who are a very strong 3rd party (roughly as strong as the Lib Dems in the UK).
Also, Australia's second rate voting system boosted the Teals. And climate change was a bigger issue in Australia, which it wouldn't be here - afaict Truss and Sunak are both fully signed up to the orthodoxy.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
The problem with your argument is that it is always better to stop voting your way down a list than to give points to your opponents which might be critical in the late playoffs. I suppose however it is possible that there was someone even more evil (in your eyes) than a PC candidate, so you would want to make as sure as possible this last candidate didn't win.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
One of the things I really appreciate about @ishmaelx is that I usually have no idea which way he will opine on a subject.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
latest royal family gossip relating to lizzy's grandkids
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
Watch that MAGA speech by Kari Lake. She is incredibly good: a natural-born populist politician. She whips up the crowd, and they love her right back
Frightening
"Thrilling" is what I think at least a part of you means?
Yes. Hitler could also be thrilling. He was a great orator in his own florid way. And yet I manage to hold this opinion without being a Nazi, and while wishing Hitler had never existed
Another speaker I find thrilling is the young Hugo Chavez. He has the same quality as Kari Lake: he commands your attention and it is difficult to look away. This is pure charisma. It is rare. Pay attention when you see it
I've watched speeches by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Stalin's style was similar to that of a BBC announcer: "This is the news." Hitler is the one who stands out. What distinguished his style of public speaking was that he spoke as if he was in great emotional pain. His speeches were practically shamanic. Lenin was between the other two. His style was similar to Hitler's, but he operated at a far lower level of skill and intensity. Comparing the two speakers would be like comparing a county-level athlete with a world champion.
Agreed, Hugo Chavez's 1994 speech in Havana was a masterpiece. But I don't know of any speech in the last 50 years by anyone that could top his "por ahora" speech of 1992.
Hitler is TOO flamboyant and hyperbolic for British tastes. But it clearly resonated with a lot of Germans. As Susan Sontag said (IIRC) "he brought Germany to orgasm with his speeches". And it is almost literally true. If you see footage of a famous Hitler speech, the people in the crowd look at him with bright, wet eyes, mesmerised, thrilled, moved, even aroused
Chavez is an intriguing contrast. He's nothing like Hitler but just as "good". That quiet hypnotic intensity. He is erudite without being pompous, his emotions are profound rather than raw
I can't think of a single British politician since Churchill with these skills: great oratory combined with great charisma. Obama could be excellent at his best but again not at this world class standard
It is unfortunate that these talents often seem to be gifted to demagogues rather than democrats
I would say the party leader who has been the best speaker since Churchill was Kinnock. God knows I was no more left wing as a child than I am now, but I always thought he performed his art well. The Welsh accent too - best speaking accent for the job, I'd say. Most British accents, at least some of the audience will take against you immediately. Less so with Welsh. Less so also with NE English, Highland Scots and SW English, though I'd say Welsh is more persuasive.
Kinnock was a powerful speaker in small doses and as long as he kept control of himself.
Kinnock's problem was that as he spoke to a live crowd, he moved his head around. It is what speakers do, at least when they are not struggling to read an autocue. Trouble is, often the television cameras would show tight close-ups (Roger will know the technical terms) from the neck up which made Kinnock's head movement look absurd or even deranged. You'd think Peter Mandelson, as a tv producer, would have been on to this but apparently not.
The damaging revelations of the Jan. 6 committee hearings are fueling skepticism among Senate Republicans that former President Trump can win the GOP nomination in 2024 or even run for another term in the White House.
If Trump backed candidates fail in November then his credibility will be damaged.
Speaking of which am I correct that Trump backed candidates in Georgia and Pennsylvania look like they're making a mess of their Senate races ?
If so it becomes very hard for the GOP to take control as they'd need to win in both Arizona and Nevada - New Hampshire seems to be another flop for them.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
Sorry. I think it is very funny
Also important. The Royalist narrative is London Bridge, then stopgap period of Chas n Camilla who people have forgiven and taken to their hearts, then sunlit upland time with the utterly wholesome Baldies. I cannot imagine more of a setback to that.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Alleged bedtime predilections of a certain royal. I haven't inquired into the details (after an unfortunate experience some decades back with another kink [edit] or rather the then slang for it).
Edit: I thought at first it was the Finnish/Cabinet Minister thing, but the emphasis seems to be on royalty, so I lost interest.
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
The culture war in the UK has only recently become a heated ‘war’ - or so it feels - because until a few years ago the *progressive left* won every battle with barely a shot fired. They simply conquered. It wasn’t a war
It’s only now that the ‘progressives’ have moved on to truly suspicious, objectionable causes - transgender toddlers, all whites are racist - that people have said Enough. And they are fighting back. And it really is a war
Of course it wasn't a war. Section 28 wasn't Thatcher bigotry, it was just a woke myth.
Given the concept of “transgender toddlers” etc, it is now quite easy to see how the Thatcher government kneejerked itself into introducing Section 28.
I have new “appreciation” for how people like Harriet Harman ended up pretty much unwittingly supporting the pro-paedophile lobby of the 70s, too.
I don't see a big difference between transgender toddlers and Christian or Muslim toddlers. It is a shorthand for the parent's beliefs and intentions.
Gender is not a matter of “faith”.
In a way it is. There's no rational basis to believe someone can be in the 'wrong' body.
That's the same as saying the concept of gender is irrational. It's meaningful only if it can differ (in an individual) from biological sex. If it can't it means gender is null and void for all practical purposes hence so is the notion of transgender. I reckon this view is quite widely held.
I don't think it's the same. Even if you accept the theory of gender as something socially constructed, it doesn't automatically follow that someone who identifies as the opposite gender to their biological sex literally is a man/woman trapped in a woman/man's body.
Kind of does though. "Trapped in wrong body" is code for "My sex is different to my gender."
If the concept of gender is meaningful it follows it is different to sex. If it isn't we don't need the term.
And if the 2 things are different a person can have their sex and gender misaligned - ie be trapped in the wrong body.
This is only irrational to somebody who thinks the notion of gender is bollox.
I would argue we don't need the term gender. It used to just be a euphemism for sex. Are you male or female? What is your body? Do you have a willy or not? That is a meaningful question with a meaningful answer. But gender - do you feel like a man or a woman - how do you define what someone of the female gender is without getting into the circular logic of 'someone who identifies as a woman'? I'd argue that the term is redundant.
Yep. I don't agree with you but I think lots of those whose heckles rise at the notion of "trans rights" do feel this way.
This is the point I was making actually.
Aaaaaand there you go again. The point is a pretty metaphysical one. The concept of "gender" in this case is probably bollocks (and rejecting it is a rare example of the correct application of Occam's razor), but you can think that and still think that if people want to be thought of, treated as and identified as the opposite sex, good luck to them and go for it. Nobody here overtly "has their hackles rising" at the thought of trans rights, and to the best of my reading of it nobody secretly feels like that and is cloaking it under cover of quibbles about what gender is or whether there should be single sex loos. These people share their inherent non existence with the Beast in Lord Of the Flies, and capitalist saboteurs in Stalinist Russia.
I wasn't specifically meaning people on here but now you mention it I bet some of our posters DO feel as I described.
Sentiment being -
"Oh god, this is so fucking tiresome. So much fuss over this tiny minority and it's all tosh anyway. Men are men, they have a dick, women are women, they don't. End of."
