Not looking good for Sunak as he approaches Truss levels – politicalbetting.com

System · May 14

Not looking good for Sunak as he approaches Truss levels – politicalbetting.com

NEW from @IpsosUK: 3 in 4 Brits think Rishi Sunak unlikely to win next General Election https://t.co/FDv829xxIK pic.twitter.com/0fDDpDrG0J

Read the full story here

Flatlander · May 14

Are the 1/4 betting types?

PS: Frist!

TheScreamingEagles · May 14

Flatlander said:
Are the 1/4 betting types?

I hope so. I encourage them to open Betfair accounts in the header.

Flatlander · May 14

TheScreamingEagles said:

Flatlander said:
Are the 1/4 betting types?
I hope so. I encourage them to open Betfair accounts in the header.

So you did. In my defence I was too focused on posting any old rubbish before someone else did to actually read anything other than the headline.

wooliedyed · May 14

Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.

Anabobazina · May 14

TRUSS will be looking closely at those numbers, and preparing to make her move. She has Sunak in her sights. And who can blame her?

TRUSS

turbotubbs · May 14

Anabobazina said:
TRUSS will be looking closely at those numbers, and preparing to make her move. She has Sunak in her sites. And who can blame her?

TRUSS

As you do this, I cannot stop myself from doing the same:

SIGHTS

S
I
G
H
T
S

FFS

(etc etc, roll eyes)

Anabobazina · May 14

turbotubbs said:

Anabobazina said:
TRUSS will be looking closely at those numbers, and preparing to make her move. She has Sunak in her sites. And who can blame her?

TRUSS
As you do this, I cannot stop myself from doing the same:

SIGHTS

S
I
G
H
T
S

FFS

(etc etc, roll eyes)

Thank you!

williamglenn · May 14

Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Cicero · May 14

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.

Thoughts on Lib Dem seats? I see some interesting surprises in the blue wall coming

No_Offence_Alan · May 14

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.

Counter-counterpoint. Thames Water goes bust, Sunak makes taxpayers outside the Affluent Southeast bail them out.
Cons get 15% in the GE.

DM_Andy · May 14

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.

I'm not sure that happens, basic psychology is that people like to be on the winning side and if Labour look like winning, that will only encourage Labour leaners to vote Labour and discourage Tory leaners from turning out.

148grss · May 14

I assume, unlike Truss, Sunak won’t be jettisoned. Mostly because Sunak is still basically the Tory policy consensus in a way Truss wasn’t, and so it kind of makes clear the issue isn’t just the messenger, but also the message.

wooliedyed · May 14

Cicero said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Thoughts on Lib Dem seats? I see some interesting surprises in the blue wall coming

Depends on their overall share. If they get 12% I see 35 to 45 seats, 10% maybe 25 to 30, over 12% and they will start pacmanning the Tory South and SouthWest at pace

Nigelb · May 14

No_Offence_Alan said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Counter-counterpoint. Thames Water goes bust, Sunak makes taxpayers outside the Affluent Southeast bail them out.
Cons get 15% in the GE.

In this case, isn't it the Effluent Southeast ?

wooliedyed · May 14

DM_Andy said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
I'm not sure that happens, basic psychology is that people like to be on the winning side and if Labour look like winning, that will only encourage Labour leaners to vote Labour and discourage Tory leaners from turning out.

I think a certain heavy defeat in a low enthusiasm election 'helps' (relative term here) the Tories - this is 2001 not 1997 imo

Nigelb · May 14

All I can say is that the PO guy would have made a crap Jesuit.
He doesn't even appear to be able to lie convincingly.

(from this morning)
Inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams interrupts to ask Davies to be clear which independent report he is referring to when he talks about inaccuracies.
Davies clarifies that he means the second report from Second Sight, published in 2015, which suggested that the Post Office acknowledged 100-150 sub-postmasters were pursuing claims on the basis they may have not have been at fault.
Davies says that is inaccurate because the Post Office had not made that acknowledgement. Williams says that by commissioning the independent report they had made that acknowledgement.
Davies says he didn't read it that way but Williams insists the wording is clear.

londonpubman · May 14

Everyone will love Rishi and Jeremy when the CPI goes down to 2.3% next week.

Probably...

Luckyguy1983 · May 14

148grss said:
I assume, unlike Truss, Sunak won’t be jettisoned. Mostly because Sunak is still basically the Tory policy consensus in a way Truss wasn’t, and so it kind of makes clear the issue isn’t just the messenger, but also the message.

There is no Tory policy consensus. Hasn't been since the 1970s.

MattW · May 14

If we have a Canada 1993 experience, who will the 2 Conservative MPs left standing be?

Sunak and Truss would be interesting.

They could come to Westminster on a tandem.

LostPassword · May 14

williamglenn said:
Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Perhaps Trump will look at the ruthless way Starmer has disposed of his internal party opponents and categorise him as a strongman he has to suck up to?

turbotubbs · May 14

londonpubman said:
Everyone will love Rishi and Jeremy when the CPI goes down to 2.3% next week.

Probably...

So that means things will be getting cheaper, right?

(Ducks for cover. Only a media person would make that mistake).

wooliedyed · May 14

MattW said:
If we have a Canada 1993 experience, who will the 2 Conservative MPs left standing be?

Sunak and Truss would be interesting.

They could come to Westminster on a tandem.

Truss will drop well before she's scheduled to. I expect her to hold her seat but I think if the Tories go under ,say, 80 she's gone

148grss · May 14

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.

I do think negative polarisation may be a push factor, though. How many people want to actively punish the Tories versus vote for Labour? The effect will be a benefit for Labour, but that may not be the point voters feel they are making.

MattW · May 14

wooliedyed said:

MattW said:
If we have a Canada 1993 experience, who will the 2 Conservative MPs left standing be?

Sunak and Truss would be interesting.

They could come to Westminster on a tandem.
Truss will drop well before she's scheduled to. I expect her to hold her seat but I think if the Tories go under ,say, 80 she's gone

It would have to be a side-by-side tandem of course, for obvious reasons.

LostPassword · May 14

MattW said:
If we have a Canada 1993 experience, who will the 2 Conservative MPs left standing be?

Sunak and Truss would be interesting.

They could come to Westminster on a tandem.

Ha!

Truss would become leader by default when Sunak took the Chiltern Hundreds and buggered off to the Pacific coast.

Edit: Proportionally, a similar result would see four Tory MPs, because the Canadian Parliament has roughly half as many members of its lower house - a new Gang of Four.

david_herdson · May 14

MattW said:
If we have a Canada 1993 experience, who will the 2 Conservative MPs left standing be?

Sunak and Truss would be interesting.

They could come to Westminster on a tandem.

It's not impossible they could be Scottish. Different dynamics north of the border, the SNP are the main challengers to the Tories in several of their seats, especially in the North East, and Reform is not such a thing up there.

JosiasJessop · May 14

Getting this thread onto both trains (sorry, not trans) and Scotland, one for our Scottish friends:

"The famous St Rollox rail depot in Glasgow is set to be re-opened after train manufacturer Gibson’s Engineering announced that it was to open its new engineering facility on the site."

https://www.railmagazine.com/news/2024/05/14/famous-st-rollox-works-in-glasgow-to-reopen

"It is expected the re-opening will create 1,000 jobs over the next five years and up to 10,000 over the next 10 years. Gibson’s Engineering plan to use the depot as a one-stop shop for train manufacturing, maintenance, and repairs on a mixture of light and heavy rolling stock. It also aims to have a fully electrified rail line from its facility to the mainline."

148grss · May 14

Apologies for bringing this FPT:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

viewcode said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

DM_Andy said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

TimS said:

TOPPING said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

DM_Andy said:

Foxy said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Benpointer said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Carnyx said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Inevitable that McVey was spouting shite.

A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.

Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.

But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.

