I see we are doing Succession and Bab5. As enough has leaked onto YouTube for me to pick up the gist of the former, and note the fine fan fiction on the latter, I may be able to comment.
The fourth series resolved the series by progressively making the obvious obvious: the three were idiots. Roman wasn't a tormented soul, he was a middle-aged perv. Shiv couldn't place a pen on a desk without drama. Kendall can't really do anything. Anything.
I don't know if it's distinct to this series or modern technique, but towards the end the dialogue was just a series of ums, ahs, whats, ers, and cussing. Expressive but annoying.
Because of Sarah Snook's pregnancy IRL, the decision to put her in a poloneck, and her tendancy to do a wide grimace to indicate incredulity or disdain, her chin was in danger of disappearing into her polo at several points.
Gerri is now worth 100s of millions.
The Caroline actress (Harriet Walter) was expectedly good. The Kerry actress (Zoë Winters) was unexpectedly good
Connor - the only offspring who was foolish rather than bad - came out best. An ambassadorship and a wife who is sincerely loyal to him.
Tom from Spooks played Tom from Succession. Does he only play Toms?
In the scene in the karaoke place where Logan pointed out that they were not serious people, the Logan actor (Hannibal Lecter) was really good, and looked really ill...
So there y'go. A drama for the 2020s involving four nepo babies arguing for four years whilst nothing got done.
Are you criticising Succession without even watching it?
Feck off
The idea the dialogue reduced to a lot of ums, ahs, errs is, for starters, total bollocks. One reason Succession was so brilliant was the scintillating dialogue, so rich in puns, allusions and jokes it was sometimes hard to grasp them all, and the series will surely be worth re-watching for that alone
One of my favourites was "Little Lord FuckLeRoy"
Gone in a second. I bet 99% of people didn't even notice it
Also, sometimes the dialogue was borderline surreal, but in a good way. Always unexpected. Genius
Also: entirely wrong on Connor. It is made clear in the closing scenes that Connor now has an open marriage, ie his younger wife is gonna cuck him, and he has little choice
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Good summary.
One of the things which boils my piss about all this is that this is described as a Tory culture war. The right have done virtually nothing here apart from almost silently yearn for saner days.
The right are generally supportive towards the women who have made the running on this, without taking the lead.
For once, actually, and unusually, the right has played this very sensibly.
Unscheduled flight arrivals in Miensk. Rumours that Lukashenka has died.
What happens next there, a takeover of the western-looking moderates, or Putin getting a placeman in charge? Huge implications for Ukraine.
I'd wager the latter. Anyways. Be more significant if it is Lukashenko. Lukashenka would be his wife or daughter. (No idea if he has either. But it's vital to start the month as pedantically as you mean to go on).
The 'Lukashenko' surname, like most -o surnames, has neutral grammatical gender and therefore does not change when used by female. Hence AGL's unlucky Mrs (imagine being fucking drilled by that) known as Галина Родионовна Лукашенко in Russian - which is all we care about. Other examples are Ludmilla Radchenko (actress, model, whatever) and Natasha Stefanenko (also actress, model, whatever).
In an educated Moscow accent, which everybody should strive to affect, the terminal 'o' is sounded as 'a' which adds to the confusion.
How the hell did you learn Russian? I’ve been trying to learn it for a decade, and failed miserably. Do you just have to live somewhere that speaks it for a few years, and avoid all the youngsters who see you as a way to practice the English skills that will get them out of their own hellhole?
Recently I heard a podcast with an American military bod who was put forward for language training. They gave the recruits an invented language, gave them a short time to learn a little of it, and then tested them. The language was an invented one so that no-one had any chance of knowing it - unlike (say) Spanish.
It showed a candidate's ability to learn a language. This guy said he hated languages at school, but he came top in that class and loved learning Russian.
The British forces have recently and finally started doing language proficiency pay like the Americans and Australians. It can be quite a lot of money. Entirely consistent with the MoD's longstanding strategy of being excellently prepared for the last war but one Arabic attracts the highest premium at 11 grand/year.
The British forces have zero L3+ Ukrainian speakers and are forced to rely on contracted translators who are probably 50% GRU agents.
Mrs Sandpit would volunteer to be a Ukranian speaker for the British forces! She was an English teacher in Kiev two decades ago.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Good summary.
One of the things which boils my piss about all this is that this is described as a Tory culture war. The right have done virtually nothing here apart from almost silently yearn for saner days.
The right have jumped on the topic to try to roll back gay rights, e.g. the recent National Conservative conference wanting to be rid of gay marriage.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
That's one of the best summaries of this that I have ever read. I feel educated. Thankyou
Yes if Rishi squeezes DKs and wins back some voters lost to RefUK given he generally polls better v Starmer as preferred PM than the Tories do against Labour on headline voting intention it could still be closer
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Good summary.
One of the things which boils my piss about all this is that this is described as a Tory culture war. The right have done virtually nothing here apart from almost silently yearn for saner days.
And that is precisely the problem for proponents.
It’s only a ‘culture war’ if someone puts up an opposition, and they’d prefer a walkover.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Good summary.
One of the things which boils my piss about all this is that this is described as a Tory culture war. The right have done virtually nothing here apart from almost silently yearn for saner days.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
...In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage...
I am surprised given PB's obsession with things American that people have not picked up on this as a factor in POTUS2022, particularly with DeSantis's stance. I assume DeSantis/Trump will escalate during the primaries (Trump has already promised to ban trans nationwide, DeSantis has defacto banned it in Florida).
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Good summary.
One of the things which boils my piss about all this is that this is described as a Tory culture war. The right have done virtually nothing here apart from almost silently yearn for saner days.
Matthew Goodwin pointed out recently that most Tory MPs are probably more in line with the average Labour voter on social issues than they are with their own voters. I thought it was an interesting observation.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Good summary.
One of the things which boils my piss about all this is that this is described as a Tory culture war. The right have done virtually nothing here apart from almost silently yearn for saner days.
'almost silently yearn'
Lol.
The Graun piece on Fenland U and slavery is quite eye-opening in the harassment of poor historians studying accounting and finance in the C18 and early C19. Not much silent yearning there.
...In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage...
I am surprised given PB's obsession with things American that people have not picked up on this as a factor in POTUS2022, particularly with DeSantis's stance. I assume DeSantis/Trump will escalate during the primaries (Trump has already promised to ban trans nationwide, DeSantis has defacto banned it in Florida).
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
I think it will be another battle of attrition. A narrow win (in terms of vote share) in 2020, followed by a narrow result in 2022, and another narrow result in 2024.
In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage.
In the UK its been overwhelmingly women making the running - from across politics - but frequently left wing. The Tories sporadically venture into it (Badenoch is sound, Mordaunt not) and Labour are hopelessly tongue tied. Some of them have worked out that women don't have penises, others can't bring themselves to say so.
The victims?
Young (probably gay) kids with other mental health problems who have been sterilised and maimed for life, unnecessarily.
Women sports competitors who have been cheated out of titles, winnings and earnings by men who think they are women. In some cases they've been injured by them too.
Medics, who have been hounded out of jobs for saying "you can't change sex".
Trans people - who wanted to get on with their lives but been drawn into a toxic debate.
Presents the story so far going into the experience of Kathleen Stock, but doesn't touch the medical issues.
Certainly in the US, the date the trans stuff started was the day the the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage in 2015. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges The trans stuff was merely what all of the activists moved on to.
....Are you criticising Succession without even watching it?...The idea the dialogue reduced to a lot of ums, ahs, errs is, for starters, total bollocks...
I pointed out that I had watched it via leaks, albeit in jigsaw fashion. Not in the same way as you tho, obvs.
....Are you criticising Succession without even watching it?...The idea the dialogue reduced to a lot of ums, ahs, errs is, for starters, total bollocks...
I pointed out that I had watched it via leaks, albeit in jigsaw fashion. Not in the same way as you tho, obvs.
...In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage...
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
I’m not sure blocking so called “Affirmative Care” counts as “Anti-trans”.
Others might characterise it as potential “child abuse”.
The science may yet emerge in favour of “affirmative care” but it’s far from “settled”.
