To be fair he does a pretty good job, says that the party needs to reflect and reinvent itself again as the party of the working class, stay away from middle-class culture war obsessions such as men in women’s toilets.
He's been on Newsnight quite a few times and I've liked him every time.
I’d not seen him before, but he was getting a lot of retweets from the feminist contingent this morning! He came across very well.
Apparently a Police Inspector before becoming an MP.
A very good counter to Farage's politicisation of the dreadful murder of Henry by a criminal who happened to be Sikh, on James O 'Brexit ( LBC) from Neil Basu.
At this stage polling is three years away from an actual election; predictions, especially on a betting site, need to take account of what happens between and its probabilities.
EC currently reckons that Reform would get 245 seats on its 27% of the vote. Which is a fair enough appraisal about today. But there is a whole match to take place yet which can't start until so near the time that the non politically minded (most people) start being participants, and the mainstream MPs start perspiring contemplating their P45s.
The next GE, I suggest, will include hundreds of quasi by elections in which the voters will converge on two parties, one being Reform in most cases. Leaving aside the by election rumpus, Makerfield was a seat Reform were certain to win in 2029, being about 30th on the Reform target list. So, on normal reckoning Reform should win this by election with well over 50% of the vote.
Whereas it is touch and go and too close to call. And it's a seat Reform have to win without breaking sweat if they are to get anywhere.
Which is a harbinger of the next election. None of the polling today tells you anything much about the tactical contest almost every seat will be. But it is increasing looking as if the main bout on the bill will be Reform v Not Reform.
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
You may well be correct in your assumption. Certainly it has moved from Kenyon is a regular local guy with a normal job, and Labour are useless and Burnham wants to be PM, etc., to immigration, interference, immigration, foreigners.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
There are questions that need answering. Farage trying to inflame racial tensions is not helping to solve those questions, is it?
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
You may well be correct in your assumption.
I said Burnham would win from the start. The Reform/Restore fandango just makes it ever more certain. For two reasons: 1) The hard rite vote splits in two 2) The increasing vitriol repels decent voters which increases the Labour vote
Reform/Restore have the exact same problem previous LabCon politicians have had - not realising that not everyone thinks like them and the more they foam on and on the more determined people are to vote against them.
To be fair he does a pretty good job, says that the party needs to reflect and reinvent itself again as the party of the working class, stay away from middle-class culture war obsessions such as men in women’s toilets.
If you look at his Twitter feed, he doesn't stay away from middle-class culture war obsessions such as men in women’s toilets, he instead dive-bombs in, splashes around loudly, and says "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I'M TALKING ABOUT ME IN WOMEN'S TOILETS AGAIN! LOOK AT ME!"
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
To be fair he does a pretty good job, says that the party needs to reflect and reinvent itself again as the party of the working class, stay away from middle-class culture war obsessions such as men in women’s toilets.
If you look at his Twitter feed, he doesn't stay away from middle-class culture war obsessions such as men in women’s toilets, he instead dive-bombs in, splashes around loudly, and says "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I'M TALKING ABOUT ME IN WOMEN'S TOILETS AGAIN! LOOK AT ME!"
There were unfair and frankly in a couple of posts insulting comments directed at me over my comments about a conversation on Sky with Sam Coates and Adam Boulton about an e mail about Ollie Robbins sacking
Ultimately I researched Sky news for over an hour and found the clip which I posted on the last thread yesterday evening with the actual words spoken by Boulton
He said 'the e mail suggests that actually the blame levelled at Ollie Robbins is not justified as the system had already approved it'
I was surprised that even this morning @Mexicanpete was raising it even though I had taken the time and effort to find and publish the clip which identifiers the e mail evidence
Posters can argue about interpretation but sadly there is no excuse for trying to discredit a poster who attempts to provide genuine information
Sky news has won numerous awards and is a recognised broadcaster and not known for bias like GB news
It’s the usual suspects. Why let it bother you. Remember DougSeal hounded Isam from the site a couple of years back. Don’t give them the power over you 👍
I value integrity and on this occasion wanted to produce the actual clip which I have done
On the wider point of hounding posters from the site that does happen but I am not going anywhere
What I find odd on a betting site (and Leon has commented as well) is that if you hound out those whose opinion you disagree with, the site becomes valueless. It's the challenge to your personal views (and betting position) that helps you refine your approach. It will cost you money if you simply follow the herd.
I wish "hounding" were that easy. There's a few wankers I'd like to banish to the Shadow Realm.
"Some people hate the English. I don't, they're just wankers!"
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
You may well be correct in your assumption.
I said Burnham would win from the start. The Reform/Restore fandango just makes it ever more certain. For two reasons: 1) The hard rite vote splits in two 2) The increasing vitriol repels decent voters which increases the Labour vote
Reform/Restore have the exact same problem previous LabCon politicians have had - not realising that not everyone thinks like them and the more they foam on and on the more determined people are to vote against them.