On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cabinet-ties-itself-in-knots-over-ban-on-rainbow-lanyards-lbl8pqsfc
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?

Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?

Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:

What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?

Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?

It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.

I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.

For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
148grss said:

Taz said:
Shouldn't this be a matter of personal choice, neither imposed by the civil service nor proscribed by HMG?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/esther-mcvey-announces-civil-service-rainbow-lanyard-ban-in-new-tory-culture-war/ar-BB1mizkr?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=501608b7a97f423482ca0dac1bd3b7a0&ei=14
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.

I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
Of course they are. Countries are social constructs - the othering of foreigner’s is a product of a society prioritising a construct of a “citizen” or “subject” above someone outside of that (which is why very often you will see people who value the construct of the nation say “why don’t you go live elsewhere” when people criticise said nation or “they should be deported” when even citizens commit certain crimes, because a citizen is a prioritised subject within society).
You have hoist yourself by your own petard. The category of "LGBTQ+ people" defines certain people as special and others the rest.

What? No. Clearly my point is that McVey is trying to, once again, enforce the historical social norm of cis het as “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” (the idea that being openly LGBTQ+ / supportive of LGBTQ+ people is somehow inherently political in a way other things are not acting as a policing of this). You are trying to tie yourself in knots to make this not so - but I feel I have been abundantly clear (if somewhat verbose as the likes of TOPPING likes to point out).

SeaShantyIrish2 · May 14

FPT: Seattle Times - Bob’s Your Uncle: 2 Bob Fergusons withdraw from WA governor’s race

The state’s longtime attorney general is now the lone Bob Ferguson in the race for governor after two people with the same name withdrew from the race Monday. . . .

Their entrance into the race, orchestrated by conservative activist Glen Morgan, had raised legal and logistical questions, but the drama subsided Monday when the other Bobs dropped out under what they said was pressure from Bob Ferguson, the Democratic front-runner in the race.

The attorney general on Monday had urged the two to pull out by a 5 p.m. deadline for candidates to withdraw, or else risk felony charges. Flanked by supporters at Kerry Park in Queen Anne in the morning, Ferguson said his campaign had sent cease-and-desist letters to the other Bob Fergusons over the weekend.

State statute says that it is a felony for a person to file for an election with a surname similar to a person who has already filed for the same office “and whose political reputation is widely known, with intent to confuse and mislead the electors by capitalizing on the public reputation of the candidate who had previously filed.”

A statement posted on the website Neighbors for Bob Ferguson PAC, attributed to Robert Ferguson, an Army veteran in Graham, said the candidate was “faced with harassment and legal action if I did not withdraw from the race.” . . .

The second Bob Ferguson, a retired state employee from Yakima, withdrew later on Monday. In a statement to The Seattle Times, he said his “dream” had been “destroyed.” . . .

Ferguson — the attorney general — said Monday that he didn’t want the other two Bobs to be prosecuted and that he held “no ill will” toward them. He said he suspected they did not know the “legal implications” of their actions at the time they filed for election. . . .

Two of Ferguson’s leading rivals in the Aug. 6 primary, Republican Dave Reichert and Democrat Mark Mullet, criticized the three-Bobs strategy in statements Monday.

“In all nine of my previous campaigns, I have won without any games or antics such as these,” said Reichert, a former congressman and King County sheriff. “I don’t support any effort to deceive the voters of Washington state.”

Mullet, a state senator, agreed the other Fergusons should drop out, calling it an “illegal sideshow” that would confused voters and threaten democracy.

However, Semi Bird, a Republican and former Richland School Board member running for governor, said Ferguson’s “whining” was disingenuous . . .

SSI - Personally think that Bob Ferguson the AG was wrong - at least politically and possibly legally - in threatening legal action to urge the other Bob Fergusons out of the 2024 governors race. Given that the AG is the state's top legal officer and enforcer. And especially since being listed on the August primary ballot as "Bob Ferguson (Attorney General)" would have helped HIM cut through the clutter of 30 (now 28) gubernatorial candidates.

david_herdson · May 14

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.

Depends on who stays home. Turnout dropped significantly from 1997 to 2001 but did so on both sides, returning almost exactly the same result.

williamglenn · May 14

148grss said:
Apologies for bringing this FPT:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

viewcode said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

DM_Andy said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

TimS said:

TOPPING said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

DM_Andy said:

Foxy said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Benpointer said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Carnyx said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Inevitable that McVey was spouting shite.

A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.

Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.

But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.

On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cabinet-ties-itself-in-knots-over-ban-on-rainbow-lanyards-lbl8pqsfc
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?

Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?

Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:

What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?

Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?

It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.

I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.

For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
148grss said:

Taz said:
Shouldn't this be a matter of personal choice, neither imposed by the civil service nor proscribed by HMG?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/esther-mcvey-announces-civil-service-rainbow-lanyard-ban-in-new-tory-culture-war/ar-BB1mizkr?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=501608b7a97f423482ca0dac1bd3b7a0&ei=14
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.

I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
Of course they are. Countries are social constructs - the othering of foreigner’s is a product of a society prioritising a construct of a “citizen” or “subject” above someone outside of that (which is why very often you will see people who value the construct of the nation say “why don’t you go live elsewhere” when people criticise said nation or “they should be deported” when even citizens commit certain crimes, because a citizen is a prioritised subject within society).
You have hoist yourself by your own petard. The category of "LGBTQ+ people" defines certain people as special and others the rest.
What? No. Clearly my point is that McVey is trying to, once again, enforce the historical social norm of cis het as “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” (the idea that being openly LGBTQ+ / supportive of LGBTQ+ people is somehow inherently political in a way other things are not acting as a policing of this). You are trying to tie yourself in knots to make this not so - but I feel I have been abundantly clear (if somewhat verbose as the likes of TOPPING likes to point out).

You said yourself that you tend towards the abolitionist view of gender/sex whereby the category of LGBTQ+ people would cease to exist and people would just be people. It follows that the category of LGBTQ+ people only exists in the first place because of the very norms you are opposing.

wooliedyed · May 14

148grss said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
I do think negative polarisation may be a push factor, though. How many people want to actively punish the Tories versus vote for Labour? The effect will be a benefit for Labour, but that may not be the point voters feel they are making.

Imo the same number will want to 'punush' as in any change election. The same that wanted to punish Brown in 2010 etc. The 'rage' factor is over amplified by social media and 24/7 news. Yep the electorate is fed up but outside the fan boys and fan girls there's no Clamour for Labour. 34% in an election year where the government are getting absolutely humped in the locals is pretty pitiful

williamglenn · May 14

LostPassword said:

williamglenn said:
Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Perhaps Trump will look at the ruthless way Starmer has disposed of his internal party opponents and categorise him as a strongman he has to suck up to?

Or he could frame Starmer's election as a victory for ethnonationalism.

wooliedyed · May 14

david_herdson said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Depends on who stays home. Turnout dropped significantly from 1997 to 2001 but did so on both sides, returning almost exactly the same result.

This is true. But I don't see any reason it won't be a 'general' CBA this time. It's a depressing set of options on the buffet. Drumsticks are all gone and some twat has cut the nose off the Stilton.

Roger · May 14

FPT.

Gardenwalker said:

LostPassword said:

Gardenwalker said:
This trans stuff is sooooo boring.
Okay. Question relating to the next UK general election.

Which seat will see the first Labour gain declared on the night, and what will different margins of victory say about the likely final result?
Too hard for me, but much more interesting.

Also interesting:

Biden’s EV tariffs
Kwarteng’s interview on “Leading”
Today’s very poor productivity numbers.
What we should read into Sunak’s speech if anything.
Caulfield’s conspiracy-mongering.

Or a more philosophical question. Is Israel an apartheid state and if it is (almost certainly) should all Labour members who have been expelled for saying so be reinstated?