As for the article from OGH it is an interesting summary and probably why Labour are treading so cautiously and this does not feel like the run up to 97.
...In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage...
I am surprised given PB's obsession with things American that people have not picked up on this as a factor in POTUS2022, particularly with DeSantis's stance. I assume DeSantis/Trump will escalate during the primaries (Trump has already promised to ban trans nationwide, DeSantis has defacto banned it in Florida).
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
Unless Biden wins a landslide, it's difficult to see how the Democrats can hold the Senate.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
That's one of the best summaries of this that I have ever read. I feel educated. Thankyou
It is also worth mentioning the funding which Stonewall received from the Arcus Foundation, a US-based organisation, which promotes trans rights, LBG rights and also funds Evangelical Christian organisations in the US, at the same time as they (Stonewall) started promoting trans issues.
Worth noting also that since 2015 Stonewall have explicitly been campaigning for the removal of all existing single sex and separate sex exemptions in the Equality Act. This would likely be a breach of the ECHR (see the Goodwin case). You can see why a lot of women are concerned at this. The Equality Act consolidated previous laws such as the the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts. Any watering down or removal of sex will weaken women's ability to fight against sex discrimination and unequal pay, inter alia.
Quite apart from that, the way that a large number of public and private bodies, including the police, have allied themselves to Stonewall raises conflicts of interest which are simply not being properly addressed. See here - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/conflicts-of-interest/
No public body should ally themselves with a lobby group in such a way because it risks them breaching the Equality Act and other laws as well (see the Miller case). Any lobby group, Stonewall included is free to lobby for what they want. But making them a part of official policy-making by allowing them to dictate how organisations approach the implementation of laws which do not give priority to one group is responsible for many of the issues and legal cases we are seeing.
Rather than attack trans people - which is wrong - the government would be better off addressing and removing these conflicts of interests. But then it does not exactly have a good record in this regard, does it?
Unscheduled flight arrivals in Miensk. Rumours that Lukashenka has died.
What happens next there, a takeover of the western-looking moderates, or Putin getting a placeman in charge? Huge implications for Ukraine.
95% of Belarusians want the white-red-white flag and a democratic future. Any Russian place man is unlikely to survive for long. It will take a lot to provoke the Belarusians to violence, but it could happen. There is already a government in exile and in the Kaliniauski battalion now regiment, an army in exile too
Tikhanovskaya is in exile and has an 8 year prison sentence hanging over her so it's hard to see a route into the Palace of Independence from that starting point. If Batka (who has been a pain in VVP's dick for decades over his flexible loyalty) has megged it then surely his replacement will be somebody more Russia adjacent who is likely to throw the full military might of Belarus into the SMO like Kochanova or Golovchenko.
In the short term, no question that Russia would put in a puppet, but the situation could move very fast. My friends in Miensk (BY versus Rus Minck) think that a Kalinauski move like the Free Russians in Belgorod could go a lot further.
Reminds me of the snooker club owner who put a large bet on Mark Williams to be world champion by 2000 - and he won at the last chance!
Presumably the bookies keep a record of all these children they take bets on becoming world champions at long odds, and 99% of them don’t result in the win that gets publicised?
...In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage...
I am surprised given PB's obsession with things American that people have not picked up on this as a factor in POTUS2022, particularly with DeSantis's stance. I assume DeSantis/Trump will escalate during the primaries (Trump has already promised to ban trans nationwide, DeSantis has defacto banned it in Florida).
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
I think it will be another battle of attrition. A narrow win (in terms of vote share) in 2020, followed by a narrow result in 2022, and another narrow result in 2024.
It's driving me nuts. The midterms is a strong indicator of Biden winning, but the recent Trump/Biden polls are too close to make a Biden victory obvious (Trump overperforms: come back @MrEd). I think you're right as to narrowness, which from a betting perspective is NOT GOOD.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
That's one of the best summaries of this that I have ever read. I feel educated. Thankyou
It is also worth mentioning the funding which Stonewall received from the Arcus Foundation, a US-based organisation, which promotes trans rights, LBG rights and also funds Evangelical Christian organisations in the US, at the same time as they (Stonewall) started promoting trans issues.
Worth noting also that since 2015 Stonewall have explicitly been campaigning for the removal of all existing single sex and separate sex exemptions in the Equality Act. This would likely be a breach of the ECHR (see the Goodwin case).
Quite apart from that the way that a large number of public and private bodies, including the police, have allied themselves to Stonewall raises conflicts of interest which are simply not being properly addressed. See here - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/conflicts-of-interest/
No public body should ally themselves with a lobby group in such a way because it risks them breaching the Equality Act and other laws as well (see the Miller case). Any lobby group, Stonewall included is free to lobby for what they want. But making them a part of official policy-making by allowing them to dictate how organisations approach the implementation of laws which do not give priority to one group is responsible for many of the issues and legal cases we are seeing.
Rather than attack trans people - which is wrong - the government would be better off addressing and removing these conflicts of interests. But then it does not exactly have a good record in this regard, does it?
Friend of mine gave a talk at Sussex Uni the other day. He asked for the loos afterwards, and was shown to the ONLY loos - entirely mixed gender. He said he felt intensely uncomfortable using it, and a couple of (female) students quietly told him they felt the same, they didn't want to be in the same space as men
Why is this nonsense being imposed on the 80% of people who want nothing to do with it??
I lived in Germany for 10 years and so learned to speak German reasonably proficiently, but I still tended to be confused for a Dutchman whenever I opened my mouth (we lived quite close to the Dutch border).
Similarly, I got mistaken for Swiss when I visited Austria recently, which I felt wasn't too bad as it's 26 years since I lived there - it's remarkable how languages stick once you learn them.
Recently chatted with one of our diplomats who had done stints in China and Afghanistan and discovered that the Foreign Office now requires extensive language training for anyone posted abroad, up to two years of intense lessons - accordingly, he's proficient in Mandarin and Farsi, which to my lay mind sounds pretty impressive. I still had the vague prejudice that our diplomats turn up in foreign lands and think they can get by through speaking English loudly - good to hear that's completely out of date.
Maybe yes. Maybe no. Some polling companies like Opinium compensate for the Don't Know effect Mike refers to, but they are also showing landslide Labour leads at the moment.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
1. THREAT OF PROSECUTION! The Chief Constable of @HantsPolice has written to us stating that if we post this flag, and it causes anyone anxiety, we will have committed an offence contrary to Communications Act S127 part 2.
We post today in defiance. Arrest us. Charge us. Or shut up.
[4 images of the new-ish Pride flag that might cause anxiety or distress (sic) ]
I do think there are better ways to make one's case than putting a swastika over the symbol of a group selected for the concentration camps by the actual Nazis.
The swastika is a function of the “improved” pride flag which was originally just the rainbow - as that covered everybody.
But some decided to “improve” it by adding a black stripe for black people, brown stripe for brown people and baby blue and baby pink stripes for trans people, as they evidently didn’t fall under “everybody”.
There have been further iterations with a red umbrella for sex workers…and a pi symbol for “minor attracted persons” (paedophiles in old money). This has not been met with universal approval - and this push back is part of that.
I know you thought that what you were doing was
"CarlottaVance posted a swastika to demonstrate pushback against inclusion of trans/black/brown people in Pride and futher iterations"
It's gone beyond Mr Fox and it is now seen by some as a pushback against the authoritarian stance taken by TRA elements of the LGBT+ movement, and the idiocy of the police who believe its a criminal offence.
It would appear only some political commentary is permissible.
Lets see if the Chief Constable follows through on his threat of arrest.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess
I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along
What happened? Who did this? Why?
Was it simply the Chinese and the Russians stirring it all up on Twitter?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
That's one of the best summaries of this that I have ever read. I feel educated. Thankyou
Rather than attack trans people - which is wrong - the government would be better off addressing and removing these conflicts of interests. But then it does not exactly have a good record in this regard, does it?
In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage.
In the UK its been overwhelmingly women making the running - from across politics - but frequently left wing. The Tories sporadically venture into it (Badenoch is sound, Mordaunt not) and Labour are hopelessly tongue tied. Some of them have worked out that women don't have penises, others can't bring themselves to say so.