I'd be surprised if there aren't some PBers who feel this - and I'm surprised you're so confident there aren't.
But the right to be bored is inalienable, surely? Anti trans sounds to me like someone who wishes to prevent adults from dressing, describing themselves, and having approved medical procedures exactly as they wish, and/or wishes to insult, humiliate or physically assault them. I don't see any sign of that.
Tell you what, rather than bit/bat this in theory, next time we're both on here and "trans" comes up and some poster makes a contribution that (imo) can fairly be called anti-trans or transphobic I'll quote/reply it and explain why I think it is.
Liz "Free The Weed" Truss is growing on me. Even if she doesn't want to free the weed anymore
"At one freshers’ week, Lib Dem members including Alan Renwick, a friend of Truss who is now an academic on constitutional affairs, were decorating a stall and Truss, then a believer in cannabis legalisation, had a particular vision of how it should look. “She wanted the whole stall to be covered with these posters saying: ‘Free the Weed’, so I was scurrying around after Liz, trying to take these down again and put up a variety of different messages rather than just having this one message all over the stall,” Renwick told BBC Radio 4. She was putting them up again just as quickly." https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/30/liz-truss-profile-ambition-charm-thick-skin-thatcher
Will Liz be the first PM in history to have publicly backed legalizing cannabis and getting rid of the monarchy (even if she claims she doesn't believe these things now) ?
She will probably be the most libertarian PM we have ever had. If the Tories elect her it is very high risk, she might do surprisingly well or she might collapse the Conservative coalition completely, losing the white working class and traditional Tories as well
Liz Truss will have about 12 months to improve the Tories' position in the opinion polls. If things actually gets worse for the party during that time she could be unceremoniously replaced as leader. The days of parties going into an election with a leader they know will drag them down to defeat are probably over. In that respect we're becoming more like Australia.
Is that really right?
The only party leader I can think of in my lifetime ousted before getting to face an election is IDS, and even the quiet man got more than 12 months. If there's anyone else, I've forgotten them. Discounting Smith as he was replaced due to mortality not being ousted.
I can think of more leaders that have lost two consecutive general elections (Kinnock and Corbyn) than to have not faced any but still been pushed out.
Menzies Campbell and Vince Cable. Not sure if you count those?
Also among minor parties, Lord Pearson (among many other total nonentities to lead UKIP).
Yeah I wasn't counting minor parties, so they don't count.
Once you start including minor parties it all goes out the window.
Campbell led a party of 63 MPs and was the second largest party in two of the four constituent nations of the UK. Hardly 'minor.'
Although, if you count his achievements with all those MPs, calling him and his party 'minor' is grotesque flattery.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
The culture war in the UK has only recently become a heated ‘war’ - or so it feels - because until a few years ago the *progressive left* won every battle with barely a shot fired. They simply conquered. It wasn’t a war
It’s only now that the ‘progressives’ have moved on to truly suspicious, objectionable causes - transgender toddlers, all whites are racist - that people have said Enough. And they are fighting back. And it really is a war
Of course it wasn't a war. Section 28 wasn't Thatcher bigotry, it was just a woke myth.
Given the concept of “transgender toddlers” etc, it is now quite easy to see how the Thatcher government kneejerked itself into introducing Section 28.
I have new “appreciation” for how people like Harriet Harman ended up pretty much unwittingly supporting the pro-paedophile lobby of the 70s, too.
I don't see a big difference between transgender toddlers and Christian or Muslim toddlers. It is a shorthand for the parent's beliefs and intentions.
Gender is not a matter of “faith”.
In a way it is. There's no rational basis to believe someone can be in the 'wrong' body.
That's the same as saying the concept of gender is irrational. It's meaningful only if it can differ (in an individual) from biological sex. If it can't it means gender is null and void for all practical purposes hence so is the notion of transgender. I reckon this view is quite widely held.
I don't think it's the same. Even if you accept the theory of gender as something socially constructed, it doesn't automatically follow that someone who identifies as the opposite gender to their biological sex literally is a man/woman trapped in a woman/man's body.
Kind of does though. "Trapped in wrong body" is code for "My sex is different to my gender."
If the concept of gender is meaningful it follows it is different to sex. If it isn't we don't need the term.
And if the 2 things are different a person can have their sex and gender misaligned - ie be trapped in the wrong body.
This is only irrational to somebody who thinks the concept of gender is irrational.
Arguably it's the other way round. If you see social gender and biological sex as two independent things, then even if they are misaligned, your body is your body; you are you.
If you say that someone has the 'wrong' body then you're actually denying that gender is separable from sex.
"Wrong body" in this context doesn't mean a denial of sex on birth. This remains a fact but it doesn't match gender. So, a transgender person is "trapped" in a body which differs from their gender. I'd only see irrationality there if I thought the whole notion of gender as something different to sex was irrational. Eg like Cookie does. And you too maybe?
If something is 'wrong' in that configuration, why is it the body and not the psyche? And if nothing is wrong, why is the progressive approach to change the person's body to bring it into conformity with social expectations, rather than to change social attitudes to gender roles?
Answer my question maybe before posing more for me?
My answer is no, it's a social theory.
I know! But do you buy it is more what I'm asking?
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
Sorry. I think it is very funny
Also important. The Royalist narrative is London Bridge, then stopgap period of Chas n Camilla who people have forgiven and taken to their hearts, then sunlit upland time with the utterly wholesome Baldies. I cannot imagine more of a setback to that.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
On the other hand, slavery, aggressive imperial conquest, the denial of votes for women/the poor, and so on, were all consistent core policies of the Tories till they weren't.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
I have no problem with you making a principled stand. But your endless railing against other PB Tories for making a principled stand of their own does makes this look rather hypocritical.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
Sorry. I think it is very funny
Also important. The Royalist narrative is London Bridge, then stopgap period of Chas n Camilla who people have forgiven and taken to their hearts, then sunlit upland time with the utterly wholesome Baldies. I cannot imagine more of a setback to that.
It's the merest tattle, and I suspect it means absolutely nothing, and is definitely not "important"
Salacious gossip - true and false - has surrounded the Royal Family for centuries. It's practically what they are FOR
Indeed, the time when the royals need to worry is when there is gossip about them, and no one cares, and no one can be bothered to spread it. THAT is when we might be headed for republicanism. Instead this is a top Twitter trend, because the royals are mega famous. They're not going anywhere
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
I don't actually. Truth and morality don't have left and right wings, so we can neutrally ask: did we ship over 3 million Africans to the New World against their will and make them carry out horrendous physical labour for no pay until they died - True or false (NOT Left or right)? Was this a morally good, bad or indifferent thing to do? Should we tell the truth about this, or lie about it?
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
I'll remember that for next time you use the term 'nationalist' for people you disagree with.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
One of the things I really appreciate about @ishmaelx is that I usually have no idea which way he will opine on a subject.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
If it were true, it would be incredibly tame, suburban almost. The rumours about Charles' generation and even those above were that ample courtiers and flunkies could be arranged to oblige any such whims amply and discretely. To me it reads like trashy nonsense originating from and spread by trashy people.
I was astonished that in trying to help mostly gay children whose childhoods were being destroyed by experimental treatment, I was misrepresented by mischief-makers and their friends in certain media outlets as being anti-LGBT with slurs gleefully retweeted by Labour politicians such as Angela Rayner and Chris Bryant…..