Nigelb · May 14

wooliedyed said:

david_herdson said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Depends on who stays home. Turnout dropped significantly from 1997 to 2001 but did so on both sides, returning almost exactly the same result.
This is true. But I don't see any reason it won't be a 'general' CBA this time. It's a depressing set of options on the buffet. Drumsticks are all gone and some twat has cut the nose off the Stilton.

How does it smell ?

MarqueeMark · May 14

david_herdson said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Depends on who stays home. Turnout dropped significantly from 1997 to 2001 but did so on both sides, returning almost exactly the same result.

I remember listening to the results in 2001 on a crappy radio in Pisa (after a stunning meal including carpaccio of swordfish). "Is that all there is to an election?" Was glad I hadn't stayed home!

Donkeys · May 14

FPT

Donkeys said:

Casino_Royale said:

Malmesbury said:

Donkeys said:
Off-topic: what are the reasons for such a large and fast fall in the Chinese birth rate?

Create a shitty environment for women to have children in?
People don't have kids if they don't need to have kids.

It's a bit heartless but much of what drives it is, in truth, economics and if you're really well off and can't be arsed then, well, you don't have kids at all.
So we have two almost opposite reasons being conjectured there.

It may also be that people between say 18 and 35 have grown less interested in having sex.

The fall is huge! To judge from that graph, the birth rate has dropped by about half in seven years.

But the most important factor in is likely to be deliberate action by the regime, almost certainly piloted in Xinjiang.

"Uighur women are also made to endure pregnancy checks. Some are forced to have abortions, or get an IUD inserted. Others are sterilized by the state. Police are known to rip unauthorized children away from their parents, who are then detained. Such measures have reduced the birthrate in some regions of Xinjiang more than 60 percent in three years."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-ai-surveillance/614197/

^ That's not a bad article by Ross Andersen in the Atlantic.

Among other things, it tells you what "AI" is really about. Which isn't putting luvvies out of work.

See also the use of "AI" on the West Bank.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/05/israel-opt-israeli-authorities-are-using-facial-recognition-technology-to-entrench-apartheid/

El_Capitano · May 14

148grss said:
Apologies for bringing this FPT

Yeah, please don't. I agree with you on practically everything on this subject but we had a dozen posts about actual politics before derailing this AGAIN.

148grss · May 14

williamglenn said:

148grss said:
Apologies for bringing this FPT:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

viewcode said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

DM_Andy said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

TimS said:

TOPPING said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

DM_Andy said:

Foxy said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Benpointer said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Carnyx said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Inevitable that McVey was spouting shite.

A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.

Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.

But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.

On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cabinet-ties-itself-in-knots-over-ban-on-rainbow-lanyards-lbl8pqsfc
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?

Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?

Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:

What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?

Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?

It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.

I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.

For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
148grss said:

Taz said:
Shouldn't this be a matter of personal choice, neither imposed by the civil service nor proscribed by HMG?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/esther-mcvey-announces-civil-service-rainbow-lanyard-ban-in-new-tory-culture-war/ar-BB1mizkr?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=501608b7a97f423482ca0dac1bd3b7a0&ei=14
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.

I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
Of course they are. Countries are social constructs - the othering of foreigner’s is a product of a society prioritising a construct of a “citizen” or “subject” above someone outside of that (which is why very often you will see people who value the construct of the nation say “why don’t you go live elsewhere” when people criticise said nation or “they should be deported” when even citizens commit certain crimes, because a citizen is a prioritised subject within society).
You have hoist yourself by your own petard. The category of "LGBTQ+ people" defines certain people as special and others the rest.
What? No. Clearly my point is that McVey is trying to, once again, enforce the historical social norm of cis het as “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” (the idea that being openly LGBTQ+ / supportive of LGBTQ+ people is somehow inherently political in a way other things are not acting as a policing of this). You are trying to tie yourself in knots to make this not so - but I feel I have been abundantly clear (if somewhat verbose as the likes of TOPPING likes to point out).
You said yourself that you tend towards the abolitionist view of gender/sex whereby the category of LGBTQ+ people would cease to exist and people would just be people. It follows that the category of LGBTQ+ people only exists in the first place because of the very norms you are opposing.

I agree. But as I’ve said, as long as we are oppressed on the basis of being LGBTQ+ it is useful and important to be able to organise and discuss that oppression based on that categorisation. It may be that along that journey the definition of LGBTQ+ as a category becomes less rigid in a general movement towards a world where people don’t need to “come out” and there is no assumption or expectation that people are automatically cis het - and I welcome that. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still important to fight for the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

Andy_JS · May 14

Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today

148grss · May 14

El_Capitano said:

148grss said:
Apologies for bringing this FPT
Yeah, please don't. I agree with you on practically everything on this subject but we had a dozen posts about actual politics before derailing this AGAIN.

I have a standing appointment soon, and will leave the site for the day then, so hopefully my few clarifications of my position to williamglenn here will not derail the entire convo.

Roger · May 14

He's ungenerous and attracted by the most unpleasant of the 'deep' Tories. Patel Braverman and Jenrick. He lacks the ingredient that makes you want to engage with him on any level. Something even Starmer has got.

Carnyx · May 14

Nigelb said:

No_Offence_Alan said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Counter-counterpoint. Thames Water goes bust, Sunak makes taxpayers outside the Affluent Southeast bail them out.
Cons get 15% in the GE.
In this case, isn't it the Effluent Southeast ?

That's a very good spot by NOA. A real thing to watch out for, all big and brown and bobbing up and down as it comes down the current.

What else could he do? Increase council tax in the SE alone?

Pulpstar · May 14

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today

I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.

148grss · May 14

wooliedyed said:

148grss said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
I do think negative polarisation may be a push factor, though. How many people want to actively punish the Tories versus vote for Labour? The effect will be a benefit for Labour, but that may not be the point voters feel they are making.
Imo the same number will want to 'punush' as in any change election. The same that wanted to punish Brown in 2010 etc. The 'rage' factor is over amplified by social media and 24/7 news. Yep the electorate is fed up but outside the fan boys and fan girls there's no Clamour for Labour. 34% in an election year where the government are getting absolutely humped in the locals is pretty pitiful

I dunno; I think more people blame the Tories / Truss for the current issues than blamed Brown / Labour for the 08 crash - that being more obviously a global crisis and the Tories not winning the kind of clear majority Labour looks like they’re gonna win now.

williamglenn · May 14

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:
Apologies for bringing this FPT:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

viewcode said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

DM_Andy said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

TimS said:

TOPPING said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

DM_Andy said:

Foxy said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Benpointer said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Carnyx said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Inevitable that McVey was spouting shite.

A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.

Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.

But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.

On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cabinet-ties-itself-in-knots-over-ban-on-rainbow-lanyards-lbl8pqsfc
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?

Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?

Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:

What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?

Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?

It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.

I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.

For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
148grss said:

Taz said:
Shouldn't this be a matter of personal choice, neither imposed by the civil service nor proscribed by HMG?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/esther-mcvey-announces-civil-service-rainbow-lanyard-ban-in-new-tory-culture-war/ar-BB1mizkr?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=501608b7a97f423482ca0dac1bd3b7a0&ei=14
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.