The victims?
Young (probably gay) kids with other mental health problems who have been sterilised and maimed for life, unnecessarily.
Women sports competitors who have been cheated out of titles, winnings and earnings by men who think they are women. In some cases they've been injured by them too.
Medics, who have been hounded out of jobs for saying "you can't change sex".
Trans people - who wanted to get on with their lives but been drawn into a toxic debate.
Presents the story so far going into the experience of Kathleen Stock, but doesn't touch the medical issues.
The GOP have moved on to banning drag acts, trying to roll back LGB rights and conspiracy theories about Michelle Obama being a man. I think they’re doing far more damage.
No-one has banned drag acts. They’ve banned drag acts from appearing in schools, in the same way as they’ve banned pornographic books (which Amazon describes as for 18+) from being in school libraries.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Good summary.
One of the things which boils my piss about all this is that this is described as a Tory culture war. The right have done virtually nothing here apart from almost silently yearn for saner days.
'almost silently yearn'
Lol.
The Graun piece on Fenland U and slavery is quite eye-opening in the harassment of poor historians studying accounting and finance in the C18 and early C19. Not much silent yearning there.
The virtual silence of the right on almost all issues is certainly one of the notable characteristics of the last few years. We can even see it on here..
...In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage...
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
I’m not sure blocking so called “Affirmative Care” counts as “Anti-trans”.
Others might characterise it as potential “child abuse”.
The science may yet emerge in favour of “affirmative care” but it’s far from “settled”.
But that’s the debate in American.
I mean, it is clearer in the US that anti-trans bigotry is related to evangelical Christianity, anti-LGBT+ bigotry overall and the general attack on bodily autonomy and women's rights.
The British anti-trans movement still the money of these far right evangelicals, and will campaign with the likes of Tucker Carlson, or CPAC, or the Heritage Foundation, but hides behind the idea that somehow they are approaching this from a "feminist" viewpoint. Despite the fact that people like Posie Parker openly say they are not a feminist and is against feminism, and Julie Bindel used to defend trans people, and even the idea of transwomen as lesbians, before this moral panic started and the money started flowing.
The anti-trans moral panic is the same as the anti-gay panic before it; an obsession with bathrooms as a place of predators, a general comparison with sexual predation and converting children, the idea that "surely children don't know enough about themselves to identify as gay / trans", the idea that children being educated about the existence of LGBT+ people is either sexual grooming or conversion. This was the argument against gay rights. The medicalisation issue is different, as LGB people do not have needs that are met with medical intervention, but thinking about AIDs we also have similar demonisation: the idea that this is god's judgement / general punishment for something outside the norm, it led to excess deaths within the community that governments actively ignored / made worse, and is something that medical experts don't really disagree about but enough political pressure is added to the "debate" that the medical consensus is ignored.
FPT... regarding the largely synthesised outrage over RAF recruitment.
There are about 770 crew in the training system at the moment Of these about 430 are "holding" (that is doing made up ground jobs) due to lack of, well, everything in the training system. This total mismanagement has a far greater effect on the RAF's combat power than the demographic conditioning of the intake. Which is, in itself, a worthy endeavour.
I look forward to some middle aged white men getting agitated over that.
All down to a bodged privatisation of fast jet training wasn't it?
"Bodged" and "privatisation" go together like a horse and carriage.
Reminds me of the snooker club owner who put a large bet on Mark Williams to be world champion by 2000 - and he won at the last chance!
Presumably the bookies keep a record of all these children they take bets on becoming world champions at long odds, and 99% of them don’t result in the win that gets publicised?
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
I lived in Germany for 10 years and so learned to speak German reasonably proficiently, but I still tended to be confused for a Dutchman whenever I opened my mouth (we lived quite close to the Dutch border).
Similarly, I got mistaken for Swiss when I visited Austria recently, which I felt wasn't too bad as it's 26 years since I lived there - it's remarkable how languages stick once you learn them.
Recently chatted with one of our diplomats who had done stints in China and Afghanistan and discovered that the Foreign Office now requires extensive language training for anyone posted abroad, up to two years of intense lessons - accordingly, he's proficient in Mandarin and Farsi, which to my lay mind sounds pretty impressive. I still had the vague prejudice that our diplomats turn up in foreign lands and think they can get by through speaking English loudly - good to hear that's completely out of date.
My father (and mother) definitely got French language training before he was posted to the British Embassy in Bruxelles in the 70s. However, he got zero Yoruba instruction before his punishment detail to the High Commission in Nigeria and did indeed rely on SHOUTING LOUDLY. Our gardener thought "For Fuck's Sake" was some sort of English benediction as he heard it 20 times a day.
In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage.
In the UK its been overwhelmingly women making the running - from across politics - but frequently left wing. The Tories sporadically venture into it (Badenoch is sound, Mordaunt not) and Labour are hopelessly tongue tied. Some of them have worked out that women don't have penises, others can't bring themselves to say so.
The victims?
Young (probably gay) kids with other mental health problems who have been sterilised and maimed for life, unnecessarily.
Women sports competitors who have been cheated out of titles, winnings and earnings by men who think they are women. In some cases they've been injured by them too.
Medics, who have been hounded out of jobs for saying "you can't change sex".
Trans people - who wanted to get on with their lives but been drawn into a toxic debate.
Presents the story so far going into the experience of Kathleen Stock, but doesn't touch the medical issues.
The GOP have moved on to banning drag acts, trying to roll back LGB rights and conspiracy theories about Michelle Obama being a man. I think they’re doing far more damage.
No-one has banned drag acts. They’ve banned drag acts from appearing in schools, in the same way as they’ve banned pornographic books (which Amazon describes as for 18+) from being in school libraries.
Some states have "banned drag in front of children" with such a lose definition that if you are trans and are in public and live in a state where people refuse to believe in transpeople's existence, you will get arrested for wearing clothes congruent with their gender. One school demanded a child have to wear female clothes, including "female socks". Trans people wear clothing both to reduce dysphoria, but also to be safe - "passing" is necessary in some places to not face greater violence (and the way that clothing often reduces dysphoria is that society uses clothes in how people generally gender people, and so they get misgendered less often).
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi...
However, what Leon is rather overlooking is that Ireland was very poor to start with, largely due to British misrule. In fact, leaving the UK didn't make a noticeable difference except in the non-Belfast areas of Ulster, which became poorer due to trade disruption along the partition line.
My Mum tried to learn Russian, but only really ever remembered how to say one thing: Ленин любил кошек.
Fox Jr did 3 months of it at uni and managed quite well when we were there for the football. Being pretty much phonetic and an alphabet not too dissimilar to Greek helps. Certainly not fluent, but enough for a visitor. He is pretty much a language chameleon though. Plop him in a country and he speaks enough to get by within weeks.
FPT... regarding the largely synthesised outrage over RAF recruitment.
There are about 770 crew in the training system at the moment Of these about 430 are "holding" (that is doing made up ground jobs) due to lack of, well, everything in the training system. This total mismanagement has a far greater effect on the RAF's combat power than the demographic conditioning of the intake. Which is, in itself, a worthy endeavour.
I look forward to some middle aged white men getting agitated over that.
All down to a bodged privatisation of fast jet training wasn't it?
"Bodged" and "privatisation" go together like a horse and carriage.
Not so sure about that. Bodged goes very well with Labour's BMA negotiations. It also goes very well with "health care system" when describing the NHS. The reality is that however "bodged" privatised systems may be they are a lot less bodged than those that are run by bureaucrats, because nationalised systems are simply run for the vested interests that work in them, rather than those that they are meant to serve.
British voters were promised an end to fees sent to Brussels, control over immigration, greater democratic control, and economic sunny uplands (the whole piece about removing ourselves from sclerotic shackles).
The first has been delivered. The second has been delivered de jure but not in my opinion de facto. Brexiters never engaged seriously with the democracy piece, and the economic promises were just a lie outright.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
That's one of the best summaries of this that I have ever read. I feel educated. Thankyou
It is also worth mentioning the funding which Stonewall received from the Arcus Foundation, a US-based organisation, which promotes trans rights, LBG rights and also funds Evangelical Christian organisations in the US, at the same time as they (Stonewall) started promoting trans issues.