Where was the furore in parliament as these women suffered? A healthy opposition would have pushed government to solve the problem sooner. Instead Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP were on the wrong side of the debate, captured by gender-identity ideologues. Notable exceptions, such as MPs Rosie Duffield and Joanna Cherry, were ostracised by their party leadership who refused to look at the evidence, preferring to posture on social media and chant slogans in parliament
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
The culture war in the UK has only recently become a heated ‘war’ - or so it feels - because until a few years ago the *progressive left* won every battle with barely a shot fired. They simply conquered. It wasn’t a war
It’s only now that the ‘progressives’ have moved on to truly suspicious, objectionable causes - transgender toddlers, all whites are racist - that people have said Enough. And they are fighting back. And it really is a war
Of course it wasn't a war. Section 28 wasn't Thatcher bigotry, it was just a woke myth.
Given the concept of “transgender toddlers” etc, it is now quite easy to see how the Thatcher government kneejerked itself into introducing Section 28.
I have new “appreciation” for how people like Harriet Harman ended up pretty much unwittingly supporting the pro-paedophile lobby of the 70s, too.
I don't see a big difference between transgender toddlers and Christian or Muslim toddlers. It is a shorthand for the parent's beliefs and intentions.
Gender is not a matter of “faith”.
In a way it is. There's no rational basis to believe someone can be in the 'wrong' body.
That's the same as saying the concept of gender is irrational. It's meaningful only if it can differ (in an individual) from biological sex. If it can't it means gender is null and void for all practical purposes hence so is the notion of transgender. I reckon this view is quite widely held.
I don't think it's the same. Even if you accept the theory of gender as something socially constructed, it doesn't automatically follow that someone who identifies as the opposite gender to their biological sex literally is a man/woman trapped in a woman/man's body.
Kind of does though. "Trapped in wrong body" is code for "My sex is different to my gender."
If the concept of gender is meaningful it follows it is different to sex. If it isn't we don't need the term.
And if the 2 things are different a person can have their sex and gender misaligned - ie be trapped in the wrong body.
This is only irrational to somebody who thinks the concept of gender is irrational.
Arguably it's the other way round. If you see social gender and biological sex as two independent things, then even if they are misaligned, your body is your body; you are you.
If you say that someone has the 'wrong' body then you're actually denying that gender is separable from sex.
"Wrong body" in this context doesn't mean a denial of sex on birth. This remains a fact but it doesn't match gender. So, a transgender person is "trapped" in a body which differs from their gender. I'd only see irrationality there if I thought the whole notion of gender as something different to sex was irrational. Eg like Cookie does. And you too maybe?
If something is 'wrong' in that configuration, why is it the body and not the psyche? And if nothing is wrong, why is the progressive approach to change the person's body to bring it into conformity with social expectations, rather than to change social attitudes to gender roles?
Answer my question maybe before posing more for me?
Not sure why you think it is such a gotcha. It's a very difficult concept. I assume you don't identify it as physical. If it is mental, are there any other mental qualities which are as binary, boolean either/or as this? Can't think of any. Why can't we just talk about people who to a greater or lesser extent would like to be the other sex, to the extent that is possible?
No gotchas. It's more that old Wills has a habit of just throwing out the questions and it's unbalanced if you don't make him answer some himself.
My understanding of Gender Dysphoria is that it's feeling of distress that your birth sex doesn't match your gender. M or F being overwhelmingly the main categories.
As for your question, ok, but how is that different or better to how we are talking about it?
I think it does make a difference whether you say of a hypothetical child, This child contains an A/B gender switch which is necessarily set to A or B, vs: of the over 100,000 thoughts which have passed through this child's head to day, 1 or 2 or 5% have been about how it would like to be/feels as if it is a girl/boy.
Watch that MAGA speech by Kari Lake. She is incredibly good: a natural-born populist politician. She whips up the crowd, and they love her right back
Frightening
"Thrilling" is what I think at least a part of you means?
Yes. Hitler could also be thrilling. He was a great orator in his own florid way. And yet I manage to hold this opinion without being a Nazi, and while wishing Hitler had never existed
Another speaker I find thrilling is the young Hugo Chavez. He has the same quality as Kari Lake: he commands your attention and it is difficult to look away. This is pure charisma. It is rare. Pay attention when you see it
I've watched speeches by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Stalin's style was similar to that of a BBC announcer: "This is the news." Hitler is the one who stands out. What distinguished his style of public speaking was that he spoke as if he was in great emotional pain. His speeches were practically shamanic. Lenin was between the other two. His style was similar to Hitler's, but he operated at a far lower level of skill and intensity. Comparing the two speakers would be like comparing a county-level athlete with a world champion.
Agreed, Hugo Chavez's 1994 speech in Havana was a masterpiece. But I don't know of any speech in the last 50 years by anyone that could top his "por ahora" speech of 1992.
Hitler is TOO flamboyant and hyperbolic for British tastes. But it clearly resonated with a lot of Germans. As Susan Sontag said (IIRC) "he brought Germany to orgasm with his speeches". And it is almost literally true. If you see footage of a famous Hitler speech, the people in the crowd look at him with bright, wet eyes, mesmerised, thrilled, moved, even aroused
Chavez is an intriguing contrast. He's nothing like Hitler but just as "good". That quiet hypnotic intensity. He is erudite without being pompous, his emotions are profound rather than raw
I can't think of a single British politician since Churchill with these skills: great oratory combined with great charisma. Obama could be excellent at his best but again not at this world class standard
It is unfortunate that these talents often seem to be gifted to demagogues rather than democrats
I would say the party leader who has been the best speaker since Churchill was Kinnock. God knows I was no more left wing as a child than I am now, but I always thought he performed his art well. The Welsh accent too - best speaking accent for the job, I'd say. Most British accents, at least some of the audience will take against you immediately. Less so with Welsh. Less so also with NE English, Highland Scots and SW English, though I'd say Welsh is more persuasive.
Yes, Kinnock was the best senior British politician in the postwar era - as an orator
I've just been reading some websites that rank the best political speakers of all time and, bizarrely, Thatcher appears on a few lists. This is surely wrong. They are confusing political importance with skilful oratory. Thatcher was competent: sometimes stilted, sometimes grand, but never brilliant
She did however do one outstanding, unforgettable speech: to the party the day after the Brighton Bomb, which tried to kill her (and came horribly close)
It is outstanding because she did it at all. A few hours later. With total calmness and aplomb
Watching this as a layabout student was when I realised she had REAL greatness in her, and was going to change the country for good, and for the better. I remember the moment distinctly
The content of her speeches and the conviction with which she delivered them was, however, superb.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
I don't actually. Truth and morality don't have left and right wings, so we can neutrally ask: did we ship over 3 million Africans to the New World against their will and make them carry out horrendous physical labour for no pay until they died - True or false (NOT Left or right)? Was this a morally good, bad or indifferent thing to do? Should we tell the truth about this, or lie about it?
You equated Britain's role in the slave trade to the Nazi Holocaust.
As pointed out to you the Nazis exterminated over 3 times more people than the British transported in the slave trade and killed over 20 times as many directly not indirectly.
The British then also played a key role in ending slavery.