Or it could be that the Burnham isn't a local and doesn't care about the area (untrue he lives as near as dammit and sent his kids to the local comp) hasn't cut through as it never would really, but immigration has. The bots have stopped insisting Burnham is a Scouser. Anyone vaguely from the area knows what a Scouser is and he blatantly isn't one. He's a wool.
With the accent of a well spoken educated bloke from the area.
Points up a Reform weakness. Just as in G+D the Online campaign narrative was very attractive to people who don't live locally and fired up their prejudices. Yet obvious errors from bots pretending to be local yet having seemingly no knowledge of the basic geography of the area.
If Reform want to win it needs to be immigration all day every day.
Exclusive: Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes PM
His spokesperson says he is ruling out a snap election
Only idiots thought that an early election would be on the cards.
Indeed.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot You cannot seriously think that Labour MPs would make Andy Burnham prime minister if they thought he was going to call a snap general election where hundreds would lose their seats even in the best case scenario. Truly bizarre.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
Several police officers have quit - at least one has used the “retired early because of stress” avenue.
This shuts down any internal disciplinary process (ha!), protects the pension and means that they have a clean employment record going forward.
In past times, such individuals would apply for jobs with other police forces. After all, no disciplinary issues against them, from their previous work… That route is supposed to have been stopped
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
There is a case for saying the three standing bodies established by the HRA/Climate Change/EA should simply be abolished. They are
The rule that Acts should be compatible with the ECtHR
The Climate Change Committee
The EHRC
They add a layer of bureaucracy, they prevent Parliament executing its democratic will, and by placing placemen in important roles can subvert Parliament without democratic oversight.
Ans while we're at it, let's abolish the SC outright and bring it back into the HoL. The Blair constitutional changes haven't worked and just created activist courts and overreach.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
To a point. But the IPCC review of the incident needs to be swift, open and published. Why did they assume he hadn't been stabbed? Yes he was wearing dark clothes in the dark at night and not all stab wounds bleed copiously but he said "I've been stabbed" repeatedly. Why did they handcuff him when he was in no position to do anything? Why, reportedly, was Digwa never handcuffed, even after being arrested? Why was the perception allowed to form that the attack was with a legally held ceremonial knife when it was anything but?
Get those questions answered, quickly, and we can move on.
I have enormous sympathy for the police. My dad did 30 years and I had no intention of ever following in his footsteps. And they will sometimes get it wrong. But if its fair to accuse the Met of being institutionally racist over MacPherson, then I think its fair to suggest that attempts to not be racist may have had a role here.
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
You may well be correct in your assumption.
I said Burnham would win from the start. The Reform/Restore fandango just makes it ever more certain. For two reasons: 1) The hard rite vote splits in two 2) The increasing vitriol repels decent voters which increases the Labour vote
Reform/Restore have the exact same problem previous LabCon politicians have had - not realising that not everyone thinks like them and the more they foam on and on the more determined people are to vote against them.
Or it could be that the Burnham isn't a local and doesn't care about the area (untrue he lives as near as dammit and sent his kids to the local comp) hasn't cut through as it never would really, but immigration has. The bots have stopped insisting Burnham is a Scouser. Anyone vaguely from the area knows what a Scouser is and he blatantly isn't one. He's a wool.
With the accent of a well spoken educated bloke from the area.
Points up a Reform weakness. Just as in G+D the Online campaign narrative was very attractive to people who don't live locally and fired up their prejudices. Yet obvious errors from bots pretending to be local yet having seemingly no knowledge of the basic geography of the area.
If Reform want to win it needs to be immigration all day every day.
Yeah, the x isn't local is always a baffling campaign when the candidate they are decrying clearly is. I remember the LibDems (booo) trying it in Rochdale in 1997 trying to make out that Lorna Fitsimons was a Londoner. Nope. Literally grew up in the constituency. Irony being the incumbent LD MP was a Londoner.
If Kenyon was kosher than maybe it would have worked. But now that he looks about as authentic as a 9 bob note its all gone wrong.
Even the immigration immigration immigration strategy has a problem. Burnham is running *against* the government, not for it. So if voters want change do they vote for the guy who would have the power to actually do it, or for a guy who won't?
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
We are extremely quick to believe conspiracies as is well known, it feels like it is getting worse but perhaps that is just us having greater exposure to examples which would have happened anyway.
I remember having to explain to a relative in 2019 that no, the Tories were not stealing the election because someone said a Tory Peer part owned software which was used by election officials, they knew of but had chosen to ignore the hundreds upon hundreds of counts attended by party observers, and chose to believe someone could just flick a switch to transfer hundreds of thousands of votes from Corbyn.
On Reform vs Restore I will eat one of my hats if Restore do more than barely hold their desposit, but the US alt-right will go nuts as they are convinced everyone in Britain besides liberal traitors loves Restore.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Farmers should all promise to convert entirely to solar farm production, people suddenly become very invested in preserving food production and locally owned farms when those get proposed.
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
You may well be correct in your assumption.
I said Burnham would win from the start. The Reform/Restore fandango just makes it ever more certain. For two reasons: 1) The hard rite vote splits in two 2) The increasing vitriol repels decent voters which increases the Labour vote
Reform/Restore have the exact same problem previous LabCon politicians have had - not realising that not everyone thinks like them and the more they foam on and on the more determined people are to vote against them.