Worth noting also that since 2015 Stonewall have explicitly been campaigning for the removal of all existing single sex and separate sex exemptions in the Equality Act. This would likely be a breach of the ECHR (see the Goodwin case).
Quite apart from that the way that a large number of public and private bodies, including the police, have allied themselves to Stonewall raises conflicts of interest which are simply not being properly addressed. See here - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/conflicts-of-interest/
No public body should ally themselves with a lobby group in such a way because it risks them breaching the Equality Act and other laws as well (see the Miller case). Any lobby group, Stonewall included is free to lobby for what they want. But making them a part of official policy-making by allowing them to dictate how organisations approach the implementation of laws which do not give priority to one group is responsible for many of the issues and legal cases we are seeing.
Rather than attack trans people - which is wrong - the government would be better off addressing and removing these conflicts of interests. But then it does not exactly have a good record in this regard, does it?
Friend of mine gave a talk at Sussex Uni the other day. He asked for the loos afterwards, and was shown to the ONLY loos - entirely mixed gender. He said he felt intensely uncomfortable using it, and a couple of (female) students quietly told him they felt the same, they didn't want to be in the same space as men
Why is this nonsense being imposed on the 80% of people who want nothing to do with it??
Grrrr
From what equality lawyer friends of mine have said, the University would probably lose a case for indirect discrimination. They should provide male, female and neutral facilities. They certainly have the space to do that. The fact that they have been a Stonewall Diversity Champion since joining in August 2018 may have something to do with it.
It is this which creates the conflict of interest - between the desire to get points from a lobby group vs the (one would have thought) overriding need to comply with the law. Cynically, they don't care about discriminating against women or men who don't want to have their privacy and dignity impinged on in this way and reckon that few will legally or otherwise challenge them. And if they do, guess what shit they will face .....
It is so bloody stupid because creating an additional third option would resolve all issues and keep everyone happy.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
Nonetheless, we sought our political independence, as they sought theirs
A lot of us Leavers made the choice for reasons entirely unrelated to economics. Indeed I voted for Brexit KNOWING that Brexit would be severely painful. A bit like - ooh, I dunno - having a baby? Therefore I do not regret Brexit - we are now independent - and I would vote Leave all over again
I accept there are millions of Leavers who did vote on economic grounds and that they probably regret it, that's their choice
But it is not mine. So. When will you finally wrap your tiny brain around this idea? Lots of us voted Leave for reasons of sovereignty and democracy. We have no regrets. It is done
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage.
In the UK its been overwhelmingly women making the running - from across politics - but frequently left wing. The Tories sporadically venture into it (Badenoch is sound, Mordaunt not) and Labour are hopelessly tongue tied. Some of them have worked out that women don't have penises, others can't bring themselves to say so.
The victims?
Young (probably gay) kids with other mental health problems who have been sterilised and maimed for life, unnecessarily.
Women sports competitors who have been cheated out of titles, winnings and earnings by men who think they are women. In some cases they've been injured by them too.
Medics, who have been hounded out of jobs for saying "you can't change sex".
Trans people - who wanted to get on with their lives but been drawn into a toxic debate.
Presents the story so far going into the experience of Kathleen Stock, but doesn't touch the medical issues.
Certainly in the US, the date the trans stuff started was the day the the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage in 2015. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges The trans stuff was merely what all of the activists moved on to.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Wonder if this fella was a PB'er back in the day (can this of a few possible candidates )
Fesshole 🧻 @fesshole · 1h Met a girl in a bar in 2007. She was heavily into Labour party politics so I pretended I voted Labour. Even claimed I was a Gordon Brown super-fan. We started banging but I was busted after 3 weeks when she found a picture of me with David Cameron on Facebook. Dumped.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi...
However, what Leon is rather overlooking is that Ireland was very poor to start with, largely due to British misrule. In fact, leaving the UK didn't make a noticeable difference except in the non-Belfast areas of Ulster, which became poorer due to trade disruption along the partition line.
By contrast, being in the EU made Britain richer.
"You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi..." Not really. All of these folk did not get parachuted into the UK to live here and lord it amongst us. They were also accountable to the Council of Ministers of which the UK was a member, so have slightly more democratic accountability than our head of state (who used to be Ireland's) and the House of Lords
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Some British people have a remarkable blind spot about Ireland. The Irish are far more forgiving towards us than we have any right to expect.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Am I right in thinking Ireland is still the only country in Europe, given a roughly similar geographic area, whose population is lower now than it was in 1840?
Manufacturing UKs inflation busting recession is coming along nicely. Ordinarily, downturn data wouldn’t be best followed with by yet another interest rate rise.
I also would not expect a house price correction without stock market pressures. Let’s be careful how we are investing until UK economy is out of the woods.
1. THREAT OF PROSECUTION! The Chief Constable of @HantsPolice has written to us stating that if we post this flag, and it causes anyone anxiety, we will have committed an offence contrary to Communications Act S127 part 2.
We post today in defiance. Arrest us. Charge us. Or shut up.
[4 images of the new-ish Pride flag that might cause anxiety or distress (sic) ]
I do think there are better ways to make one's case than putting a swastika over the symbol of a group selected for the concentration camps by the actual Nazis.
The swastika is a function of the “improved” pride flag which was originally just the rainbow - as that covered everybody.
But some decided to “improve” it by adding a black stripe for black people, brown stripe for brown people and baby blue and baby pink stripes for trans people, as they evidently didn’t fall under “everybody”.
There have been further iterations with a red umbrella for sex workers…and a pi symbol for “minor attracted persons” (paedophiles in old money). This has not been met with universal approval - and this push back is part of that.
I know you thought that what you were doing was
"CarlottaVance posted a swastika to demonstrate pushback against inclusion of trans/black/brown people in Pride and futher iterations"
It's gone beyond Mr Fox and it is now seen by some as a pushback against the authoritarian stance taken by TRA elements of the LGBT+ movement, and the idiocy of the police who believe its a criminal offence.
It would appear only some political commentary is permissible.
Lets see if the Chief Constable follows through on his threat of arrest.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess
I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along
What happened? Who did this? Why?
Was it simply the Chinese and the Russians stirring it all up on Twitter?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that.
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
That's one of the best summaries of this that I have ever read. I feel educated. Thankyou
Rather than attack trans people - which is wrong - the government would be better off addressing and removing these conflicts of interests. But then it does not exactly have a good record in this regard, does it?
I was positing it as an alternative. The conflicts of interest issue is a serious one which needs looking at. It would be the same if, say, the lobby group in question were Scientology or Opus Dei or the Plymouth Brethren.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Some British people have a remarkable blind spot about Ireland. The Irish are far more forgiving towards us than we have any right to expect.
We freed up a heck of a lot of parking on the West Coast, and encouraged them to diversify their agriculture away from the potato. How is this bad?
I lived in Germany for 10 years and so learned to speak German reasonably proficiently, but I still tended to be confused for a Dutchman whenever I opened my mouth (we lived quite close to the Dutch border).
Similarly, I got mistaken for Swiss when I visited Austria recently, which I felt wasn't too bad as it's 26 years since I lived there - it's remarkable how languages stick once you learn them.
Recently chatted with one of our diplomats who had done stints in China and Afghanistan and discovered that the Foreign Office now requires extensive language training for anyone posted abroad, up to two years of intense lessons - accordingly, he's proficient in Mandarin and Farsi, which to my lay mind sounds pretty impressive. I still had the vague prejudice that our diplomats turn up in foreign lands and think they can get by through speaking English loudly - good to hear that's completely out of date.
My father (and mother) definitely got French language training before he was posted to the British Embassy in Bruxelles in the 70s. However, he got zero Yoruba instruction before his punishment detail to the High Commission in Nigeria and did indeed rely on SHOUTING LOUDLY. Our gardener thought "For Fuck's Sake" was some sort of English benediction as he heard it 20 times a day.
My brother got trained well on government service in Arabic and a number of other languages. He always sounds English* but speaks well enough for complex conversations.