I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
Of course they are. Countries are social constructs - the othering of foreigner’s is a product of a society prioritising a construct of a “citizen” or “subject” above someone outside of that (which is why very often you will see people who value the construct of the nation say “why don’t you go live elsewhere” when people criticise said nation or “they should be deported” when even citizens commit certain crimes, because a citizen is a prioritised subject within society).
You have hoist yourself by your own petard. The category of "LGBTQ+ people" defines certain people as special and others the rest.
What? No. Clearly my point is that McVey is trying to, once again, enforce the historical social norm of cis het as “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” (the idea that being openly LGBTQ+ / supportive of LGBTQ+ people is somehow inherently political in a way other things are not acting as a policing of this). You are trying to tie yourself in knots to make this not so - but I feel I have been abundantly clear (if somewhat verbose as the likes of TOPPING likes to point out).
You said yourself that you tend towards the abolitionist view of gender/sex whereby the category of LGBTQ+ people would cease to exist and people would just be people. It follows that the category of LGBTQ+ people only exists in the first place because of the very norms you are opposing.
I agree. But as I’ve said, as long as we are oppressed on the basis of being LGBTQ+ it is useful and important to be able to organise and discuss that oppression based on that categorisation. It may be that along that journey the definition of LGBTQ+ as a category becomes less rigid in a general movement towards a world where people don’t need to “come out” and there is no assumption or expectation that people are automatically cis het - and I welcome that. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still important to fight for the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

How are you oppressed today?

SirNorfolkPassmore · May 14

LostPassword said:

williamglenn said:
Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Perhaps Trump will look at the ruthless way Starmer has disposed of his internal party opponents and categorise him as a strongman he has to suck up to?

"Let me tell you, Keith Starmer is a very beautiful man. There was once a big star over there in Britain - not as huge as yours truly but a big star - who wanted to fix it for people and make Britain fixed again. And some mean, nasty people said horrible things about him and wanted a witch hunt. But Keith said 'stop the witch hunt'. We could do with more of him here in America - a wise, beautiful man."

SeaShantyIrish2 · May 14

Re: the Progressive Conservative wipe-out in 1993 Canadian federal election, which saw the party go from governing majority to wretched rump, the two PC survivors were elected solely on their personal appeal in their own parliamentary ridings:

> Jean Charest of Quebec, only member of PM Kim Campbell's cabinet to survive; he'd lost the PC leadership election to succeed "Lyin' Brian" Mulroney to KC who was BM's hand-picked successor/fall girl; Charest subsequently switched to provincial politics as leader of Quebec Liberal Party and served as premier; and

> Elsie Wayne of New Brunswick, who was NOT an incumbent, but rather the popular mayor of Saint John NB (not to be confused with St. John's NL)

So suggest that scenario with TWO front-line UK Tories surviving similar melt-down, is perhaps a bridge too far; at least one would probably be a nationally-unknown local hero like EW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Wayne

SSI - Maybe most interesting, if hardly (ahem) uplifting (ahem) thing about EW's wiki bio, is statement that she "opposed Viagra for war veterans".

Andy_JS · May 14

It looks like the Post Office inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams has got a bit fed up with lawyers for core participants taking longer than they say they will to ask questions. Today he refused to allow any of them to do so.

148grss · May 14

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:
Apologies for bringing this FPT:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

viewcode said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

williamglenn said:

DM_Andy said:

williamglenn said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

isam said:

148grss said:

TimS said:

TOPPING said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

DavidL said:

DM_Andy said:

Foxy said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Benpointer said:

BlancheLivermore said:

Carnyx said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Inevitable that McVey was spouting shite.

A cabinet split has opened up on civil service rainbow lanyards as it emerges that guidance agreed across government will not actually ban officials from wearing them.

Esther McVey, who was appointed to attend Rishi Sunak’s cabinet as a minister without portfolio, said on Monday that staff would be disciplined for any messaging on lanyards to hold security passes, describing it as “political activism in a visible way”.

But official guidance due to be issued on Tuesday makes no mention of lanyards and the policy was not raised with other government ministers, The Times understands.

On Tuesday morning Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, distanced himself from McVey’s criticism of rainbow lanyards, telling Times Radio: “Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. What lanyard somebody wears doesn’t particularly concern me.” He said he was “more interested in the jobs that the civil service do” than in what they wore.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cabinet-ties-itself-in-knots-over-ban-on-rainbow-lanyards-lbl8pqsfc
It's all a bit odd. I went to a meeting down in Oz many years ago and wore the lanyard from that for decades at work - nobody even noticed, it was the security pass on the end that mattered (and I could keep that in my shirt pocket when outside work so it wasn't obvious where I worked from either pass or lanyard). A generic rainbow lanyard is positively useful in that respect, unless one works somwhere which is so high security that colour coding is important - in which case it's irrelevant to ban rainbow lanyards.
What if people some people start wearing star of David lanyards, and others wearing Palestinian flag lanyards?

Or, God forbid, TERF lanyards?

Couldn't that make things a bit tetchy at work?
Come on, you can invent trickier scenarios than that:

What about if I wear a lanyard with mini-swastikas printed all down it? Or what about if I wear a tie with naked glamour mag models on them?

Can't we just apply a bit of common sense? Remind me again, who are the rainbow lanyards offending?
What's the reason for wearing a rainbow lanyard?

It's at least pointless virtue signalling
I don't have a Rainbow Lanyard (mine is from Diabetes UK) but do have a rainbow flag badge for it, which I wear alongside a number of others. It was officially issued by my Trust as part of a campaign to encourage inclusion of marginalised groups in mainstream health care.

I wouldn't wear political badges (such as the LD bird) but the rainbow flag is not political.
I'm not sure - I feel like the rainbow is a bit like the poppy, it's non-political for those that wear it because they think their position is completely uncontroversial and opposed only by extremists. But both are, like a lot of little things a political statement.
I tend to agree. If I came across someone wearing one I would note it but almost certainly not comment and I would be just a little more wary about certain topics. Is that ideal in a professional you are dealing with? I would say not but I wouldn't be upset about it, just cautious.
I can't imagine noticing let alone caring what someone's lanyard might or might not be signalling.
To me it would be signalling they work for a corporate which has a desire to be seen as woke.
And so the definition of woke continues to spread and metastasise, so that any corporate even acknowledging the diversity of its own employee base gets the dreaded moniker. Until the word loses all meaning. Like the way Americans bandy about "socialist" and "fascist".
But even if it is “virtue signalling” to wear a rainbow lanyard - why is that a problem? The virtue they are signalling is that they support LGBTQ+ people - a minority group that has typically been oppressed legally and socially. Making it clear that you support people being openly LGBTQ+ is surely a virtue we want to signal, no?
If ‘we’ is ‘people who wear the lanyards’ then obviously. Not sure society as a whole think of it as a virtue that needs to be signalled
Well then we surely need to signal it more, because it should be considered the norm to be fine with openly LGBTQ+ people, no?
Not really, no. I think it tends to get on a lot of people’s nerves, who otherwise don’t give it much thought
Well, lucky them. As a man who has had “faggot” shouted at me for holding a partner’s hand, - I do give it a lot of thought and tend to feel a somewhat increased sense of relaxation and safety in intimidating spaces (like a hospital or government office) when someone has a small rainbow pin or lanyard. And I tend to care about the increased normalisation of LGBTQ+ people in public life and spaces.
Returning to our discussion from yesterday, is Michael Portillo an LGBTQ+ person or a cis het person? Was he one and now the other?
Why are you asking 148grss, surely you would need to ask Michael Portillo.