Or it could be that the Burnham isn't a local and doesn't care about the area (untrue he lives as near as dammit and sent his kids to the local comp) hasn't cut through as it never would really, but immigration has. The bots have stopped insisting Burnham is a Scouser. Anyone vaguely from the area knows what a Scouser is and he blatantly isn't one. He's a wool.
With the accent of a well spoken educated bloke from the area.
Points up a Reform weakness. Just as in G+D the Online campaign narrative was very attractive to people who don't live locally and fired up their prejudices. Yet obvious errors from bots pretending to be local yet having seemingly no knowledge of the basic geography of the area.
If Reform want to win it needs to be immigration all day every day.
Yeah, the x isn't local is always a baffling campaign when the candidate they are decrying clearly is. I remember the LibDems (booo) trying it in Rochdale in 1997 trying to make out that Lorna Fitsimons was a Londoner. Nope. Literally grew up in the constituency. Irony being the incumbent LD MP was a Londoner.
If Kenyon was kosher than maybe it would have worked. But now that he looks about as authentic as a 9 bob note its all gone wrong.
Even the immigration immigration immigration strategy has a problem. Burnham is running *against* the government, not for it. So if voters want change do they vote for the guy who would have the power to actually do it, or for a guy who won't?
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
On the face of it, they ought at the least to face disciplinary proceedings. But has it been established (for example) what information they were given by police dispatch before arriving on scene ?
I gather that the murdered kid's father has asked that his son's death not be politicised. That should be given a little more respect than Farage's pronouncements.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
All series have been good. Others have said that Clarkson is brilliant at turning other people into stars. See Hammond and May in Top Gear/LGT and then Caleb here. He has also shone a light on the ridiculously low financial margins of farming, and the petty anti-business attitudes of local councils. He is of course making an entertainment show, but no-one imagines that when Russel T Davies makes a drama about being LGBTQ life it doesn't help educate and change the debate in the country, so why cannot Clarkson do the same via his show? He also seems to have gained real respect in the farming world (to which I am unbelievable tangentially connected through my sister).
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
You may well be correct in your assumption.
I said Burnham would win from the start. The Reform/Restore fandango just makes it ever more certain. For two reasons: 1) The hard rite vote splits in two 2) The increasing vitriol repels decent voters which increases the Labour vote
Reform/Restore have the exact same problem previous LabCon politicians have had - not realising that not everyone thinks like them and the more they foam on and on the more determined people are to vote against them.
Or it could be that the Burnham isn't a local and doesn't care about the area (untrue he lives as near as dammit and sent his kids to the local comp) hasn't cut through as it never would really, but immigration has. The bots have stopped insisting Burnham is a Scouser. Anyone vaguely from the area knows what a Scouser is and he blatantly isn't one. He's a wool.
With the accent of a well spoken educated bloke from the area.
Points up a Reform weakness. Just as in G+D the Online campaign narrative was very attractive to people who don't live locally and fired up their prejudices. Yet obvious errors from bots pretending to be local yet having seemingly no knowledge of the basic geography of the area.
If Reform want to win it needs to be immigration all day every day.
Yeah, the x isn't local is always a baffling campaign when the candidate they are decrying clearly is. I remember the LibDems (booo) trying it in Rochdale in 1997 trying to make out that Lorna Fitsimons was a Londoner. Nope. Literally grew up in the constituency. Irony being the incumbent LD MP was a Londoner.
If Kenyon was kosher than maybe it would have worked. But now that he looks about as authentic as a 9 bob note its all gone wrong.
Even the immigration immigration immigration strategy has a problem. Burnham is running *against* the government, not for it. So if voters want change do they vote for the guy who would have the power to actually do it, or for a guy who won't?
The Reform "shadow cabinet" are mostly the ministers who were in place for the Boris wave. Labour have reduced immigration by 75% from when the Reform cabinet were in charge.......
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
Many farmers work at least part time outside to pay the bills, and rates of suicide are some of the highest of any job.
With fewer and fewer people now working in agriculture, it’s out of sight and out of mind for the vast majority of the population, who think that beef comes from a supermarket rather than from a cow.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Do you not agree that when it comes to policing, the notion of white privilege still exists despite the error (and many other DEI errors that have been made over the last twenty five years) in the Henry Novak case? I think I am better off being an educated, white, heterosexual male when it comes to any interaction with the police.
The fact that despite Henry's father Peter Novak pleaded for politicians not to add the racial dimension to this tragedy, that is exactly what Farage has done. Unfortunately Philp has also jumped on that bandwagon which is unfortunate. I was listening to Liz Webster whose son Henry was similarly attacked by Asian students and she felt Farage's intervention was despicable.*
It is unfortunate that a number of PB posters are foursquare behind Farage's analysis of the racial element of this tragedy which was perpetrated by an evil criminal.
No FB it isn't a reliable source. I wasn't claiming it to be. But the mood on it has definitely shifted. The level of vitriol has upped considerably towards more personal attacks and claims of interference and unfairness. Whether this is significant, I don't know. But it has been noticeable.