*I think people rarely lose the accent of their upbringing with out major effort. My sister in law still sounds German after 40 years, and in cosmopolitan Leicester people often have the accent of when they arrived here, even if they have added some Leicester vocabulary too.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi...
However, what Leon is rather overlooking is that Ireland was very poor to start with, largely due to British misrule. In fact, leaving the UK didn't make a noticeable difference except in the non-Belfast areas of Ulster, which became poorer due to trade disruption along the partition line.
By contrast, being in the EU made Britain richer.
"You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi..." Not really. All of these folk did not get parachuted into the UK to live here and lord it amongst us. They were also accountable to the Council of Ministers of which the UK was a member, so have slightly more democratic accountability than our head of state (who used to be Ireland's) and the House of Lords
Interestingly though several of them were parachuted into Ireland to manage its finances after the GFC.
There were of course a significant number of Irish MPs in the Commons as well, although only 28 peers in the Lords (many of whom were not Irish).
...In the US the debate is catastrophically polarised - Democrats fully in the "Affirmative Care" camp (where "the science is settled" FFS - anyone who writes that doesn't understand science) and the GOP who are pursuing a "stop it all" model. Both are wrong, although I think the GOP is doing less damage...
I am surprised given PB's obsession with things American that people have not picked up on this as a factor in POTUS2022, particularly with DeSantis's stance. I assume DeSantis/Trump will escalate during the primaries (Trump has already promised to ban trans nationwide, DeSantis has defacto banned it in Florida).
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
Unless Biden wins a landslide, it's difficult to see how the Democrats can hold the Senate.
Thank you for not pointing out my POTUS2022 error...
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Some British people have a remarkable blind spot about Ireland. The Irish are far more forgiving towards us than we have any right to expect.
We freed up a heck of a lot of parking on the West Coast, and encouraged them to diversify their agriculture away from the potato. How is this bad?
Find a good local pub in North Dublin or the Bogside and give them a bit of your "humour", they love the craic over there.
Maybe yes. Maybe no. Some polling companies like Opinium compensate for the Don't Know effect Mike refers to, but they are also showing landslide Labour leads at the moment.
I think it’s elections like 1997 where usual so expected swing-back doesn’t happen, Mike’s d/k fail to vote on the day and HY’s If’s confirmed as If only.
and how to spot swingback won’t happen. Nothing from the pollsters or psephologists convince me they know how to spot it.
I lived in Germany for 10 years and so learned to speak German reasonably proficiently, but I still tended to be confused for a Dutchman whenever I opened my mouth (we lived quite close to the Dutch border).
Similarly, I got mistaken for Swiss when I visited Austria recently, which I felt wasn't too bad as it's 26 years since I lived there - it's remarkable how languages stick once you learn them.
Recently chatted with one of our diplomats who had done stints in China and Afghanistan and discovered that the Foreign Office now requires extensive language training for anyone posted abroad, up to two years of intense lessons - accordingly, he's proficient in Mandarin and Farsi, which to my lay mind sounds pretty impressive. I still had the vague prejudice that our diplomats turn up in foreign lands and think they can get by through speaking English loudly - good to hear that's completely out of date.
My father (and mother) definitely got French language training before he was posted to the British Embassy in Bruxelles in the 70s. However, he got zero Yoruba instruction before his punishment detail to the High Commission in Nigeria and did indeed rely on SHOUTING LOUDLY. Our gardener thought "For Fuck's Sake" was some sort of English benediction as he heard it 20 times a day.
My brother got trained well on government service in Arabic and a number of other languages. He always sounds English* but speaks well enough for complex conversations.
*I think people rarely lose the accent of their upbringing with out major effort. My sister in law still sounds German after 40 years, and in cosmopolitan Leicester people often have the accent of when they arrived here, even if they have added some Leicester vocabulary too.
The point that to end a war one may have to negotiate with people one doesn't like is less striking than the suggestion that if Ukraine doesn't succeed in this year's expected offensive, the West will need to rethink the nature of support. His comments are qualified (and translation may be an issue too) and certainly not pro-Putin but probably the clearest hint we've seen so far that a continuing military deadlock may lead to some pressure on Ukraine to negotiate for something less than total victory. Conversely the war hysteria of Russian nationalists seems to have subsided into trying to keep their current gains rather than advancing further.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi...
However, what Leon is rather overlooking is that Ireland was very poor to start with, largely due to British misrule. In fact, leaving the UK didn't make a noticeable difference except in the non-Belfast areas of Ulster, which became poorer due to trade disruption along the partition line.
By contrast, being in the EU made Britain richer.
"You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi..." Not really. All of these folk did not get parachuted into the UK to live here and lord it amongst us. They were also accountable to the Council of Ministers of which the UK was a member, so have slightly more democratic accountability than our head of state (who used to be Ireland's) and the House of Lords
Interestingly though several of them were parachuted into Ireland to manage its finances after the GFC.
There were of course a significant number of Irish MPs in the Commons as well, although only 28 peers in the Lords (many of whom were not Irish).
Yes, but you know that it is an almost as weak an analogy as Leon's absolutely absurd one. By the same token we could argue that we have to work with foreigners from UN (probably will be IMF after Labour have been in a while) and representatives of NATO. That said, on the latter point, the yanks do sometimes literally "parachute in". The Brexiteer self-appointed protectors of our sovereignty have less to say on the country that has airbases on our soil of course.
The GOP have moved on to banning drag acts, trying to roll back LGB rights and conspiracy theories about Michelle Obama being a man. I think they’re doing far more damage.
No-one has banned drag acts. They’ve banned drag acts from appearing in schools, in the same way as they’ve banned pornographic books (which Amazon describes as for 18+) from being in school libraries.
As I pointed out above (and absolutely nobody listened to me)
Just a brief glance at the trans debate on Twitter shows that it has lost none of its ugliness and venom. What a horrible poisonous mess I’m still bemused how we ended up here, when ten years ago trans people were generally accepted and everyone seemed to rub along What happened? Who did this? Why?
Several things have happened - quite a few of which were going on “under the radar” and have only recently become apparent.
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. Except some LGB people don't think it's a good fit between LGB (who people are attracted to) and QT+ (who people think they are). Among the QT+ tribe are trans people, who have gender dysphoria, but also "AGPs" - heterosexual men who are sexually aroused by themselves in women's clothes. These men in particular are seen as a threat to women's safety by women's groups.
Then Stonewall started briefing employers and organisations on the Equality Law as they thought it should be, not as it actually was. They also adopted a policy of "No Debate" when it came to Trans rights, so were not only deaf to criticism, but actively hostile towards it. This ended up in the courts when employers sacked people based on "Stonewall law" and found it did not stand up. These people were predominantly women, often left wing & frequently lesbian. So much for Tory "culture war"!
Meanwhile in Scotland, safe in the progressive echo chamber the SNP at the behest of their Green partners pushed through Gender Recognition Reform - which would turn getting a gender recognition certificate into a formality - again discussion or debate was dismissed as "transphobia". When this was finally exposed to full public discussion and the case of male rapists discovering they had "Prison onset gender dysphoria - can I be housed with women?" the politicians were I suspect grateful for Westminster blocking it because they could return to safer ground "disrespecting Scotland" than a policy unpopular with voters.
Back in England the explosion in cases of "gender dysphoria" among teen girls (previously it had mainly been pre-pubescent children and middle aged men) at the Tavistock led to an investigation under a leading paediatrician - Dr Cass - which started blowing holes in the assertions of the "Affirmative Care" model - widely (and, it must be said, profitably) promoted in the USA in particular. The ripples from the NHS review are spreading across the world with Australia wondering whether it should backtrack, and some states in the US now banning so-called "affirmative care". 1/2
Thanks for the summary.
I think the difference is that after the loss on equal marriage in the US, both in the courts and the public opinion, evangelical Christians and the big money in it moved to two other causes - finding a wedge issue to make LGBT+ issues relevant again (so they picked trans people) and trying to help non Western countries (specifically those in Africa) pass homophobic laws. Trans people became the battleground in the US and UK, and a lot of the rest of the Western world, that replaced the old fight (with the same talking points).