For example, I consider myself cis het male and I tick those boxes. But I have been romantically attracted to three men in my life and had sex with one of them. Sexual orientation is probably a spectrum rather then discontinuous buckets. I'm sure that you've been attracted to someone who's "not your type", it doesn't necessarily change your label.
I'm asking 148grss because he is the one who is defining a category of "LGBTQ+ people" as opposed to cis het people.
I mean historically it’s cisheteronormative society that has defined the category of LGBTQ+ people as “opposed” to cishet people. We can still see this in the way some people - like far right politicians and the Catholic church - try to characterise LGBTQ+ people as anti-family and so on. It doesn’t mean every cishet person is against LGBTQ+ people, it just means that the category of cishet has historically in society been considered “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” - and therefore a target of oppression from authority.
You're not being clear about whether you think there is such a thing as an "LGBTQ+ person" or just a person who might or might not engage in LGBTQ+ activities at some point in their life.
I think these terms and their meanings are social constructs - labels we give to people and behaviours. There are periods in time where same sex sexual acts were more permissible, for example, but those people wouldn’t have considered themselves gay. Something being a social construct doesn’t in any way mean people don’t have attraction to different people based on their gender or gender presentation - but the history or culture of a time and person will effect how people identify.
So in an ideal world there would be no LGBTQ+ people because people would be free to express themselves without gender or sexual norms?
That would be the position of gender / sexuality abolitionists - yeah. I would tend towards that position.
Then why do you use divisive rhetoric pitting "LGBTQ+ people" against "cis het people"?
I know you dislike me derailing this discussion, but categorisation is divisive by definition. For example, categorising the world into "North" and "South" does not depend on the observer holding a geographic position, or a "North" position, or a "South" position. If your stance was correct we could not have (for example) a line denoting zero degrees longitude.
We started yesterday with @148grss opposing the idea of norms:
148grss said:

Taz said:
Shouldn't this be a matter of personal choice, neither imposed by the civil service nor proscribed by HMG?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/esther-mcvey-announces-civil-service-rainbow-lanyard-ban-in-new-tory-culture-war/ar-BB1mizkr?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=501608b7a97f423482ca0dac1bd3b7a0&ei=14
Stuff like this clearly shows what the Tories would do if they could get away with it, though.

I don't disagree that a pride flag is political, but why is it so? - because LGBTQ+ people had to fight for their rights. Would the suffragette colours similarly be banned for being "political"? Poppies in November? No - because they are the right kind of political. If someone has a photo on their desk showing their cis het family with their kid/s, is that considered "political"? Most people would just say "no, that's normal" - despite the fact that marriage and childrearing are things that are political and politicised (if it was a picture of a same sex couple with a child, or a trans couple with a child, I'm sure many people would argue that would be inappropriate in the workplace). The aim here is clearly define what is normal and what isn't. This says to me, clearly, that McVey views LGBTQ+ people and support for them as not normal.
My point is that the category of "LGBTQ+ people" only makes sense when defined against a norm. Your examples of hair colour or citizenship aren't equivalent.
Of course they are. Countries are social constructs - the othering of foreigner’s is a product of a society prioritising a construct of a “citizen” or “subject” above someone outside of that (which is why very often you will see people who value the construct of the nation say “why don’t you go live elsewhere” when people criticise said nation or “they should be deported” when even citizens commit certain crimes, because a citizen is a prioritised subject within society).
You have hoist yourself by your own petard. The category of "LGBTQ+ people" defines certain people as special and others the rest.
What? No. Clearly my point is that McVey is trying to, once again, enforce the historical social norm of cis het as “normal” and LGBTQ+ as “deviant” (the idea that being openly LGBTQ+ / supportive of LGBTQ+ people is somehow inherently political in a way other things are not acting as a policing of this). You are trying to tie yourself in knots to make this not so - but I feel I have been abundantly clear (if somewhat verbose as the likes of TOPPING likes to point out).
You said yourself that you tend towards the abolitionist view of gender/sex whereby the category of LGBTQ+ people would cease to exist and people would just be people. It follows that the category of LGBTQ+ people only exists in the first place because of the very norms you are opposing.
I agree. But as I’ve said, as long as we are oppressed on the basis of being LGBTQ+ it is useful and important to be able to organise and discuss that oppression based on that categorisation. It may be that along that journey the definition of LGBTQ+ as a category becomes less rigid in a general movement towards a world where people don’t need to “come out” and there is no assumption or expectation that people are automatically cis het - and I welcome that. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still important to fight for the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

How are you oppressed today?

LGBTQ+ people are still the targets of disproportionate social violence, still have worse career outcomes and opportunities, are more likely to experience youth homelessness, are still targets of campaigns to paint us as “deviant” to children. I would say de jure LGB people (although not transgender) are doing well; but de facto there is still a significant portion of society at large who hold prejudices and bigotries against LGBTQ+ people, and the kind of thing McVey suggests feeds into that.

LostPassword · May 14

Carnyx said:

Nigelb said:

No_Offence_Alan said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Counter-counterpoint. Thames Water goes bust, Sunak makes taxpayers outside the Affluent Southeast bail them out.
Cons get 15% in the GE.
In this case, isn't it the Effluent Southeast ?
That's a very good spot by NOA. A real thing to watch out for, all big and brown and bobbing up and down as it comes down the current.

What else could he do? Increase council tax in the SE alone?

They could make the Thames Water bill payers repay whatever costs were associated with nationalisation. That would be much more likely than doing something novel with council tax.

kinabalu · May 14

148grss said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
I do think negative polarisation may be a push factor, though. How many people want to actively punish the Tories versus vote for Labour? The effect will be a benefit for Labour, but that may not be the point voters feel they are making.

Exactly. You can't tell from the X on the ballot paper what the governing sentiment behind it is. This allows people to spin election results in a way that supports their preconceptions. Eg after Boris Johnson won big in 2019 there was loads of "it was only because his opponent was so shit" punditry from those who disliked or didn't rate him. The same will no doubt happen with the SKS landslide.

AlsoLei · May 14

Carnyx said:

Nigelb said:

No_Offence_Alan said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Counter-counterpoint. Thames Water goes bust, Sunak makes taxpayers outside the Affluent Southeast bail them out.
Cons get 15% in the GE.
In this case, isn't it the Effluent Southeast ?
That's a very good spot by NOA. A real thing to watch out for, all big and brown and bobbing up and down as it comes down the current.

What else could he do? Increase council tax in the SE alone?

That might sit well with the recent London-bashing.

Ideally, whatever they come up with would disproportionately hit urban lefties & blue wallers whilst leaving the Susan Hall-esque strivers alone. A levy on public transport might do it...

Nigelb · May 14

Bill Barr was pretty complicit in Trump's schemes.

Regarding the Weisselberg matter: he was never charged because he was given immunity by Barr’s DOJ to testify against Cohen. Pretty neat trick to shut him up in this case.
https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1790401976217301196

kinabalu · May 14

148grss said:

El_Capitano said:

148grss said:
Apologies for bringing this FPT
Yeah, please don't. I agree with you on practically everything on this subject but we had a dozen posts about actual politics before derailing this AGAIN.
I have a standing appointment soon, and will leave the site for the day then, so hopefully my few clarifications of my position to williamglenn here will not derail the entire convo.

There is no end to the process of "clarifying a position with williamglenn".

SeaShantyIrish2 · May 14

With respect to UK Prime Minister and/or Leader of the Labour Party, the number of USers who know their names is pretty limited. However, it exceeds the number who give a blind fiddler's final farewell feck about it.

Tony Blair was last UKPM to cut any ice with Americans, at first with progressive moderates, then with conservative hawks.

Even Boris Johnson is mostly unknown on this side of the Atlantic (or the Pacific) in part because many who are aware of his existence, think (for some reason) he's just a rather lame Benny Hill tribute act.

Jim_Miller · May 14

Good for Georgia Laurie: "Georgia Laurie immediately jumped into the water when her twin sister was dragged into a river by a crocodile in Mexico. Holding onto her sister Melissa, who had been lying facedown in the water, she fended off two more attacks by the crocodile — including by punching the beast in the head.

Both made it out alive."

Political point: One advantage American presidents have over your prime ministers is that they get to give out the medals for such actions.

And good for that off-duty police officer who also received the King’s Gallantry Medal .

SirNorfolkPassmore · May 14

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.

I get why it's difficult to model tactical voting in an MRP, and maybe I rather than the pollsters will have egg on my face rather than them. But a lot of the projected results are not credible (even leaving aside the fact they use old boundaries).

Take North Devon - Lib Dems are projected to just miss out as the Labour vote more than doubles to 21%. Labour got 7% of the vote and no councillors only last year - they just aren't a presence.