Its this:
Reform will win because Labour are awful. Restore hate Reform and think they are race traitors Restore and Reform step up both their vitriol against each other and hurl rocks towards Burnham The entire social media world is which one wins - Reform or Restore
Then Labour wins and we get the EVERYONE I KNOW VOTED REFORM / RESTORE THIS WAS STOLEN bullshit
You may well be correct in your assumption.
I said Burnham would win from the start. The Reform/Restore fandango just makes it ever more certain. For two reasons: 1) The hard rite vote splits in two 2) The increasing vitriol repels decent voters which increases the Labour vote
Reform/Restore have the exact same problem previous LabCon politicians have had - not realising that not everyone thinks like them and the more they foam on and on the more determined people are to vote against them.
Or it could be that the Burnham isn't a local and doesn't care about the area (untrue he lives as near as dammit and sent his kids to the local comp) hasn't cut through as it never would really, but immigration has. The bots have stopped insisting Burnham is a Scouser. Anyone vaguely from the area knows what a Scouser is and he blatantly isn't one. He's a wool.
With the accent of a well spoken educated bloke from the area.
Points up a Reform weakness. Just as in G+D the Online campaign narrative was very attractive to people who don't live locally and fired up their prejudices. Yet obvious errors from bots pretending to be local yet having seemingly no knowledge of the basic geography of the area.
If Reform want to win it needs to be immigration all day every day.
Yeah, the x isn't local is always a baffling campaign when the candidate they are decrying clearly is. I remember the LibDems (booo) trying it in Rochdale in 1997 trying to make out that Lorna Fitsimons was a Londoner. Nope. Literally grew up in the constituency. Irony being the incumbent LD MP was a Londoner.
If Kenyon was kosher than maybe it would have worked. But now that he looks about as authentic as a 9 bob note its all gone wrong.
Even the immigration immigration immigration strategy has a problem. Burnham is running *against* the government, not for it. So if voters want change do they vote for the guy who would have the power to actually do it, or for a guy who won't?
The Reform "shadow cabinet" are mostly the ministers who were in place for the Boris wave. Labour have reduced immigration by 75% from when the Reform cabinet were in charge.......
Which is why they're apparently leaning in the direction of racism rather than "stop immigration".
Exclusive: Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes PM
His spokesperson says he is ruling out a snap election
Only idiots thought that an early election would be on the cards.
Recent history shows new PMs tend to go back to the country in 1-2 years in any case, either because they are polling well (Boris/May), or they have no choice as even going late as possible will be about 2 years (Sunak). Brown held out the full term.
2 years would take us to 2028, and if Labour have recovered under Andy they might well go then, as going for the full five years is unusual. But with a massive majority at risk there's no reason to go very early even if there's an immediate Andy recovery.
Personal 'mandate'? A nonsense, which can be shrugged off, opposition will bleat about it without really meaning it, and Labour MPs will ignore it without really caring.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I'd go with Linehan's tweet, the one that got him into trouble with the police (and which the police have grudgingly admitted was a wrongful arrest)
"If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
To a point. But the IPCC review of the incident needs to be swift, open and published. Why did they assume he hadn't been stabbed? Yes he was wearing dark clothes in the dark at night and not all stab wounds bleed copiously but he said "I've been stabbed" repeatedly. Why did they handcuff him when he was in no position to do anything? Why, reportedly, was Digwa never handcuffed, even after being arrested? Why was the perception allowed to form that the attack was with a legally held ceremonial knife when it was anything but?
Get those questions answered, quickly, and we can move on.
I have enormous sympathy for the police. My dad did 30 years and I had no intention of ever following in his footsteps. And they will sometimes get it wrong. But if its fair to accuse the Met of being institutionally racist over MacPherson, then I think its fair to suggest that attempts to not be racist may have had a role here.
The IPCC review will be open and published, because that’s how they work. It should be as swift as possible without compromising quality. So, great, let’s wait for the IPCC review before rushing to conclusions.
Concerns over racism in the police arose not because of one event, not because of ten events, but because of thousands of events. This is one event that may suggest that sensitivity over racism caused a problem (but may not, let’s see what the IPCC report says). I don’t think the comparison remotely holds up.
The other Makerfield consideration. We still have 2 weeks of this campaign to run, and as it becomes clear that Burnham is winning I expect the hysteria to increase to absurd levels. Farage isn't far off "If you want a muslim for your neighbour vote Labour" and I expect it will get much much worse.
If this was Reform vs Labour then that would be one thing. But Reform and Restore need to out goose step each other to secure votes. So they will get worse and worse and worse. This doesn't just damage them in this by-election, I think they are capable of doing damage which lasts far longer.
Combine that with a new Burnham government completely reframing the political narrative, and Reform could find themselves in real trouble.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Hmm. The issue is a sometimes complex one which can stray into wider matters of discrimination, but that advice seems to only be concerned with one side of it.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
Could some Latin lovers give me some help, please?