The increase in cases of dysphoria is made much of, but surely it makes sense that the bodies of people assigned female at birth were more heavily policed than those assigned male at birth, and therefore their ability to transition was lessened. Again, the increase in dysphoria cases seem huge when put in percentage increases, but we're still typically talking about an increase in referrals, not treatment, and still a very small number of people.
Queer issues have ALWAYS been part of the struggle - the idea of challenging the nuclear family, of heteronormativity and gender roles has always been part of the struggle of LGBT+ people because we are considered an existential threat to the existence of it. If people can have same sex partners, never get married, have multiple partners, not have to fit in with societal norms of gender, they can say that the patriarchal set up of society doesn't have to exist. "We're here, we're queer, we're used to it" was a rallying cry of the 70s and 80s. Some LGBT+ activists didn't WANT equal marriage because they saw that as conforming too much to heteronormative living - that partners deserved rights without having to concede to the constricts of conservative family values. But the movement became less radical, and that seems to have helped in some ways, and failed in others; most people still look down on any queer person who isn't living a heteronormative lifestyle.
Wonder if this fella was a PB'er back in the day (can this of a few possible candidates )
Fesshole 🧻 @fesshole · 1h Met a girl in a bar in 2007. She was heavily into Labour party politics so I pretended I voted Labour. Even claimed I was a Gordon Brown super-fan. We started banging but I was busted after 3 weeks when she found a picture of me with David Cameron on Facebook. Dumped.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Some British people have a remarkable blind spot about Ireland. The Irish are far more forgiving towards us than we have any right to expect.
We freed up a heck of a lot of parking on the West Coast, and encouraged them to diversify their agriculture away from the potato. How is this bad?
Find a good local pub in North Dublin or the Bogside and give them a bit of your "humour", they love the craic over there.
Actually. I've found the actual Irish in Ireland way more forgiving - indeed, forgetful - of all this ancient history, than Plastic Paddies in London or Boston or a few mad Sinners in Belfast
Which is only right. The Famine was a terrible thing but - FFS - it was nearly two centuries ago. Sometimes it is better to move on
Alternatively, I could be really really really angry at Morocco, whence the Sale Rovers enslaved thousands of my fellow Cornishmen - often taking entire villages - in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were brutal and cruel to my people. They would often castrate the men, immediately
But it is ridiculous to get furious at something that happened centuries ago, whether it is slavery or Famine
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi...
However, what Leon is rather overlooking is that Ireland was very poor to start with, largely due to British misrule. In fact, leaving the UK didn't make a noticeable difference except in the non-Belfast areas of Ulster, which became poorer due to trade disruption along the partition line.
By contrast, being in the EU made Britain richer.
"You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi..." Not really. All of these folk did not get parachuted into the UK to live here and lord it amongst us. They were also accountable to the Council of Ministers of which the UK was a member, so have slightly more democratic accountability than our head of state (who used to be Ireland's) and the House of Lords
Interestingly though several of them were parachuted into Ireland to manage its finances after the GFC.
There were of course a significant number of Irish MPs in the Commons as well, although only 28 peers in the Lords (many of whom were not Irish).
Yes, but you know that it is an almost as weak an analogy as Leon's absolutely absurd one. By the same token we could argue that we have to work with foreigners from UN (probably will be IMF after Labour have been in a while) and representatives of NATO. That said, on the latter point, the yanks do sometimes literally "parachute in". The Brexiteer self-appointed protectors of our sovereignty have less to say on the country that has airbases on our soil of course.
True. But that's one of the reasons why I felt that point was a dangerous one to drag in. The constitutional situation of Ireland was quite complex. Pointing out Leon was wrong on the economic facts where he clearly is is altogether more pertinent to what you were saying.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The problem is that from the 12th Century to the late 19th Century Ireland was, effectively, run as a plantation colony rather than part of the Union.
Such contrasts can be exaggerated - Had it been done so throughout, particularly from the 17th Century onwards - it would be (a) still part of the UK and (b) economically more balanced and prosperous and (c) far fewer lives would have been lost.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Some British people have a remarkable blind spot about Ireland. The Irish are far more forgiving towards us than we have any right to expect.
It's probably a question of timing, proximity and scale - you could make similar arguments about Scotland in the 18th Century and Wales in the 13th Century. Hell, even England if you go back earlier.
The trouble was that Ireland was run as a plantation colony until well into the late 19th Century before it started to reform and, by then, it was too little too late, and the errors kept coming.
Were that not the case I have no doubt Ireland would be part of the UK today.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Some British people have a remarkable blind spot about Ireland. The Irish are far more forgiving towards us than we have any right to expect.
Probably because "we" (including myself) have much shared ancestry. The history of Ireland is highly complex, and as many Irish people (IMO) seem to have a much better understanding of history in general than most Brits it is possible that they/we recognise that moving forward requires a certain amount of acceptance that wrongs are committed by individuals not collective bogeymen-nationalities.
Manufacturing UKs inflation busting recession is coming along nicely. Ordinarily, downturn data wouldn’t be best followed with by yet another interest rate rise.
I also would not expect a house price correction without stock market pressures. Let’s be careful how we are investing until UK economy is out of the woods.
Demand for manufactured product is weakening globally. It is not just in the UK. Yes, where I work we are feeling it and we have just allowed people to apply for severance, not terming it redundancy, on signing a compromise agreement. We have had quite a take up in manufacturing. Our forward order book for the second half of the year, compared to last year, shows a marked decline.
One of the main reasons we are being told by marketing and sales is our customers simply overstocked when COVID came along and maintained those stock levels during extended lead times. Lead times are back to normal so stock is being run down.
The point that to end a war one may have to negotiate with people one doesn't like is less striking than the suggestion that if Ukraine doesn't succeed in this year's expected offensive, the West will need to rethink the nature of support. His comments are qualified (and translation may be an issue too) and certainly not pro-Putin but probably the clearest hint we've seen so far that a continuing military deadlock may lead to some pressure on Ukraine to negotiate for something less than total victory. Conversely the war hysteria of Russian nationalists seems to have subsided into trying to keep their current gains rather than advancing further.
You missed a few words off the end; it should be: "... into trying to keep their current gains rather than advancing further for the time being."
*Any* peace deal - whether on today's lines, on 2014's, or pre-2014 - has to ensure that Russia will not just rebuild and try again in a few years - as they have before.
And the major issue is that, absent a Russian defeat, I see no way of ensuring that. Why trust Putin and his cronies, especially if they can sell a big territorial 'win' to their populace?
Godwinning myself, It's like trying to 'negotiate' with Hitler or Stalin back in the late 1930s.
Maybe yes. Maybe no. Some polling companies like Opinium compensate for the Don't Know effect Mike refers to, but they are also showing landslide Labour leads at the moment.
I think it’s elections like 1997 where usual so expected swing-back doesn’t happen, Mike’s d/k fail to vote on the day and HY’s If’s confirmed as If only.
and how to spot swingback won’t happen. Nothing from the pollsters or psephologists convince me they know how to spot it.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi...
However, what Leon is rather overlooking is that Ireland was very poor to start with, largely due to British misrule. In fact, leaving the UK didn't make a noticeable difference except in the non-Belfast areas of Ulster, which became poorer due to trade disruption along the partition line.
By contrast, being in the EU made Britain richer.
"You could make a case for 'yes' for your last point - Juncker, Selmayr, Van der Leyen, Barroso, Prodi..." Not really. All of these folk did not get parachuted into the UK to live here and lord it amongst us. They were also accountable to the Council of Ministers of which the UK was a member, so have slightly more democratic accountability than our head of state (who used to be Ireland's) and the House of Lords
Interestingly though several of them were parachuted into Ireland to manage its finances after the GFC.
There were of course a significant number of Irish MPs in the Commons as well, although only 28 peers in the Lords (many of whom were not Irish).
Yes, but you know that it is an almost as weak an analogy as Leon's absolutely absurd one. By the same token we could argue that we have to work with foreigners from UN (probably will be IMF after Labour have been in a while) and representatives of NATO. That said, on the latter point, the yanks do sometimes literally "parachute in". The Brexiteer self-appointed protectors of our sovereignty have less to say on the country that has airbases on our soil of course.