I repeat, you are a far left revisionist. Slavery was wrong as was our role in it but historically it was not the Holocaust
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
If it were true, it would be incredibly tame, suburban almost. The rumours about Charles' generation and even those above were that ample courtiers and flunkies could be arranged to oblige any such whims amply and discretely. To me it reads like trashy nonsense oringinating from and spread by trashy people.
Yes, I've heard some absolutely gob-smacking rumours about nearly all the royals. Far spicier than this
The idea this particular one imperils the Crown is juvenile
Some of the stuff I used to hear about Prince Edward make THE FINLAND RUMOUR look tame. And of course the royals have already survived - it seems - the unending shitshow of cringe that is Andrew
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
If it were true, it would be incredibly tame, suburban almost. The rumours about Charles' generation and even those above were that ample courtiers and flunkies could be arranged to oblige any such whims amply and discretely. To me it reads like trashy nonsense originating from and spread by trashy people.
Basically the heir to the throne has an affair and has a kink? Is that it? How does that differ from the last 500 years? Or more…
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
I have no problem with you making a principled stand. But your endless railing against other PB Tories for making a principled stand of their own does makes this look rather hypocritical.
No it doesn't as the Tory party still exists for now
There are, of course, a few unfortunates who are physically intersex, such as those suffering from complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome . (A geneticist would look at their chromosomes, see the Y, and say that's a male. Were you to see one in a shower, you'd say that's a female. And a technician doing a scan would be shocked, because they are born with testicles, rather than ovaries.)
Again, I will say such rare individuals deserve our sympathy, and, where possible, our help. But they aren't going to have children.
So there aren't many of them -- as the theory of evolution predicts.
And homosexuals? Is there an Evolution angle there iyo?
I've seen a theory before that yes there is an evolutionary advantage to it.
Not everyone breeds and it's a myth that evolution means you need to pass on your genes directly to have an evolutionary impact.
Theory I saw goes that having childless aunts and uncles could in the past be an advantage to ensuring that the line continued. So families with basically recessive gay genes would have a biological advantage and they could be passed on via the none gay family members with their gay relatives helping to ensure their success and their propagation of the line.
If having a gay sibling aids your line continuing via you, then that is an evolutionary advantage for you to be carrying such genetics even if you're not personally gay.
Interesting. Although I must admit my main insight into the theory of evolution is it's one of the most popularly misunderstood bits of science around.
Everyone thinks they understand exactly how it works, apart from those who specialise in the subject.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
On the other hand, slavery, aggressive imperial conquest, the denial of votes for women/the poor, and so on, were all consistent core policies of the Tories till they weren't.
They were not founding principles of the Tory party as support for the monarchy and established church were
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
If it were true, it would be incredibly tame, suburban almost. The rumours about Charles' generation and even those above were that ample courtiers and flunkies could be arranged to oblige any such whims amply and discretely. To me it reads like trashy nonsense originating from and spread by trashy people.
That's me told.
I would have more sympathy with your position if he didn't have a superinjunction about all this. I seriously and genuinely despise the things, and all who obtain them.
I was astonished that in trying to help mostly gay children whose childhoods were being destroyed by experimental treatment, I was misrepresented by mischief-makers and their friends in certain media outlets as being anti-LGBT with slurs gleefully retweeted by Labour politicians such as Angela Rayner and Chris Bryant…..
Where was the furore in parliament as these women suffered? A healthy opposition would have pushed government to solve the problem sooner. Instead Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP were on the wrong side of the debate, captured by gender-identity ideologues. Notable exceptions, such as MPs Rosie Duffield and Joanna Cherry, were ostracised by their party leadership who refused to look at the evidence, preferring to posture on social media and chant slogans in parliament
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
If it were true, it would be incredibly tame, suburban almost. The rumours about Charles' generation and even those above were that ample courtiers and flunkies could be arranged to oblige any such whims amply and discretely. To me it reads like trashy nonsense originating from and spread by trashy people.
That's me told.
I would have more sympathy with your position if he didn't have a superinjunction about all this. I seriously and genuinely despise the things, and all who obtain them.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
If it were true, it would be incredibly tame, suburban almost. The rumours about Charles' generation and even those above were that ample courtiers and flunkies could be arranged to oblige any such whims amply and discretely. To me it reads like trashy nonsense originating from and spread by trashy people.
That's me told.
I would have more sympathy with your position if he didn't have a superinjunction about all this. I seriously and genuinely despise the things, and all who obtain them.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
I don't actually. Truth and morality don't have left and right wings, so we can neutrally ask: did we ship over 3 million Africans to the New World against their will and make them carry out horrendous physical labour for no pay until they died - True or false (NOT Left or right)? Was this a morally good, bad or indifferent thing to do? Should we tell the truth about this, or lie about it?
You equated Britain's role in the slave trade to the Nazi Holocaust.
As pointed out to you the Nazis exterminated over 3 times more people than the British transported in the slave trade and killed over 20 times as many directly not indirectly.
The British then also played a key role in ending slavery.
I repeat, you are a far left revisionist. Slavery was wrong as was our role in it but historically it was not the Holocaust
I don't think it is really a numbers game when both parties are in the millions. Anyway, if you count the subsequent generations of plantation-bred slaves I imagine you end up level pegging.
I think you have a frightening lack of imagination in failing to understand the misery of a field slave's life and death, and a lack of historical understanding of the holocaust which was a slave racket as much as straight extermination.
The terrible and foreseeable consequences of black US slavery persist to this day while the holocaust is history.
It was a very great evil. I do not say that the descendants of slaves are owed compensation or apologies (which would arguably be a left wing position), I just say they are owed the truth.
Notable that Badenoch praises Truss in that splendid article. She will surely get her reward. And thank fuck the Wokester Mordaunt was edged out
When do the legal actions against the Tavistock (and Mermaids and Stonewall) begin? They must be en route. Hundreds of kids - and their families- have suffered terrible things
The damaging revelations of the Jan. 6 committee hearings are fueling skepticism among Senate Republicans that former President Trump can win the GOP nomination in 2024 or even run for another term in the White House.
If Trump backed candidates fail in November then his credibility will be damaged.
Speaking of which am I correct that Trump backed candidates in Georgia and Pennsylvania look like they're making a mess of their Senate races ?
If so it becomes very hard for the GOP to take control as they'd need to win in both Arizona and Nevada - New Hampshire seems to be another flop for them.
So... It's 50-50 now, which gives the Dems control.
If Oz really does lose Pennsylvania (which looks increasingly likely) then the Republicans need to make two gains.
There are two excellent shots (Nevada and Arizona), one fading, but still perfectly possible (Georgia), and two unlikely but would fall in a wave election (New Hampshire and Colorado).
I would make the Republicans a slightly better than evens shot... But only sightly better. The Dems lead in the polls (by the narrowest of margins) in both AZ and NV, but you have to reckon the Republicans will have the enthusiasm gap on their side.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
Really? As with the news that Trusster turning out to be a whip-cracking adult baby wrangler, Wills wanting to take it like a man makes me think he is more interesting than he was before...
If it were true, it would be incredibly tame, suburban almost. The rumours about Charles' generation and even those above were that ample courtiers and flunkies could be arranged to oblige any such whims amply and discretely. To me it reads like trashy nonsense originating from and spread by trashy people.
That's me told.