In the Style section of the May 5th New York Times, in "What We Love About the First 'Devil Wears Prada'", I found this sentence:
When [journalist] Andy [Sachs] scoffs at a room of Runway employees choosing between two very similar belts, Miranda soundly decimates her with a monologue about the ubiquitousness and utility of fashion.
I can guess what the Maya Phillips means, but I couldn't help trying to translate what she wrote. The best I could come up with something like this: Miranda gave Andy weight loss surgery, perhaps using ultrasound.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
On the face of it, they ought at the least to face disciplinary proceedings. But has it been established (for example) what information they were given by police dispatch before arriving on scene ?
I gather that the murdered kid's father has asked that his son's death not be politicised. That should be given a little more respect than Farage's pronouncements.
There were 2 calls to 999: one from the murderer's family, which was a bunch of lies, and one from a neighbour which mentioned the stabbing, who had been stabbed and that there was blood.
The police may have been misled and the murderer and his family clearly lied to them.
But what I don't understand is why the police - seeing an inert man on the ground, unable to move, repeatedly saying he's been stabbed and cannot breathe and offering no resistance and also seeing his alleged victim standing up and moving around - thought it was appropriate to drag the inert unresponsive man posing no risk across the ground and handcuff him.
That is just a failure of proper policing, possibly aggravated by an assumption. Whatever they were told they should have assessed what they could see in front of them which did not at all match with what they had been told.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
If he wins the by-election he's a shoo-in, there may not even be a contest - he'll be the only one with a narrative to sell, of the plucky outsider coming in to save the party and country from the horrible Starmer.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
To a point. But the IPCC review of the incident needs to be swift, open and published. Why did they assume he hadn't been stabbed? Yes he was wearing dark clothes in the dark at night and not all stab wounds bleed copiously but he said "I've been stabbed" repeatedly. Why did they handcuff him when he was in no position to do anything? Why, reportedly, was Digwa never handcuffed, even after being arrested? Why was the perception allowed to form that the attack was with a legally held ceremonial knife when it was anything but?
Get those questions answered, quickly, and we can move on.
I have enormous sympathy for the police. My dad did 30 years and I had no intention of ever following in his footsteps. And they will sometimes get it wrong. But if its fair to accuse the Met of being institutionally racist over MacPherson, then I think its fair to suggest that attempts to not be racist may have had a role here.
The IPCC review will be open and published, because that’s how they work. It should be as swift as possible without compromising quality. So, great, let’s wait for the IPCC review before rushing to conclusions.
Concerns over racism in the police arose not because of one event, not because of ten events, but because of thousands of events. This is one event that may suggest that sensitivity over racism caused a problem (but may not, let’s see what the IPCC report says). I don’t think the comparison remotely holds up.
The Met reflected a racist society that has changed. Still not perfect but I would argue that the UK is one of the least racist Countries on earth. I know its fiction but the TV show "Life on Mars" showed the the changes in policing by putting a 2000's copper into a 1970's police force. The Met needed to change.
I don't believe are suggesting that the police force is now racist against whites in a mirror of how the Met (and other forces) where against Blacks. That would be absurd. But the suggestion that trying to avoid being portrayed as racist has played a role here ought to be looked at (and I am sure is or will be).
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I don’t have a daughter. I understand from friends with daughters that their daughters would call them transphobic if they talked like that. There is a strong generational divide here and the daughters generally do not seem to be in agreement with your position, Cyclefree.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
On the face of it, they ought at the least to face disciplinary proceedings. But has it been established (for example) what information they were given by police dispatch before arriving on scene ?
I gather that the murdered kid's father has asked that his son's death not be politicised. That should be given a little more respect than Farage's pronouncements.
There were 2 calls to 999: one from the murderer's family, which was a bunch of lies, and one from a neighbour which mentioned the stabbing, who had been stabbed and that there was blood.
The police may have been misled and the murderer and his family clearly lied to them.
But what I don't understand is why the police - seeing an inert man on the ground, unable to move, repeatedly saying he's been stabbed and cannot breathe and offering no resistance and also seeing his alleged victim standing up and moving around - thought it was appropriate to drag the inert unresponsive man posing no risk across the ground and handcuff him.
That is just a failure of proper policing, possibly aggravated by an assumption. Whatever they were told they should have assessed what they could see in front of them which did not at all match with what they had been told.
Yes, wider questions of what motivated them and whether accusations of racism were treated more serious than anything else etc are important, but the fundamental point of "If someone, anyone, says they have been stabbed, check to see if they were" would be the same regardless of what the answers of those wider questions are.
Because if you get it wrong people might, and in this case did, die. So take no chances and make sure.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
If he wins the by-election, he’s clearly got favourite.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Hmm. The issue is a sometimes complex one which can stray into wider matters of discrimination, but that advice seems to only be concerned with one side of it.
Exclusive: Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes PM
His spokesperson says he is ruling out a snap election
Only idiots thought that an early election would be on the cards.
Recent history shows new PMs tend to go back to the country in 1-2 years in any case, either because they are polling well (Boris/May), or they have no choice as even going late as possible will be about 2 years (Sunak). Brown held out the full term.