True. But that's one of the reasons why I felt that point was a dangerous one to drag in. The constitutional situation of Ireland was quite complex. Pointing out Leon was wrong on the economic facts where he clearly is is altogether more pertinent to what you were saying.
But I am right, Ireland got relatively POORER after Independence, only really catching up after about 1980
Here's a very fair minded IRISH analysis. Which also notes how Ireland's GDP per capita is a bit leprechauny
"It is clear that Irish living standards fell further behind in the first decades following independence, only returning to its pre-independence relative position by around 1980. Convergence with Scottish GDP per capita in the decades since then has been dramatic. Convergence did not occur for Northern Ireland: today, it is in a similar position relative to Scotland as it was in 1925."
The point that to end a war one may have to negotiate with people one doesn't like is less striking than the suggestion that if Ukraine doesn't succeed in this year's expected offensive, the West will need to rethink the nature of support. His comments are qualified (and translation may be an issue too) and certainly not pro-Putin but probably the clearest hint we've seen so far that a continuing military deadlock may lead to some pressure on Ukraine to negotiate for something less than total victory. Conversely the war hysteria of Russian nationalists seems to have subsided into trying to keep their current gains rather than advancing further.
You missed a few words off the end; it should be: "... into trying to keep their current gains rather than advancing further for the time being."
*Any* peace deal - whether on today's lines, on 2014's, or pre-2014 - has to ensure that Russia will not just rebuild and try again in a few years - as they have before.
And the major issue is that, absent a Russian defeat, I see no way of ensuring that. Why trust Putin and his cronies, especially if they can sell a big territorial 'win' to their populace?
Godwinning myself, It's like trying to 'negotiate' with Hitler or Stalin back in the late 1930s.
Although a major Russian defeat wouldn't necessarily guarantee that either. Just because Pilsudski hammered them into a million pieces didn't mean they gave up on the 130,000km2 of Poland they were forced to give up. They bided their time and took it back in 1940 and 1945.
1. THREAT OF PROSECUTION! The Chief Constable of @HantsPolice has written to us stating that if we post this flag, and it causes anyone anxiety, we will have committed an offence contrary to Communications Act S127 part 2.
We post today in defiance. Arrest us. Charge us. Or shut up.
[4 images of the new-ish Pride flag that might cause anxiety or distress (sic) ]
I do think there are better ways to make one's case than putting a swastika over the symbol of a group selected for the concentration camps by the actual Nazis.
"I killed 27 people. What are you in for?" "I made a case suboptimally on Twitter."
That cop is full of it. Causing someone anxiety isn't against the law. S127(2) of the Act says this:
"A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—
(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false, (b)causes such a message to be sent; or (c)persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network."
Their actions are being deliberately provocative. This “flag” only has the purpose of winding people up. I don’t necessarily agree with the law, but it would appear to be at least close to “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another”, no?
It's the Twitter equivalent of primary school kids discovering swear words, but less innocent. Best ignored.
This is one to annoy that diminishing coterie of Brexit-is-shite-deniers that still protest it was a good idea despite the complete lack of evidence that it has done us any favours. No doubt their closed minds will find some reason to doubt his analysis lol.
Irish independence was a major economic error, of historic proportions. They were poorer as a result, and remained poorer for decades
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
What a ridiculous comparison @Leon. Do you have ANY idea what British rule in Ireland meant? Did the EU preside over a potato famine? Did the EU send troops into the UK. Did the EU insist on having it's aristocrats run major institutions?
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
The Great Hunger removed a third of the island of Ireland's population, through death or migration. The population has never recovered. The island was occupied by soldiers, up to the modern era, who committed war crimes, even if the UK refuses to accept them. That is not the same as voting to join an economic consortium of countries that evolved into a more political consortium of countries, and the comparison is sickening.
Some British people have a remarkable blind spot about Ireland. The Irish are far more forgiving towards us than we have any right to expect.
Probably because "we" (including myself) have much shared ancestry. The history of Ireland is highly complex, and as many Irish people (IMO) seem to have a much better understanding of history in general than most Brits it is possible that they/we recognise that moving forward requires a certain amount of acceptance that wrongs are committed by individuals not collective bogeymen-nationalities.
Yes. No rational person gets concerned about what one group of their ancestors did to another group of their ancestors.
People on the Faroes are descended from Norse and Danish men, and Irish women. I’m willing to bet the latter did not migrate there, voluntarily.
Comments
Feck off
The idea the dialogue reduced to a lot of ums, ahs, errs is, for starters, total bollocks. One reason Succession was so brilliant was the scintillating dialogue, so rich in puns, allusions and jokes it was sometimes hard to grasp them all, and the series will surely be worth re-watching for that alone
One of my favourites was "Little Lord FuckLeRoy"
Gone in a second. I bet 99% of people didn't even notice it
Also, sometimes the dialogue was borderline surreal, but in a good way. Always unexpected. Genius
Also: entirely wrong on Connor. It is made clear in the closing scenes that Connor now has an open marriage, ie his younger wife is gonna cuck him, and he has little choice
For once, actually, and unusually, the right has played this very sensibly.
We were playing which Succession character are you and I’m clearly Logan Roy.
According to several people I’m clearly Roman.
My withering put downs are so Logan.
I once said my hotel room smells like the cheesemonger died and left his dick in the brie.
Jonny Bairstow has taken a catch.
As I am due a walk in Kenwood with my older daughter later, that would be nice
It’s only a ‘culture war’ if someone puts up an opposition, and they’d prefer a walkover.
Lol.
The Republican primary season will be interesting, and the first debate is August 2023. You can track anti-trans legislation by US State here.
Josh Tongue's England debut will bank £50,000 cash win for family friend
https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/england-v-ireland-men/josh_tongues_england_debut_will_bank_50000_cash_win_family_friend.html
Reminds me of the snooker club owner who put a large bet on Mark Williams to be world champion by 2000 - and he won at the last chance!
The ums, ahs, errs came from this scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es17PtDeHRU . Check out how much is non-articulated.
Others might characterise it as potential “child abuse”.
The science may yet emerge in favour of “affirmative care” but it’s far from “settled”.
But that’s the debate in American.
Worth noting also that since 2015 Stonewall have explicitly been campaigning for the removal of all existing single sex and separate sex exemptions in the Equality Act. This would likely be a breach of the ECHR (see the Goodwin case). You can see why a lot of women are concerned at this. The Equality Act consolidated previous laws such as the the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts. Any watering down or removal of sex will weaken women's ability to fight against sex discrimination and unequal pay, inter alia.
Quite apart from that, the way that a large number of public and private bodies, including the police, have allied themselves to Stonewall raises conflicts of interest which are simply not being properly addressed. See here - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/conflicts-of-interest/
No public body should ally themselves with a lobby group in such a way because it risks them breaching the Equality Act and other laws as well (see the Miller case). Any lobby group, Stonewall included is free to lobby for what they want. But making them a part of official policy-making by allowing them to dictate how organisations approach the implementation of laws which do not give priority to one group is responsible for many of the issues and legal cases we are seeing.
Rather than attack trans people - which is wrong - the government would be better off addressing and removing these conflicts of interests. But then it does not exactly have a good record in this regard, does it?
BTW the Interim Cass Report can be read here - https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/
The situation in BY is pretty unstable
"A U.S. Army Special Forces paratrooper conducts a high-altitude military freefall jump with a W54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition, 1960s."
https://twitter.com/atomicarchive/status/1663626491521892355?s=20
He's actually strapped to a nuke. What's he meant to do when he lands, set it off then run REALLY fast?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/brexit-will-be-known-as-historic-economic-error-says-former-us-treasury-secretary/ar-AA1bZanx?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=67be5e6d2933443fae6d36505a808ac6&ei=18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vhipybrPdg
Why is this nonsense being imposed on the 80% of people who want nothing to do with it??
Grrrr
Recently chatted with one of our diplomats who had done stints in China and Afghanistan and discovered that the Foreign Office now requires extensive language training for anyone posted abroad, up to two years of intense lessons - accordingly, he's proficient in Mandarin and Farsi, which to my lay mind sounds pretty impressive. I still had the vague prejudice that our diplomats turn up in foreign lands and think they can get by through speaking English loudly - good to hear that's completely out of date.