I would have more sympathy with your position if he didn't have a superinjunction about all this. I seriously and genuinely despise the things, and all who obtain them.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
On the other hand, slavery, aggressive imperial conquest, the denial of votes for women/the poor, and so on, were all consistent core policies of the Tories till they weren't.
They were not founding principles of the Tory party as support for the monarchy and established church were
I've never heard a Tory mentioning the established church (outside this forum anyway). Unlike the Monarchy, it has minority support in the public at large. I don't see why it should be a core principle of today's Conservative Party, just because it was of the Tory Party in the 17th century.
On the other hand, I've heard dozens mentioning tax cuts and law and order.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
I don't actually. Truth and morality don't have left and right wings, so we can neutrally ask: did we ship over 3 million Africans to the New World against their will and make them carry out horrendous physical labour for no pay until they died - True or false (NOT Left or right)? Was this a morally good, bad or indifferent thing to do? Should we tell the truth about this, or lie about it?
You equated Britain's role in the slave trade to the Nazi Holocaust.
As pointed out to you the Nazis exterminated over 3 times more people than the British transported in the slave trade and killed over 20 times as many directly not indirectly.
The British then also played a key role in ending slavery.
I repeat, you are a far left revisionist. Slavery was wrong as was our role in it but historically it was not the Holocaust
I don't think it is really a numbers game when both parties are in the millions. Anyway, if you count the subsequent generations of plantation-bred slaves I imagine you end up level pegging.
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
It hasn't done any damage at all, if anything it is damaged Markle more by showing the pathetic, tawdry nature of her fanatics on twitter, already leading to responses just as rude about the Sussexes from Cambridge supporters.
Most people were appalled by the Bashir allegations too.
Though the last thing the Tory party wants is to appeal to Britain hating, royal family hating, far left fanatics like you
Yeah?
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
So what, all you ever post now is far left crap, you make Starmer look like a rightwinger
I don't actually. Truth and morality don't have left and right wings, so we can neutrally ask: did we ship over 3 million Africans to the New World against their will and make them carry out horrendous physical labour for no pay until they died - True or false (NOT Left or right)? Was this a morally good, bad or indifferent thing to do? Should we tell the truth about this, or lie about it?
You equated Britain's role in the slave trade to the Nazi Holocaust.
As pointed out to you the Nazis exterminated over 3 times more people than the British transported in the slave trade and killed over 20 times as many directly not indirectly.
The British then also played a key role in ending slavery.
I repeat, you are a far left revisionist. Slavery was wrong as was our role in it but historically it was not the Holocaust
I don't think it is really a numbers game when both parties are in the millions. Anyway, if you count the subsequent generations of plantation-bred slaves I imagine you end up level pegging.
I think you have a frightening lack of imagination in failing to understand the misery of a field slave's life and death, and a lack of historical understanding of the holocaust which was a slave racket as much as straight extermination.
The terrible and foreseeable consequences of black US slavery persist to this day while the holocaust is history.
It was a very great evil. I do not say that the descendants of slaves are owed compensation or apologies (which would arguably be a left wing position), I just say they are owed the truth.
Me for @Telegraph. News re GIDs is a relief but where do we go from here if (1) Labour cannot put the needs of children above their fear of activists - what hope for cross party agreement? (2) if LGBT charities won’t acknowledge there are issues?
Part of the issue is the “T” and the conflation of an “identity” with “sexual attraction”. They are not the same thing. By all means campaign for “T” rights, but lumping the two together has not been unproblematic.
So far everyone who likes Truss seems to have been voting Tory anyway. Anyone being converted?
If she leagalises weed and abolishes the monarchy I'd vote for her!
If she proposes that I will vote LD or RefUK for the first time ever at a general election. It would no longer be the Tory Party.
She would lead the party to its worst defeat ever and give Labour and the LDs a landslide victory, the Tories probably even falling behind RefUK led by a resurgent Farage.
Though I can't believe she would be that stupid. It would be Kim Campbell 1993 annihilation
Or Plaid.
I never voted Plaid at a general election and voted for every Tory candidate on the same town council ballot paper
And have berated every other Tory for not being a proper Tory like you. And now here you are saying "if they do x I will have to protest vote against the Tories." Which is quite literally what all the people you berate did...
If the Tory leader does not support the monarchy or the Church of England as the established church the Tory party by definition no longer exists, as those have always been its consistent core principles since the 17th century and still as the Conservative Party since the mid 19th century.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
I have no problem with you making a principled stand. But your endless railing against other PB Tories for making a principled stand of their own does makes this look rather hypocritical.
No it doesn't as the Tory party still exists for now
Your definition of the Tory party perhaps. It is a statement of supreme arrogance for you to say that your definition is the only valid definition. And if you flounce off there will be Tories making similar statements about you.
So what, his family did not launch 9/11, Osama did
The future king agreed to the donation despite the objections of advisers at the Clarence House and the Prince of Wales Charitable Foundation (PWCF), where the money was ultimately deposited.
According to sources, several of Charles’s advisers, including at least one trustee, pleaded with him in person to return the money.
One of his household staff said it would cause national outrage if the news leaked to the media. They told the prince that “it would not be good for anybody” if it emerged that he had accepted money from the family of the perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in history.
A second adviser also urged the prince to return the money. They told the prince he would suffer serious reputational damage if his name appeared in the same sentence as the terrorist, who was responsible for the murder of 67 Britons alongside thousands of Americans on 9/11.
One source said: “The fact that a member of the highest level of the British establishment was choosing to broker deals with a name and a family that not only rang alarm bells, but abject horror around the world . . . why would you do this? What good reason is there to do this?”
For example, she says, bluntly, that New York City did not lock down as quickly as it should have, because New York Governor Andrew Cumo had a long-time feud with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a feud that cost lives.
Although Birx is an epidemiologist, there are fewer numbers than I expected, and so far, no graphs or tables. That's a minor defect for me, but, I suspect, a plus for many other readers.
(If, like me, your memory is not as good as it used to be, you may find this hint helpful: After the first mention, Birx mostly refers to those she worked with by their first names, or even nicknames. So, when she says "Tony", she means Anthony Fauci, and so on. So I am ging to have to go back and write a little crib sheet for myself, so I can keep track of the characters.)
For example, she says, bluntly, that New York City did not lock down as quickly as it should have, because New York Governor Andrew Cumo had a long-time feud with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a feud that cost lives.
Although Birx is an epidemiologist, there are fewer numbers than I expected, and so far, no graphs or tables. That's a minor defect for me, but, I suspect, a plus for many other readers.
(If, like me, your memory is not as good as it used to be, you may find this hint helpful: After the first mention, Birx mostly refers to those she worked with by their first names, or even nicknames. So, when she says "Tony", she means Anthony Fauci, and so on. So I am ging to have to go back and write a little crib sheet for myself, so I can keep track of the characters.)
Thanks for that. One of the first of many such tomes I think. When the dust has settled a bit more I look forward to a dispassionate history of what happened here.
Watch that MAGA speech by Kari Lake. She is incredibly good: a natural-born populist politician. She whips up the crowd, and they love her right back
Frightening
"Thrilling" is what I think at least a part of you means?