2 years would take us to 2028, and if Labour have recovered under Andy they might well go then, as going for the full five years is unusual. But with a massive majority at risk there's no reason to go very early even if there's an immediate Andy recovery.
Personal 'mandate'? A nonsense, which can be shrugged off, opposition will bleat about it without really meaning it, and Labour MPs will ignore it without really caring.
I hope that if (a) Burnham wins the by-election and (b) becomes PM that (c) the opposition are mature enough to not bang on about personal mandates and constantly scream "General election NOW".
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
So either (a) try to make the countryside make money, bring in visitors who might just use local shops etc or (b) just block everything.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
So either (a) try to make the countryside make money, bring in visitors who might just use local shops etc or (b) just block everything.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I don’t have a daughter. I understand from friends with daughters that their daughters would call them transphobic if they talked like that. There is a strong generational divide here and the daughters generally do not seem to be in agreement with your position, Cyclefree.
Lots of evidence that the last few years trans-wave is in retreat. Social media contagion etc.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I don’t have a daughter. I understand from friends with daughters that their daughters would call them transphobic if they talked like that. There is a strong generational divide here and the daughters generally do not seem to be in agreement with your position, Cyclefree.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
To a point. But the IPCC review of the incident needs to be swift, open and published. Why did they assume he hadn't been stabbed? Yes he was wearing dark clothes in the dark at night and not all stab wounds bleed copiously but he said "I've been stabbed" repeatedly. Why did they handcuff him when he was in no position to do anything? Why, reportedly, was Digwa never handcuffed, even after being arrested? Why was the perception allowed to form that the attack was with a legally held ceremonial knife when it was anything but?
Get those questions answered, quickly, and we can move on.
I have enormous sympathy for the police. My dad did 30 years and I had no intention of ever following in his footsteps. And they will sometimes get it wrong. But if its fair to accuse the Met of being institutionally racist over MacPherson, then I think its fair to suggest that attempts to not be racist may have had a role here.
The IPCC review will be open and published, because that’s how they work. It should be as swift as possible without compromising quality. So, great, let’s wait for the IPCC review before rushing to conclusions.
Concerns over racism in the police arose not because of one event, not because of ten events, but because of thousands of events. This is one event that may suggest that sensitivity over racism caused a problem (but may not, let’s see what the IPCC report says). I don’t think the comparison remotely holds up.
The Met reflected a racist society that has changed. Still not perfect but I would argue that the UK is one of the least racist Countries on earth. I know its fiction but the TV show "Life on Mars" showed the the changes in policing by putting a 2000's copper into a 1970's police force. The Met needed to change.
I don't believe are suggesting that the police force is now racist against whites in a mirror of how the Met (and other forces) where against Blacks. That would be absurd. But the suggestion that trying to avoid being portrayed as racist has played a role here ought to be looked at (and I am sure is or will be).
Unfortunately the society is changing back at a rate of knots.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
If he wins the by-election, he’s clearly got favourite.
I think he’ll be PM by August.
Given the Labour process to elect a new permanent leader I'm not sure this is even possible.
See the odds for Starmer's departure - I don't think July or August are possible given the Lab process, and Sept is only a very small possibility. I'm laying July - Sept.
There were unfair and frankly in a couple of posts insulting comments directed at me over my comments about a conversation on Sky with Sam Coates and Adam Boulton about an e mail about Ollie Robbins sacking
Ultimately I researched Sky news for over an hour and found the clip which I posted on the last thread yesterday evening with the actual words spoken by Boulton
He said 'the e mail suggests that actually the blame levelled at Ollie Robbins is not justified as the system had already approved it'
I was surprised that even this morning @Mexicanpete was raising it even though I had taken the time and effort to find and publish the clip which identifiers the e mail evidence
Posters can argue about interpretation but sadly there is no excuse for trying to discredit a poster who attempts to provide genuine information
Sky news has won numerous awards and is a recognised broadcaster and not known for bias like GB news
Your post said Ollie Robbins had been "exonerated"!!!!!!! This is your basis for that assertion????? Do you at least accept you got that wrong? When you're in a hole stop digging and please stop sharing Sky posts disingenuously.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
If he wins the by-election, he’s clearly got favourite.
I think he’ll be PM by August.
In chemistry we talk about a rate limiting step - the bit in a set of events that controls the pace of things. Here the rate limiting step is the by-election. If he wins the rest will fall like dominos. If he loses then who knows what happens!
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Do you not agree that when it comes to policing, the notion of white privilege still exists despite the error (and many other DEI errors that have been made over the last twenty five years) in the Henry Novak case? I think I am better off being an educated, white, heterosexual male when it comes to any interaction with the police.
The fact that despite Henry's father Peter Novak pleaded for politicians not to add the racial dimension to this tragedy, that is exactly what Farage has done. Unfortunately Philp has also jumped on that bandwagon which is unfortunate. I was listening to Liz Webster whose son Henry was similarly attacked by Asian students and she felt Farage's intervention was despicable.*
It is unfortunate that a number of PB posters are foursquare behind Farage's analysis of the racial element of this tragedy which was perpetrated by an evil criminal.