I'm not especially bullish on the Lib Dems for the election, and the Tories have an okay chance of holding North Devon. But, if they do, they'll have to do it without relying on Labour implausibly getting 21%.

DM_Andy · May 14

Roger said:
FPT.
Gardenwalker said:

LostPassword said:

Gardenwalker said:
This trans stuff is sooooo boring.
Okay. Question relating to the next UK general election.

Which seat will see the first Labour gain declared on the night, and what will different margins of victory say about the likely final result?
Too hard for me, but much more interesting.

Also interesting:

Biden’s EV tariffs
Kwarteng’s interview on “Leading”
Today’s very poor productivity numbers.
What we should read into Sunak’s speech if anything.
Caulfield’s conspiracy-mongering.
Or a more philosophical question. Is Israel an apartheid state and if it is (almost certainly) should all Labour members who have been expelled for saying so be reinstated?

I can see why some people call Israel an apartheid state but I don't think it is. There's nothing stopping an Israeli Arab voting, standing for election, being elected or even in theory becoming Prime Minister or President. There's no Jew-only or Arab-only benches, beaches or parks. By the Constitution of Israel all citizens have equal rights.

Does that mean that because it's not an apartheid state it's perfect, no, there's systemic discrimination against non-Jewish citizens, the immigration process, housing policy and education systems are discriminatory.

What Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza is almost without parallel. There's a military occupation but with the movement of the occupying force's civilian population to settle some areas of the occupied territory but without annexation. It's similar to China annexing Tibet or Morocco annexing Western Sahara but wanting to keep the existing occupied population as non-citizens. It doesn't seem sustainable, but I've thought that since before Oslo so what do I know?

Carnyx · May 14

AlsoLei said:

Carnyx said:

Nigelb said:

No_Offence_Alan said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Counter-counterpoint. Thames Water goes bust, Sunak makes taxpayers outside the Affluent Southeast bail them out.
Cons get 15% in the GE.
In this case, isn't it the Effluent Southeast ?
That's a very good spot by NOA. A real thing to watch out for, all big and brown and bobbing up and down as it comes down the current.

What else could he do? Increase council tax in the SE alone?
That might sit well with the recent London-bashing.

Ideally, whatever they come up with would disproportionately hit urban lefties & blue wallers whilst leaving the Susan Hall-esque strivers alone. A levy on public transport might do it...

Another interesting point is that if Mr S goes for a central government funded taxpayer bailout it would generate Barnett consequentials for Wales and Scotland, as far as I can see - entirely logically, as they are based on expenditure, and as water is very much a devolved area. Which would increase the Home Counties vs the Rest of England tensions even more.

mickydroy · May 14

On topic 14 % of the British public think Sunak can win the election, that means they don't think he will, doesn't mean he can't, and fwiw I totally agree that Sunak is far better suited to the job as PM, than his two predecessors, although that's a very shallow pond he is swimming in

wooliedyed · May 14

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.
I get why it's difficult to model tactical voting in an MRP, and maybe I rather than the pollsters will have egg on my face rather than them. But a lot of the projected results are not credible (even leaving aside the fact they use old boundaries).

Take North Devon - Lib Dems are projected to just miss out as the Labour vote more than doubles to 21%. Labour got 7% of the vote and no councillors only last year - they just aren't a presence.

I'm not especially bullish on the Lib Dems for the election, and the Tories have an okay chance of holding North Devon. But, if they do, they'll have to do it without relying on Labour implausibly getting 21%.

Constituency by constituency is always tricky - this seems very (even absurdly in some cases) generous to them in rural seats but massively harsh on the Tories in London. Its way too UNS when we've just had a very clear steer on London sentiment.

SirNorfolkPassmore · May 14

On topic, whilst Sunak is in trouble, comparing his perceived (un)likelihood of winning the General Election with that of Truss or Johnson (or indeed himself) a couple of years ago is comparing apples with pears.

What Tory PMs had in 2022 that Sunak doesn't in 2024 is time - they had a couple of years, whereas he has about six months. As you move into injury time, the odds on the team that is in fact winning being the winner at full time shorten. Not particularly because they've improved or their opponent has got worse - it's just that the time in which things can turn around is much more limited.

Casino_Royale · May 14

londonpubman said:
Everyone will love Rishi and Jeremy when the CPI goes down to 2.3% next week.

Probably...

Rishi could promise free sex and cash to everyone and it wouldn't be enough now.

The horse has bolted.

Northern_Al · May 14

I suspect that the longer that Sunak delays the General Election, the higher the turnout will be.

And none of you can ever prove me wrong, so there.

Casino_Royale · May 14

LostPassword said:

williamglenn said:
Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Perhaps Trump will look at the ruthless way Starmer has disposed of his internal party opponents and categorise him as a strongman he has to suck up to?

I'm really struggling to see a bromance between those two.

It will be as awkward as Theresa May.

wooliedyed · May 14

Casino_Royale said:

LostPassword said:

williamglenn said:
Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Perhaps Trump will look at the ruthless way Starmer has disposed of his internal party opponents and categorise him as a strongman he has to suck up to?
I'm really struggling to see a bromance between those two.

It will be as awkward as Theresa May.

Brown in Bush's Golf Cart hilarious

Big_G_NorthWales · May 14

Andy_JS said:
It looks like the Post Office inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams has got a bit fed up with lawyers for core participants taking longer than they say they will to ask questions. Today he refused to allow any of them to do so.

He is a wonderful chair and a credit to Wales

algarkirk · May 14

david_herdson said:

wooliedyed said:
Counterpoint. Lukewarm Labour etc can safely stay home. Low turnout election, Tories cobble together 30% and 175 seats. The more certain defeat looks, the lower turnout drops and the more bargain basement seats stay blue.
Depends on who stays home. Turnout dropped significantly from 1997 to 2001 but did so on both sides, returning almost exactly the same result.

2001 was a very boring election, with a result certain and no change IIRC. In the 2024 election there are extremely boring features - lack of charisma in leadership, everyone scared of ideas because they all cost money, very little material for hopey changey generalised spiritual uplift, no vote in an election can change the existential global threats - but also an intense desire among most to have a better lot than the Tories, and to give a decent person (ie Starmer) a chance. a 'change will happen' election at least has that automatic level of interest, lacking in 2001 and 2005.

So it is quite possible that more stalwart Tories will stay at home than the other parties.

megasaur · May 14

Northern_Al said:
I suspect that the longer that Sunak delays the General Election, the higher the turnout will be.

And none of you can ever prove me wrong, so there.

Actually you will be proven wrong if Sunak does not now call an election on the earliest possible date and when the election does take place, turnout is zero. Nobody votes anywhere.

SirNorfolkPassmore · May 14

wooliedyed said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.
I get why it's difficult to model tactical voting in an MRP, and maybe I rather than the pollsters will have egg on my face rather than them. But a lot of the projected results are not credible (even leaving aside the fact they use old boundaries).

Take North Devon - Lib Dems are projected to just miss out as the Labour vote more than doubles to 21%. Labour got 7% of the vote and no councillors only last year - they just aren't a presence.

I'm not especially bullish on the Lib Dems for the election, and the Tories have an okay chance of holding North Devon. But, if they do, they'll have to do it without relying on Labour implausibly getting 21%.
Constituency by constituency is always tricky - this seems very (even absurdly in some cases) generous to them in rural seats but massively harsh on the Tories in London. Its way too UNS when we've just had a very clear steer on London sentiment.

The point with an MRP is that it isn't UNS, though. So it is in fact meant to be modelling what particular demographics are doing, and applying it to the demographics of the area - there are regional, urban/rural, remain/leave and other variations and they follow the stats on that.

Their quite specific problem is that a particular demographic may behave quite differently in objectively similar seats based on perceived and historical strength of different parties.

SirNorfolkPassmore · May 14

megasaur said:

Northern_Al said:
I suspect that the longer that Sunak delays the General Election, the higher the turnout will be.