Yes. Hitler could also be thrilling. He was a great orator in his own florid way. And yet I manage to hold this opinion without being a Nazi, and while wishing Hitler had never existed
Another speaker I find thrilling is the young Hugo Chavez. He has the same quality as Kari Lake: he commands your attention and it is difficult to look away. This is pure charisma. It is rare. Pay attention when you see it
I've watched speeches by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Stalin's style was similar to that of a BBC announcer: "This is the news." Hitler is the one who stands out. What distinguished his style of public speaking was that he spoke as if he was in great emotional pain. His speeches were practically shamanic. Lenin was between the other two. His style was similar to Hitler's, but he operated at a far lower level of skill and intensity. Comparing the two speakers would be like comparing a county-level athlete with a world champion.
Agreed, Hugo Chavez's 1994 speech in Havana was a masterpiece. But I don't know of any speech in the last 50 years by anyone that could top his "por ahora" speech of 1992.
Hitler is TOO flamboyant and hyperbolic for British tastes. But it clearly resonated with a lot of Germans. As Susan Sontag said (IIRC) "he brought Germany to orgasm with his speeches". And it is almost literally true. If you see footage of a famous Hitler speech, the people in the crowd look at him with bright, wet eyes, mesmerised, thrilled, moved, even aroused
Chavez is an intriguing contrast. He's nothing like Hitler but just as "good". That quiet hypnotic intensity. He is erudite without being pompous, his emotions are profound rather than raw
I can't think of a single British politician since Churchill with these skills: great oratory combined with great charisma. Obama could be excellent at his best but again not at this world class standard
It is unfortunate that these talents often seem to be gifted to demagogues rather than democrats
We’re British. We neither do, nor fall for, that sort of thing.
Liz Truss interview: My mum would vote for me, I’m not sure about dad. All triple-A* star pupils would get Oxbridge interviews, says the No 10 favourite, as she reveals her love for Reagan, a sexually explicit rap song and radical thinking
The best thing that can be said for Truss is she will back Zelensky to the hilt and ensure he continues to get the arms and supplies to take advantage of situations like the above
Even better if she also frees the weed and sacks the royal family!
If she did that I am off and would actively vote and campaign against her in the landslide defeat she would take the party to.
Though she would almost certainly have been deposed by the party first. The only way she will get elected leader is by having dumped most of her leftwing near anarchist past
You have not the first idea of the damage peggate has done to the Royal family, coming on top of baldy's attempt to suppress the "Three people in the marriage" bashir interview. she might be well advised to referret on this one.
The only mentions of 'peggate' since the evening it was first discussed here, that I have seen anywhere, literally anywhere, work, socially, etc. are yours. Probably 5 or 6 posts in the last couple of days.
I've found it has been referenced less than the last episode of neighbours but probably more than the extra curricular activities of Mrs Truss.
Considering that the matter was 'trending' on Twitter last night, though under more than one term, that seems a fair assessment.
For those of us who try to avoid Twitter, WTF is “peggate”?
Prince William has been seeking pegging outside his marriage because Kate doesn't want to do it.
Liz Truss vows to evoke the spirit of Thatcher and form 'supergroup' economic team - including veteran Tory John Redwood - to challenge Treasury 'group-think'
Watch that MAGA speech by Kari Lake. She is incredibly good: a natural-born populist politician. She whips up the crowd, and they love her right back
Frightening
"Thrilling" is what I think at least a part of you means?
Yes. Hitler could also be thrilling. He was a great orator in his own florid way. And yet I manage to hold this opinion without being a Nazi, and while wishing Hitler had never existed
Another speaker I find thrilling is the young Hugo Chavez. He has the same quality as Kari Lake: he commands your attention and it is difficult to look away. This is pure charisma. It is rare. Pay attention when you see it
I've watched speeches by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Stalin's style was similar to that of a BBC announcer: "This is the news." Hitler is the one who stands out. What distinguished his style of public speaking was that he spoke as if he was in great emotional pain. His speeches were practically shamanic. Lenin was between the other two. His style was similar to Hitler's, but he operated at a far lower level of skill and intensity. Comparing the two speakers would be like comparing a county-level athlete with a world champion.
Agreed, Hugo Chavez's 1994 speech in Havana was a masterpiece. But I don't know of any speech in the last 50 years by anyone that could top his "por ahora" speech of 1992.
Hitler is TOO flamboyant and hyperbolic for British tastes. But it clearly resonated with a lot of Germans. As Susan Sontag said (IIRC) "he brought Germany to orgasm with his speeches". And it is almost literally true. If you see footage of a famous Hitler speech, the people in the crowd look at him with bright, wet eyes, mesmerised, thrilled, moved, even aroused
Chavez is an intriguing contrast. He's nothing like Hitler but just as "good". That quiet hypnotic intensity. He is erudite without being pompous, his emotions are profound rather than raw
I can't think of a single British politician since Churchill with these skills: great oratory combined with great charisma. Obama could be excellent at his best but again not at this world class standard
It is unfortunate that these talents often seem to be gifted to demagogues rather than democrats
We’re British. We neither do, nor fall for, that sort of thing.
We’re just waiting for someone to find the sweet spot. As Leon says, Hitler was too flamboyant and hyperbolic for our tastes, but see what a self-deprecating buffoon was able to do for a very long time.
I was astonished that in trying to help mostly gay children whose childhoods were being destroyed by experimental treatment, I was misrepresented by mischief-makers and their friends in certain media outlets as being anti-LGBT with slurs gleefully retweeted by Labour politicians such as Angela Rayner and Chris Bryant…..
Where was the furore in parliament as these women suffered? A healthy opposition would have pushed government to solve the problem sooner. Instead Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP were on the wrong side of the debate, captured by gender-identity ideologues. Notable exceptions, such as MPs Rosie Duffield and Joanna Cherry, were ostracised by their party leadership who refused to look at the evidence, preferring to posture on social media and chant slogans in parliament
Hopefully Liz will put her in charge of education and weed out all of the gender identity idiots from schools before they do any more damage to our children.
The endless trans culture war - for that is what it is - saddens me. I have various irons in this particular fire - I am a bisexual man with a wife and a daughter, I have a non-binary adult offspring who has had several relationships with trans men, and I have an old friend who is a trans woman.
I keep coming back to basic beliefs like all things in moderation, treat as you want to be tret, your freedoms can't trample on other people's freedoms etc etc. Too many of the activists on both sides simply want to defeat the other side who aren't just wrong but morally degenerate.
We do need to be very careful though. The "anti-woke" foamers don't want to pull back what they see as the excesses of modern attitudes to people like my eldest and their exes. They want to put deviants like me back in our boxes where we can't be heard. And want to stop women from getting in the way of man things like football and voting.
So we have to take all of this in moderation. Promoting trans rights can't trample on the rights of women. Protecting the rights of women can't become the momentum to reduce the rights of women. But when the talk is of sides, and of activists calling the other side blind or stupid or ignorant for questioning their own position, we slide backwards as a society whether we roll back progress or not.
It needs to stop.
The culture war in the UK has only recently become a heated ‘war’ - or so it feels - because until a few years ago the *progressive left* won every battle with barely a shot fired. They simply conquered. It wasn’t a war
It’s only now that the ‘progressives’ have moved on to truly suspicious, objectionable causes - transgender toddlers, all whites are racist - that people have said Enough. And they are fighting back. And it really is a war
Of course it wasn't a war. Section 28 wasn't Thatcher bigotry, it was just a woke myth.
Given the concept of “transgender toddlers” etc, it is now quite easy to see how the Thatcher government kneejerked itself into introducing Section 28.