* My interpretation.
I have not followed what the politicians have said and am mistrustful of their motives for speaking up.
I don't accept a general concept of "white privilege" as justification for adopting a different sort of prejudice or set of assumptions.
What any good investigator has to do is not allow a preconceived assumption to determine their assessment of a situation. This is not easy. Not easy at all. But it is precisely what good training and professionalism - constantly reinforced - have to do.
I rather think that a lot of this has been overlooked or forgotten by the police. Remember what I wrote in 2019 on here following Operation Midland about the police automatically believing victims and how disastrous this is as an approach. Here you go.
Something like that I suspect is happening with the police approach to racism allegations.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
So either (a) try to make the countryside make money, bring in visitors who might just use local shops etc or (b) just block everything.
The council chose (b).
That's how local democracy works in rural areas. I will be re-elected to our Parish Council in perpetuity because I promise to block everything, everywhere at all times. Stopping construction of a public barbecue was my personal Austerlitz.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
So either (a) try to make the countryside make money, bring in visitors who might just use local shops etc or (b) just block everything.
The council chose (b).
They shouldn’t be allowed to block anything.
That's too strong for me, but a presumption of granting permission ought to be there.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's much doubt that the police on the scene made a complete mess of it. I wonder what those on the scene felt when they had time to reflect.
This. Totally.
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
We know the police can jump to assumptions on arriving at a scene. That's natural human behaviour; we try to train them not to. Decades of research and experience show that the police often jump to racist assumptions. There has been much work to reduce that happening and the situation is better than a few decades ago. However, there is plenty of evidence that racism remains common in the police force.
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
To a point. But the IPCC review of the incident needs to be swift, open and published. Why did they assume he hadn't been stabbed? Yes he was wearing dark clothes in the dark at night and not all stab wounds bleed copiously but he said "I've been stabbed" repeatedly. Why did they handcuff him when he was in no position to do anything? Why, reportedly, was Digwa never handcuffed, even after being arrested? Why was the perception allowed to form that the attack was with a legally held ceremonial knife when it was anything but?
Get those questions answered, quickly, and we can move on.
I have enormous sympathy for the police. My dad did 30 years and I had no intention of ever following in his footsteps. And they will sometimes get it wrong. But if its fair to accuse the Met of being institutionally racist over MacPherson, then I think its fair to suggest that attempts to not be racist may have had a role here.
The IPCC review will be open and published, because that’s how they work. It should be as swift as possible without compromising quality. So, great, let’s wait for the IPCC review before rushing to conclusions.
Concerns over racism in the police arose not because of one event, not because of ten events, but because of thousands of events. This is one event that may suggest that sensitivity over racism caused a problem (but may not, let’s see what the IPCC report says). I don’t think the comparison remotely holds up.
The Met reflected a racist society that has changed. Still not perfect but I would argue that the UK is one of the least racist Countries on earth. I know its fiction but the TV show "Life on Mars" showed the the changes in policing by putting a 2000's copper into a 1970's police force. The Met needed to change.
I don't believe are suggesting that the police force is now racist against whites in a mirror of how the Met (and other forces) where against Blacks. That would be absurd. But the suggestion that trying to avoid being portrayed as racist has played a role here ought to be looked at (and I am sure is or will be).
The UK has changed a lot and I would agree we are one of the less racist countries in the world. The IOPC are looking at the case and everything suggests that they will consider that angle. Starmer has welcomed the investigation. Let’s see what they say.
I’ve not suggested that angle shouldn’t be looked at. I was criticising the jumping to assume that that was the cause of the police officers’ actions.
Exclusive: Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes PM
His spokesperson says he is ruling out a snap election
Only idiots thought that an early election would be on the cards.
Indeed.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot You cannot seriously think that Labour MPs would make Andy Burnham prime minister if they thought he was going to call a snap general election where hundreds would lose their seats even in the best case scenario. Truly bizarre.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
If he wins the by-election, he’s clearly got favourite.
I think he’ll be PM by August.
Given the Labour process to elect a new permanent leader I'm not sure this is even possible.
See the odds for Starmer's departure - I don't think July or August are possible given the Lab process, and Sept is only a very small possibility. I'm laying July - Sept.
It is not a long process if only one candidate stands.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
Yeah this is right. Starmer won’t fight Burnham.
It will be a one person contest like Brown in 2007.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I don’t have a daughter. I understand from friends with daughters that their daughters would call them transphobic if they talked like that. There is a strong generational divide here and the daughters generally do not seem to be in agreement with your position, Cyclefree.
Yes true, but only because they have been influenced by trans activists on social media. I have two daughters and they and their peers readily change their view when the full issues are explained to them in a unbiased and factual way.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
If he wins the by-election, he’s clearly got favourite.
I think he’ll be PM by August.
Given the Labour process to elect a new permanent leader I'm not sure this is even possible.
See the odds for Starmer's departure - I don't think July or August are possible given the Lab process, and Sept is only a very small possibility. I'm laying July - Sept.