And none of you can ever prove me wrong, so there.
Actually you will be proven wrong if Sunak does not now call an election on the earliest possible date and when the election does take place, turnout is zero. Nobody votes anywhere.

Or if he calls one immediately and everyone votes.

DM_Andy · May 14

Does anyone have the transcript of all of Sunak's speech yesterday, I could only find the .gov version with all over the place?

wooliedyed · May 14

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

wooliedyed said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.
I get why it's difficult to model tactical voting in an MRP, and maybe I rather than the pollsters will have egg on my face rather than them. But a lot of the projected results are not credible (even leaving aside the fact they use old boundaries).

Take North Devon - Lib Dems are projected to just miss out as the Labour vote more than doubles to 21%. Labour got 7% of the vote and no councillors only last year - they just aren't a presence.

I'm not especially bullish on the Lib Dems for the election, and the Tories have an okay chance of holding North Devon. But, if they do, they'll have to do it without relying on Labour implausibly getting 21%.
Constituency by constituency is always tricky - this seems very (even absurdly in some cases) generous to them in rural seats but massively harsh on the Tories in London. Its way too UNS when we've just had a very clear steer on London sentiment.
The point with an MRP is that it isn't UNS, though. So it is in fact meant to be modelling what particular demographics are doing, and applying it to the demographics of the area - there are regional, urban/rural, remain/leave and other variations and they follow the stats on that.

Their quite specific problem is that a particular demographic may behave quite differently in objectively similar seats based on perceived and historical strength of different parties.

This isn't MRP though, it's based on the Strong Transition Model from aggregated polling

MikeL · May 14

Next GE date - nearing crossover - Dec shortening, Oct lengthening - Dec very close to becoming 2nd favourite.

Oct 5.2
Nov 1.91
Dec 5.4

kinabalu · May 14

Casino_Royale said:

LostPassword said:

williamglenn said:
Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Perhaps Trump will look at the ruthless way Starmer has disposed of his internal party opponents and categorise him as a strongman he has to suck up to?
I'm really struggling to see a bromance between those two.

It will be as awkward as Theresa May.

If there were to be a bromance between Keir Starmer and Donald Trump I would have to cancel my subs to Labour and burn my membership card, leaving me politically homeless.

Peter_the_Punter · May 14

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Andy_JS said:
It looks like the Post Office inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams has got a bit fed up with lawyers for core participants taking longer than they say they will to ask questions. Today he refused to allow any of them to do so.
He is a wonderful chair and a credit to Wales

He affects a well-crafted gentleness, by my goodness, he's sharp.

viewcode · May 14

DM_Andy said:
Does anyone have the transcript of all of Sunak's speech yesterday, I could only find the .gov version with all over the place?

Go here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hrXVup2lLo
Click on "more"
Click on "Transcript"

Scott_xP · May 14

DM_Andy said:
Does anyone have the transcript of all of Sunak's speech yesterday, I could only find the .gov version with all over the place?

https://x.com/JohnRentoul/status/1789984062540591551

OldKingCole · May 14

wooliedyed said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

wooliedyed said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.
I get why it's difficult to model tactical voting in an MRP, and maybe I rather than the pollsters will have egg on my face rather than them. But a lot of the projected results are not credible (even leaving aside the fact they use old boundaries).

Take North Devon - Lib Dems are projected to just miss out as the Labour vote more than doubles to 21%. Labour got 7% of the vote and no councillors only last year - they just aren't a presence.

I'm not especially bullish on the Lib Dems for the election, and the Tories have an okay chance of holding North Devon. But, if they do, they'll have to do it without relying on Labour implausibly getting 21%.
Constituency by constituency is always tricky - this seems very (even absurdly in some cases) generous to them in rural seats but massively harsh on the Tories in London. Its way too UNS when we've just had a very clear steer on London sentiment.
The point with an MRP is that it isn't UNS, though. So it is in fact meant to be modelling what particular demographics are doing, and applying it to the demographics of the area - there are regional, urban/rural, remain/leave and other variations and they follow the stats on that.

Their quite specific problem is that a particular demographic may behave quite differently in objectively similar seats based on perceived and historical strength of different parties.
This isn't MRP though, it's based on the Strong Transition Model from aggregated polling

What surprised me about the forecast was the high vote predicted for Refotm. Even then they win nothing.

I still think January’s the date though. On the grounds that Something will Turn Up!

Peter_the_Punter · May 14

Casino_Royale said:

londonpubman said:
Everyone will love Rishi and Jeremy when the CPI goes down to 2.3% next week.

Probably...
Rishi could promise free sex and cash to everyone and it wouldn't be enough now.

The horse has bolted.

Oh I don't know, CR. Might work with me.

Even fairly cheap sex would be tempting.

williamglenn · May 14

kinabalu said:

Casino_Royale said:

LostPassword said:

williamglenn said:
Fate is bringing two men together to lead the West.

Perhaps Trump will look at the ruthless way Starmer has disposed of his internal party opponents and categorise him as a strongman he has to suck up to?
I'm really struggling to see a bromance between those two.

It will be as awkward as Theresa May.
If there were to be a bromance between Keir Starmer and Donald Trump I would have to cancel my subs to Labour and burn my membership card, leaving me politically homeless.

I can imagine Starmer practicing in front of the mirror: “Chy-na!”

Selebian · May 14

'Truss Levels' sounds like Norfolk's answer to the Somerset Levels.

DougSeal · May 14

DM_Andy said:

Roger said:
FPT.
Gardenwalker said:

LostPassword said:

Gardenwalker said:
This trans stuff is sooooo boring.
Okay. Question relating to the next UK general election.

Which seat will see the first Labour gain declared on the night, and what will different margins of victory say about the likely final result?
Too hard for me, but much more interesting.

Also interesting:

Biden’s EV tariffs
Kwarteng’s interview on “Leading”
Today’s very poor productivity numbers.
What we should read into Sunak’s speech if anything.
Caulfield’s conspiracy-mongering.
Or a more philosophical question. Is Israel an apartheid state and if it is (almost certainly) should all Labour members who have been expelled for saying so be reinstated?
I can see why some people call Israel an apartheid state but I don't think it is. There's nothing stopping an Israeli Arab voting, standing for election, being elected or even in theory becoming Prime Minister or President. There's no Jew-only or Arab-only benches, beaches or parks. By the Constitution of Israel all citizens have equal rights.

Does that mean that because it's not an apartheid state it's perfect, no, there's systemic discrimination against non-Jewish citizens, the immigration process, housing policy and education systems are discriminatory.

What Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza is almost without parallel. There's a military occupation but with the movement of the occupying force's civilian population to settle some areas of the occupied territory but without annexation. It's similar to China annexing Tibet or Morocco annexing Western Sahara but wanting to keep the existing occupied population as non-citizens. It doesn't seem sustainable, but I've thought that since before Oslo so what do I know?

I understand your point but the problem with all historical analogies is that they call apart when examined too closely.

The area of historic Mandatory Palestine, now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, functions in many respects as a single entity. Power, water, telecoms (Israeli Ministry of Communications has control over the cellular communications and technology Palestinians may build, which has been limited to 2G) are all essentially those of a single polity. The West Bank and Gaza, to my mind, resemble Bantustans, or the way Native American reservations used to be (but are not now) run within that polity. They are basically reservations for Palestinians, the residents of which have no recognised citizenship. That's where I see the parallel with Apartheid South Africa, not the treatment of Israeli-Arabs, which is a separate matter.

kinabalu · May 14

SirNorfolkPassmore said:
On topic, whilst Sunak is in trouble, comparing his perceived (un)likelihood of winning the General Election with that of Truss or Johnson (or indeed himself) a couple of years ago is comparing apples with pears.