I have new “appreciation” for how people like Harriet Harman ended up pretty much unwittingly supporting the pro-paedophile lobby of the 70s, too.
I don't see a big difference between transgender toddlers and Christian or Muslim toddlers. It is a shorthand for the parent's beliefs and intentions.
Gender is not a matter of “faith”.
In a way it is. There's no rational basis to believe someone can be in the 'wrong' body.
That's the same as saying the concept of gender is irrational. It's meaningful only if it can differ (in an individual) from biological sex. If it can't it means gender is null and void for all practical purposes hence so is the notion of transgender. I reckon this view is quite widely held.
I don't think it's the same. Even if you accept the theory of gender as something socially constructed, it doesn't automatically follow that someone who identifies as the opposite gender to their biological sex literally is a man/woman trapped in a woman/man's body.
Kind of does though. "Trapped in wrong body" is code for "My sex is different to my gender."
If the concept of gender is meaningful it follows it is different to sex. If it isn't we don't need the term.
And if the 2 things are different a person can have their sex and gender misaligned - ie be trapped in the wrong body.
This is only irrational to somebody who thinks the concept of gender is irrational.
Arguably it's the other way round. If you see social gender and biological sex as two independent things, then even if they are misaligned, your body is your body; you are you.
If you say that someone has the 'wrong' body then you're actually denying that gender is separable from sex.
"Wrong body" in this context doesn't mean a denial of sex on birth. This remains a fact but it doesn't match gender. So, a transgender person is "trapped" in a body which differs from their gender. I'd only see irrationality there if I thought the whole notion of gender as something different to sex was irrational. Eg like Cookie does. And you too maybe?
If something is 'wrong' in that configuration, why is it the body and not the psyche? And if nothing is wrong, why is the progressive approach to change the person's body to bring it into conformity with social expectations, rather than to change social attitudes to gender roles?
Answer my question maybe before posing more for me?
Not sure why you think it is such a gotcha. It's a very difficult concept. I assume you don't identify it as physical. If it is mental, are there any other mental qualities which are as binary, boolean either/or as this? Can't think of any. Why can't we just talk about people who to a greater or lesser extent would like to be the other sex, to the extent that is possible?
No gotchas. It's more that old Wills has a habit of just throwing out the questions and it's unbalanced if you don't make him answer some himself.
My understanding of Gender Dysphoria is that it's feeling of distress that your birth sex doesn't match your gender. M or F being overwhelmingly the main categories.
As for your question, ok, but how is that different or better to how we are talking about it?
I think it does make a difference whether you say of a hypothetical child, This child contains an A/B gender switch which is necessarily set to A or B, vs: of the over 100,000 thoughts which have passed through this child's head to day, 1 or 2 or 5% have been about how it would like to be/feels as if it is a girl/boy.
The latter sounds better to me. It's about what's going on with people, how they feel, their identity. However, male or female are in practice how we view both sex and gender, so this mismatch between the 2 remains at the heart of things. Don't see how to get away from that until the nirvana of the post gender society where the sex you are born with carries no consequences other than the physical and reproductive.
The damaging revelations of the Jan. 6 committee hearings are fueling skepticism among Senate Republicans that former President Trump can win the GOP nomination in 2024 or even run for another term in the White House.
If Trump backed candidates fail in November then his credibility will be damaged.
Trump is losing the support of Rupert Murdoch's press and even Fox News is giving more coverage to DeSantis than Trump nowadays. The interesting thing will be to see what Trump does if he doesn't get the Republican nomination. Another interesting thing will be to see what Liz Cheney does if he does. Either of these factors could help the Democrats
The first appointment was the psychological assessment, the second an endocrinological one, usually after a 2 year wait following referral, so not a transient whim. There may also have been significant assessment by the referring unit.
Worth noting that puberty blockers were only prescribed if the child was Gillick competent, and could not be prescribed without that informed consent.
The Tavistock is closing in favour of regional services, initially in London and Liverpool, with others to follow. In part this is to reduce waiting times as referrals have massively increased over the last decade. It isn't the Tavistock that is generating the demand, indeed it has clearly struggled to cope with demand.
Liz "Free The Weed" Truss is growing on me. Even if she doesn't want to free the weed anymore
"At one freshers’ week, Lib Dem members including Alan Renwick, a friend of Truss who is now an academic on constitutional affairs, were decorating a stall and Truss, then a believer in cannabis legalisation, had a particular vision of how it should look. “She wanted the whole stall to be covered with these posters saying: ‘Free the Weed’, so I was scurrying around after Liz, trying to take these down again and put up a variety of different messages rather than just having this one message all over the stall,” Renwick told BBC Radio 4. She was putting them up again just as quickly." https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/30/liz-truss-profile-ambition-charm-thick-skin-thatcher
Will Liz be the first PM in history to have publicly backed legalizing cannabis and getting rid of the monarchy (even if she claims she doesn't believe these things now) ?
She will probably be the most libertarian PM we have ever had. If the Tories elect her it is very high risk, she might do surprisingly well or she might collapse the Conservative coalition completely, losing the white working class and traditional Tories as well
Liz Truss will have about 12 months to improve the Tories' position in the opinion polls. If things actually gets worse for the party during that time she could be unceremoniously replaced as leader. The days of parties going into an election with a leader they know will drag them down to defeat are probably over. In that respect we're becoming more like Australia.
Is that really right?
The only party leader I can think of in my lifetime ousted before getting to face an election is IDS, and even the quiet man got more than 12 months. If there's anyone else, I've forgotten them. Discounting Smith as he was replaced due to mortality not being ousted.
I can think of more leaders that have lost two consecutive general elections (Kinnock and Corbyn) than to have not faced any but still been pushed out.
Menzies Campbell and Vince Cable. Not sure if you count those?
Also among minor parties, Lord Pearson (among many other total nonentities to lead UKIP).
Yeah I wasn't counting minor parties, so they don't count.
Once you start including minor parties it all goes out the window.
Campbell led a party of 63 MPs and was the second largest party in two of the four constituent nations of the UK. Hardly 'minor.'
Less than a tenth of the MPs and zero credible chance of getting Downing Street.
Tories and Labour are the major parties.
LDs are minor as opposed to insignificant like UKIP.
Comments
Consider. In a society not far from ours in time, location and kinship, there was a Great Moral Question. Everyone said answer A was right. A few lunatics fought against it there - most of the opposition cane from outside the society in question.
A noted follower of B held public meetings to provoke riots. He killed with his own hands a number of protestors. He even wrote a pamphlet about how best to kill someone with a knife…. His name was Cassius Clay.
I voted in three general elections for Thatcher led governments. You didn't, and don't give me any snivelling leftie "Please sir, I wasn't born at the time" nonsense in mitigation. That's the test, or rather those are the tests. Me: 3/3, you LOL.
The other thing is that the Australian Labor Party is more socially conservative compared to the US Democrats and possibly also UK Labour. The reason is that more left-wing voters tend to vote for the Australian Greens, who are a very strong 3rd party (roughly as strong as the Lib Dems in the UK).
My understanding of Gender Dysphoria is that it's feeling of distress that your birth sex doesn't match your gender. M or F being overwhelmingly the main categories.
As for your question, ok, but how is that different or better to how we are talking about it?