More detail on Don't Know handling here: https://www.opinium.com/resource-center/uk-voting-intention-27th-january-2022-2/
Do they regret it now? Do they want to revert? No. They did it for reasons OTHER than economics
With the arrival of Gay Marriage the LGB Charity Stonewall had run out of road - what LGB rights were left to secure? So they added QT+ and started advocating for Trans people. Nothing wrong with that. When did the government attack trans people?
The British anti-trans movement still the money of these far right evangelicals, and will campaign with the likes of Tucker Carlson, or CPAC, or the Heritage Foundation, but hides behind the idea that somehow they are approaching this from a "feminist" viewpoint. Despite the fact that people like Posie Parker openly say they are not a feminist and is against feminism, and Julie Bindel used to defend trans people, and even the idea of transwomen as lesbians, before this moral panic started and the money started flowing.
The anti-trans moral panic is the same as the anti-gay panic before it; an obsession with bathrooms as a place of predators, a general comparison with sexual predation and converting children, the idea that "surely children don't know enough about themselves to identify as gay / trans", the idea that children being educated about the existence of LGBT+ people is either sexual grooming or conversion. This was the argument against gay rights. The medicalisation issue is different, as LGB people do not have needs that are met with medical intervention, but thinking about AIDs we also have similar demonisation: the idea that this is god's judgement / general punishment for something outside the norm, it led to excess deaths within the community that governments actively ignored / made worse, and is something that medical experts don't really disagree about but enough political pressure is added to the "debate" that the medical consensus is ignored.
"Bodged" and "privatisation" go together like a horse and carriage.
Don't be so fucking ridiculous. You have more cred when you talk about alien invasions.
However, what Leon is rather overlooking is that Ireland was very poor to start with, largely due to British misrule. In fact, leaving the UK didn't make a noticeable difference except in the non-Belfast areas of Ulster, which became poorer due to trade disruption along the partition line.
By contrast, being in the EU made Britain richer.
The first has been delivered.
The second has been delivered de jure but not in my opinion de facto.
Brexiters never engaged seriously with the democracy piece, and the economic promises were just a lie outright.
It is this which creates the conflict of interest - between the desire to get points from a lobby group vs the (one would have thought) overriding need to comply with the law. Cynically, they don't care about discriminating against women or men who don't want to have their privacy and dignity impinged on in this way and reckon that few will legally or otherwise challenge them. And if they do, guess what shit they will face .....
It is so bloody stupid because creating an additional third option would resolve all issues and keep everyone happy.
A lot of us Leavers made the choice for reasons entirely unrelated to economics. Indeed I voted for Brexit KNOWING that Brexit would be severely painful. A bit like - ooh, I dunno - having a baby? Therefore I do not regret Brexit - we are now independent - and I would vote Leave all over again
I accept there are millions of Leavers who did vote on economic grounds and that they probably regret it, that's their choice
But it is not mine. So. When will you finally wrap your tiny brain around this idea? Lots of us voted Leave for reasons of sovereignty and democracy. We have no regrets. It is done
Collect your PB Pedantry Award on the way out.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html
Fesshole 🧻
@fesshole
·
1h
Met a girl in a bar in 2007. She was heavily into Labour party politics so I pretended I voted Labour. Even claimed I was a Gordon Brown super-fan. We started banging but I was busted after 3 weeks when she found a picture of me with David Cameron on Facebook. Dumped.
https://news.sky.com/story/manufacturing-downturn-deepens-amid-weak-demand-for-uk-goods-12894227
I also would not expect a house price correction without stock market pressures. Let’s be careful how we are investing until UK economy is out of the woods.
https://news.sky.com/story/storm-clouds-gathering-for-property-market-as-house-prices-fall-12894048
*I think people rarely lose the accent of their upbringing with out major effort. My sister in law still sounds German after 40 years, and in cosmopolitan Leicester people often have the accent of when they arrived here, even if they have added some Leicester vocabulary too.
I heard the great man's words on R4 this morning, hard to disagree with any of it, depressing though it was.
There were of course a significant number of Irish MPs in the Commons as well, although only 28 peers in the Lords (many of whom were not Irish).
and how to spot swingback won’t happen. Nothing from the pollsters or psephologists convince me they know how to spot it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/may/31/putin-may-not-face-war-crimes-trial-if-ukraine-war-ends-in-a-negotiation-macron-says-video
The point that to end a war one may have to negotiate with people one doesn't like is less striking than the suggestion that if Ukraine doesn't succeed in this year's expected offensive, the West will need to rethink the nature of support. His comments are qualified (and translation may be an issue too) and certainly not pro-Putin but probably the clearest hint we've seen so far that a continuing military deadlock may lead to some pressure on Ukraine to negotiate for something less than total victory. Conversely the war hysteria of Russian nationalists seems to have subsided into trying to keep their current gains rather than advancing further.
The increase in cases of dysphoria is made much of, but surely it makes sense that the bodies of people assigned female at birth were more heavily policed than those assigned male at birth, and therefore their ability to transition was lessened. Again, the increase in dysphoria cases seem huge when put in percentage increases, but we're still typically talking about an increase in referrals, not treatment, and still a very small number of people.
Queer issues have ALWAYS been part of the struggle - the idea of challenging the nuclear family, of heteronormativity and gender roles has always been part of the struggle of LGBT+ people because we are considered an existential threat to the existence of it. If people can have same sex partners, never get married, have multiple partners, not have to fit in with societal norms of gender, they can say that the patriarchal set up of society doesn't have to exist. "We're here, we're queer, we're used to it" was a rallying cry of the 70s and 80s. Some LGBT+ activists didn't WANT equal marriage because they saw that as conforming too much to heteronormative living - that partners deserved rights without having to concede to the constricts of conservative family values. But the movement became less radical, and that seems to have helped in some ways, and failed in others; most people still look down on any queer person who isn't living a heteronormative lifestyle.
Which is only right. The Famine was a terrible thing but - FFS - it was nearly two centuries ago. Sometimes it is better to move on
Alternatively, I could be really really really angry at Morocco, whence the Sale Rovers enslaved thousands of my fellow Cornishmen - often taking entire villages - in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were brutal and cruel to my people. They would often castrate the men, immediately
But it is ridiculous to get furious at something that happened centuries ago, whether it is slavery or Famine
Such contrasts can be exaggerated -
Had it been done so throughout, particularly from the 17th Century onwards - it would be (a) still part of the UK and (b) economically more balanced and prosperous and (c) far fewer lives would have been lost. It's probably a question of timing, proximity and scale - you could make similar arguments about Scotland in the 18th Century and Wales in the 13th Century. Hell, even England if you go back earlier.
The trouble was that Ireland was run as a plantation colony until well into the late 19th Century before it started to reform and, by then, it was too little too late, and the errors kept coming.
Were that not the case I have no doubt Ireland would be part of the UK today.
One of the main reasons we are being told by marketing and sales is our customers simply overstocked when COVID came along and maintained those stock levels during extended lead times. Lead times are back to normal so stock is being run down.
We expect an upturn in the new Year.
*Any* peace deal - whether on today's lines, on 2014's, or pre-2014 - has to ensure that Russia will not just rebuild and try again in a few years - as they have before.
And the major issue is that, absent a Russian defeat, I see no way of ensuring that. Why trust Putin and his cronies, especially if they can sell a big territorial 'win' to their populace?
Godwinning myself, It's like trying to 'negotiate' with Hitler or Stalin back in the late 1930s.
Here's a very fair minded IRISH analysis. Which also notes how Ireland's GDP per capita is a bit leprechauny
https://www.economicsobservatory.com/irelands-economy-since-independence-what-lessons-from-the-past-100-years
"It is clear that Irish living standards fell further behind in the first decades following independence, only returning to its pre-independence relative position by around 1980. Convergence with Scottish GDP per capita in the decades since then has been dramatic. Convergence did not occur for Northern Ireland: today, it is in a similar position relative to Scotland as it was in 1925."
Best ignored.
People on the Faroes are descended from Norse and Danish men, and Irish women. I’m willing to bet the latter did not migrate there, voluntarily.