What Tory PMs had in 2022 that Sunak doesn't in 2024 is time - they had a couple of years, whereas he has about six months. As you move into injury time, the odds on the team that is in fact winning being the winner at full time shorten. Not particularly because they've improved or their opponent has got worse - it's just that the time in which things can turn around is much more limited.

Like the time value of an option. There's little left in the Sunak call and the intrinsic is large and negative. You could pick it up for peanuts.

El_Capitano · May 14

Casino_Royale said:

londonpubman said:
Everyone will love Rishi and Jeremy when the CPI goes down to 2.3% next week.

Probably...
Rishi could promise free sex and cash to everyone and it wouldn't be enough now.

The horse has bolted.

I don't blame it if that was how Rishi was going to deliver the free sex.

williamglenn · May 14

Selebian said:
'Truss Levels' sounds like Norfolk's answer to the Somerset Levels.

She should have styled herself as the Norfolk Broad.

Nigelb · May 14

.

Peter_the_Punter said:

Casino_Royale said:

londonpubman said:
Everyone will love Rishi and Jeremy when the CPI goes down to 2.3% next week.

Probably...
Rishi could promise free sex and cash to everyone and it wouldn't be enough now.

The horse has bolted.
Oh I don't know, CR. Might work with me.

Even fairly cheap sex would be tempting.

You find Rishi that attractive ?

Roger · May 14

Donkeys said:
FPT
Donkeys said:

Casino_Royale said:

Malmesbury said:

Donkeys said:
Off-topic: what are the reasons for such a large and fast fall in the Chinese birth rate?

Create a shitty environment for women to have children in?
People don't have kids if they don't need to have kids.

It's a bit heartless but much of what drives it is, in truth, economics and if you're really well off and can't be arsed then, well, you don't have kids at all.
So we have two almost opposite reasons being conjectured there.

It may also be that people between say 18 and 35 have grown less interested in having sex.

The fall is huge! To judge from that graph, the birth rate has dropped by about half in seven years.
But the most important factor in is likely to be deliberate action by the regime, almost certainly piloted in Xinjiang.

"Uighur women are also made to endure pregnancy checks. Some are forced to have abortions, or get an IUD inserted. Others are sterilized by the state. Police are known to rip unauthorized children away from their parents, who are then detained. Such measures have reduced the birthrate in some regions of Xinjiang more than 60 percent in three years."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-ai-surveillance/614197/

^ That's not a bad article by Ross Andersen in the Atlantic.

Among other things, it tells you what "AI" is really about. Which isn't putting luvvies out of work.

See also the use of "AI" on the West Bank.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/05/israel-opt-israeli-authorities-are-using-facial-recognition-technology-to-entrench-apartheid/

The Amnesty stuff is horrific. PB's self proclaimed 'champion of the downtrodden' cyclefree could only find HORRIFIC the story of the Jewish Chaplain at Leeds University who was hounded because he chose to post photographs of himself in his IDF uniform having moonlighted for them when he should have been doing pastoral work at the university.

wooliedyed · May 14

williamglenn said:

Selebian said:
'Truss Levels' sounds like Norfolk's answer to the Somerset Levels.
She should have styled herself as the Norfolk Broad.

Puh leeeeaze, she's not Norfolk. She's never been Norfolk. We are not her and she is not us

DougSeal · May 14

Selebian said:
'Truss Levels' sounds like Norfolk's answer to the Somerset Levels.

It brought to my mind visions of an exam curriculum purged of the indoctrinations of the anti-growth coalition. "What did you get in your Truss Levels?"

megasaur · May 14

OldKingCole said:

wooliedyed said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

wooliedyed said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.
I get why it's difficult to model tactical voting in an MRP, and maybe I rather than the pollsters will have egg on my face rather than them. But a lot of the projected results are not credible (even leaving aside the fact they use old boundaries).

Take North Devon - Lib Dems are projected to just miss out as the Labour vote more than doubles to 21%. Labour got 7% of the vote and no councillors only last year - they just aren't a presence.

I'm not especially bullish on the Lib Dems for the election, and the Tories have an okay chance of holding North Devon. But, if they do, they'll have to do it without relying on Labour implausibly getting 21%.
Constituency by constituency is always tricky - this seems very (even absurdly in some cases) generous to them in rural seats but massively harsh on the Tories in London. Its way too UNS when we've just had a very clear steer on London sentiment.
The point with an MRP is that it isn't UNS, though. So it is in fact meant to be modelling what particular demographics are doing, and applying it to the demographics of the area - there are regional, urban/rural, remain/leave and other variations and they follow the stats on that.

Their quite specific problem is that a particular demographic may behave quite differently in objectively similar seats based on perceived and historical strength of different parties.
This isn't MRP though, it's based on the Strong Transition Model from aggregated polling
What surprised me about the forecast was the high vote predicted for Refotm. Even then they win nothing.

I still think January’s the date though. On the grounds that Something will Turn Up!

I have now doubled my money on my December bet (or rather I haven't but I could if I cash out). My Jan bet is out of the money. I think this is bonkers. Intuitively I would seriously mind a GE interfering with the partying, planning, shopping etc which have to be crammed into 3 and a bit weeks of December, whereas January is so boring that a GE would be a welcome distraction. In fact thinking about it I think I will take the Dec profit and lump more on January.

Mortimer · May 14

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.

I wouldn't be.

Many SW Liberal voters used to be very, very eurosceptic.

I remember campaigning in 2017 and 2019 and changing house after house from Lib Dem to Tory VIs.

williamglenn · May 14

DougSeal said:

Selebian said:
'Truss Levels' sounds like Norfolk's answer to the Somerset Levels.
It brought to my mind visions of an exam curriculum purged of the indoctrinations of the anti-growth coalition. "What did you get in your Truss Levels?"

Her name lends itself to so many neologisms that it’s a shame she didn’t last a decade in office.

Peter_the_Punter · May 14

wooliedyed said:

MattW said:
If we have a Canada 1993 experience, who will the 2 Conservative MPs left standing be?

Sunak and Truss would be interesting.

They could come to Westminster on a tandem.
Truss will drop well before she's scheduled to. I expect her to hold her seat but I think if the Tories go under ,say, 80 she's gone

I think we can safely say that in this context there is every likelihood she will surprise on the downside.

IanB2 · May 14

Andy_JS said:
It looks like the Post Office inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams has got a bit fed up with lawyers for core participants taking longer than they say they will to ask questions. Today he refused to allow any of them to do so.

It’s amazing to find some lawyers who don’t exaggerate

Carnyx · May 14

Scott_xP said:

DM_Andy said:
Does anyone have the transcript of all of Sunak's speech yesterday, I could only find the .gov version with all over the place?
https://x.com/JohnRentoul/status/1789984062540591551

Just to help you:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24319964.expert-debunks-rishi-sunak-branding-yessers-extremist/?ref=ebbn&nid=1457&u=f140ec39d500193051a33e140c12bd95&date=140524

Alasdair_ · May 14

Mortimer said:

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.
I wouldn't be.

Many SW Liberal voters used to be very, very eurosceptic.

I remember campaigning in 2017 and 2019 and changing house after house from Lib Dem to Tory VIs.

Follow the link to the NS article. Their constituency map uses the old boundaries. Has this forecast any value?

IanB2 · May 14

Mortimer said:

Pulpstar said:

Andy_JS said:
Tories would win 156 seats according to the New Statesman's latest forecast, with Lab on 419, the same as Blair in 1997.

https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2023/08/britain-predicts-who-would-win-election-held-today
I'd be amazed if the Lib Dems only won St Ives within Devon, Cornwall & Dorset.
I wouldn't be.

Many SW Liberal voters used to be very, very eurosceptic.

I remember campaigning in 2017 and 2019 and changing house after house from Lib Dem to Tory VIs.

Maybe all those farmers and fisherfolk and workers in associated industries have at least begun to realise that they’ve been conned?

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