When he didn't:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TOgB3Smvro
I've just been reading some websites that rank the best political speakers of all time and, bizarrely, Thatcher appears on a few lists. This is surely wrong. They are confusing political importance with skilful oratory. Thatcher was competent: sometimes stilted, sometimes grand, but never brilliant
She did however do one outstanding, unforgettable speech: to the party the day after the Brighton Bomb, which tried to kill her (and came horribly close)
It is outstanding because she did it at all. A few hours later. With total calmness and aplomb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV-nKpf0Gd4
Watching this as a layabout student was when I realised she had REAL greatness in her, and was going to change the country for good, and for the better. I remember the moment distinctly
And for anyone to suggest that a girl who plays with trains and trucks should really become a boy would indicate they hold some very old fashioned views of the interests of kids.
I think. I've found it very difficult to care.
If so it becomes very hard for the GOP to take control as they'd need to win in both Arizona and Nevada - New Hampshire seems to be another flop for them.
Also important. The Royalist narrative is London Bridge, then stopgap period of Chas n Camilla who people have forgiven and taken to their hearts, then sunlit upland time with the utterly wholesome Baldies. I cannot imagine more of a setback to that.
Edit: I thought at first it was the Finnish/Cabinet Minister thing, but the emphasis seems to be on royalty, so I lost interest.
Instead it would just be a libertarian right of centre on economics, socially liberal party if Truss went down that route.
However nationalist patriots would move en masse to RefUK and traditional One Nation Tories would move en masse to the LDs leaving a relic of the old party behind. Truss would have killed the Tories as well as most likely her premiership
How Ipswich failed to win today is beyond me. (Speaking as literally the only person on this board who cares of course)
Salacious gossip - true and false - has surrounded the Royal Family for centuries. It's practically what they are FOR
Indeed, the time when the royals need to worry is when there is gossip about them, and no one cares, and no one can be bothered to spread it. THAT is when we might be headed for republicanism. Instead this is a top Twitter trend, because the royals are mega famous. They're not going anywhere
I think @Scrapheap_as_was is the league owner
I was astonished that in trying to help mostly gay children whose childhoods were being destroyed by experimental treatment, I was misrepresented by mischief-makers and their friends in certain media outlets as being anti-LGBT with slurs gleefully retweeted by Labour politicians such as Angela Rayner and Chris Bryant…..
Where was the furore in parliament as these women suffered? A healthy opposition would have pushed government to solve the problem sooner. Instead Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP were on the wrong side of the debate, captured by gender-identity ideologues. Notable exceptions, such as MPs Rosie Duffield and Joanna Cherry, were ostracised by their party leadership who refused to look at the evidence, preferring to posture on social media and chant slogans in parliament
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0df1a300-1022-11ed-b7aa-67f5549661eb?shareToken=6d94871b81fb663cf7366c65891fbe26
As pointed out to you the Nazis exterminated over 3 times more people than the British transported in the slave trade and killed over 20 times as many directly not indirectly.
The British then also played a key role in ending slavery.
I repeat, you are a far left revisionist. Slavery was wrong as was our role in it but historically it was not the Holocaust
The idea this particular one imperils the Crown is juvenile
Some of the stuff I used to hear about Prince Edward make THE FINLAND RUMOUR look tame. And of course the royals have already survived - it seems - the unending shitshow of cringe that is Andrew
I would have more sympathy with your position if he didn't have a superinjunction about all this. I seriously and genuinely despise the things, and all who obtain them.
She's excellent. Truss must give her a senior job
I think you have a frightening lack of imagination in failing to understand the misery of a field slave's life and death, and a lack of historical understanding of the holocaust which was a slave racket as much as straight extermination.
The terrible and foreseeable consequences of black US slavery persist to this day while the holocaust is history.
It was a very great evil. I do not say that the descendants of slaves are owed compensation or apologies (which would arguably be a left wing position), I just say they are owed the truth.
When do the legal actions against the Tavistock (and Mermaids and Stonewall) begin? They must be en route. Hundreds of kids - and their families- have suffered terrible things
If Oz really does lose Pennsylvania (which looks increasingly likely) then the Republicans need to make two gains.
There are two excellent shots (Nevada and Arizona), one fading, but still perfectly possible (Georgia), and two unlikely but would fall in a wave election (New Hampshire and Colorado).
I would make the Republicans a slightly better than evens shot... But only sightly better. The Dems lead in the polls (by the narrowest of margins) in both AZ and NV, but you have to reckon the Republicans will have the enthusiasm gap on their side.
Edit - If Liverpool lose this match then it is a glorified friendly.
On the other hand, I've heard dozens mentioning tax cuts and law and order.
https://twitter.com/nmdacosta/status/1553436312379789312
Part of the issue is the “T” and the conflation of an “identity” with “sexual attraction”. They are not the same thing. By all means campaign for “T” rights, but lumping the two together has not been unproblematic.
According to sources, several of Charles’s advisers, including at least one trustee, pleaded with him in person to return the money.
One of his household staff said it would cause national outrage if the news leaked to the media. They told the prince that “it would not be good for anybody” if it emerged that he had accepted money from the family of the perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in history.
A second adviser also urged the prince to return the money. They told the prince he would suffer serious reputational damage if his name appeared in the same sentence as the terrorist, who was responsible for the murder of 67 Britons alongside thousands of Americans on 9/11.
One source said: “The fact that a member of the highest level of the British establishment was choosing to broker deals with a name and a family that not only rang alarm bells, but abject horror around the world . . . why would you do this? What good reason is there to do this?”
"Children referred for puberty blockers after just one consultation at Tavistock clinic
"Parents call for use of the drugs to be stopped immediately, following warnings they could affect parts of the brain"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/29/children-referred-puberty-blockers-just-one-consultation-tavistock/
WTAF
https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Invasion-Administration-Covid-19-Preventing/dp/0063204231/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Deborah+Birx&qid=1659203686&sr=8-1
For example, she says, bluntly, that New York City did not lock down as quickly as it should have, because New York Governor Andrew Cumo had a long-time feud with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a feud that cost lives.
Although Birx is an epidemiologist, there are fewer numbers than I expected, and so far, no graphs or tables. That's a minor defect for me, but, I suspect, a plus for many other readers.
(If, like me, your memory is not as good as it used to be, you may find this hint helpful: After the first mention, Birx mostly refers to those she worked with by their first names, or even nicknames. So, when she says "Tony", she means Anthony Fauci, and so on. So I am ging to have to go back and write a little crib sheet for myself, so I can keep track of the characters.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUiN7fTPU3o
Liz Truss interview: My mum would vote for me, I’m not sure about dad. All triple-A* star pupils would get Oxbridge interviews, says the No 10 favourite, as she reveals her love for Reagan, a sexually explicit rap song and radical thinking
?
The interesting thing will be to see what Trump does if he doesn't get the Republican nomination.
Another interesting thing will be to see what Liz Cheney does if he does.
Either of these factors could help the Democrats
Worth noting that puberty blockers were only prescribed if the child was Gillick competent, and could not be prescribed without that informed consent.
The Tavistock is closing in favour of regional services, initially in London and Liverpool, with others to follow. In part this is to reduce waiting times as referrals have massively increased over the last decade. It isn't the Tavistock that is generating the demand, indeed it has clearly struggled to cope with demand.
Tories and Labour are the major parties.
LDs are minor as opposed to insignificant like UKIP.