Lab conference is the last few days of September. The assumption has to be that a new leader would be revealed either at or just before.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
There are questions that need answering. Farage trying to inflame racial tensions is not helping to solve those questions, is it?
If that is actually what is happening, as opposed to highlighting double standards in policing and seeking improvements, I’d condemn that.
Just as I’d condemn the hard left rabble who turned up to a vigil for the victim and shouted abuse at all and sundry.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
So either (a) try to make the countryside make money, bring in visitors who might just use local shops etc or (b) just block everything.
The council chose (b).
Councils often are bound by national policy to refuse things even if they personally don't have an issue with it. They do also set local planning policy of course, which is unlikely to be more permissive than national policy allows, and instead be as restrictive as possible. So it can be partly their fault and partly not depending on the issue.
Now in this case he had a lot of people coming and so it probably was against policy, which generally wants there to be a vibrant countryside economy but not too much actual activity, which would be seen as out of character, the roads not able to take it etc.
As to Dura's point about councillors losing election if they hadn't said no, that is partly why the government is taking away a lot of the power of planning committees (possibly even too much to be honest) - decisions are meant to be made taking account of national and local planning policy, but local politicians still openly make decisions on the basis of 'my residents don't like it', which in itself is not actually enough. They aren't purely democratic exercises and any councillor who says it is is a liar, or a planning officer's worst nightmare who will cost residents tens of thousands more in appeal costs.
It's also silly as residents do not reward you for standing against the local housing development or whatever, if it then gets approved on appeal and built anyway because it was fully compliant with policy. Councillors are meant to exercise discretion where policy allows for judgement calls (eg, does the benefit outweigh the harm? Is the impact reasonable? Is X in character with the area?)
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I'd go with Linehan's tweet, the one that got him into trouble with the police (and which the police have grudgingly admitted was a wrongful arrest)
"If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."
Its a joke, but it portrays real situations.
When I went to the States four weeks ago I saw Linehan in the queue at arrivals. I was determined to say hello and shake his hand at the baggage carousel but he didn't appear so I lost my chance. He was dressed (very smartly) in same suit he wore at his court appearance.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I don’t have a daughter. I understand from friends with daughters that their daughters would call them transphobic if they talked like that. There is a strong generational divide here and the daughters generally do not seem to be in agreement with your position, Cyclefree.
Yes true, but only because they have been influenced by trans activists on social media. I have two daughters and they and their peers readily change their view when the full issues are explained to them in a unbiased and factual way.
It’s a good thing that those who are critical of trans rights have never been influenced by activists on social media.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
If he wins the by-election, he’s clearly got favourite.
I think he’ll be PM by August.
Given the Labour process to elect a new permanent leader I'm not sure this is even possible.
See the odds for Starmer's departure - I don't think July or August are possible given the Lab process, and Sept is only a very small possibility. I'm laying July - Sept.
Lab conference is the last few days of September. The assumption has to be that a new leader would be revealed either at or just before.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
There was me thinking you’d be all in favour of finding as many loopholes and exemptions in the way of people doing their business as possible.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I'd go with Linehan's tweet, the one that got him into trouble with the police (and which the police have grudgingly admitted was a wrongful arrest)
"If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."
Its a joke, but it portrays real situations.
Linehan is talking balls I'm afraid. A woman will challenge but will not be violent because she knows that in a physical confrontation with a man she will lose. So she will try to defuse or flee. That then is used by activists to say women don't object which is nonsense too.
Women rely on men behaving decently and no men, whether trans or not, should go into a women only space and universities and others need to have procedures which reinforce that decency and so not put the onus of challenge on women or actively tell them not to. What this university is doing is telling women to put up with indecent behaviour and, far from reinforcing equality, it is putting the demands of a subset of men above all other considerations, including the law.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
If 81 wanted Streeting he would have pulled the trigger by now and laughed at the complaints that Saint Andy wasn't able to be nominated yet.
That isn't fixing it. Murdering arsehole has been convicted and jailed. Justice. Next we need the officers who utterly failed to show concern for their prisoner to face justice. At the very least its a gross failure of their duties
But Farage? He's trying to fan flames to incite a political reaction. For votes, not out of concern.
We need less hate and division in this country, not more.
And what was Starmer doing exactly then he took the knee. Was he doing it for political advantage and votes?
I wouldn't have taken the knee like that. Then again I think there is a world of difference between trying to calm racial tensions and hoping to inflame them.
Again, there's too much hate as it is. Its not our fault that Farage has been outflanked by Rupert Lower, but that doesn't mean that we should just accept a return to open racism because it suits some politicians.
Whats next - pogroms?
It was a white guy who was stabbed...
And Farage is trying to provoke white men by banging on about two-tier policing.
There clearly are questions that need answering as to the conduct of the Police that night. Especially when the victim told them he’d been stabbed, some Plod told him he hadn’t, and said he couldn’t breathe. Repeatedly.
There are questions that need answering. Farage trying to inflame racial tensions is not helping to solve those questions, is it?
If that is actually what is happening, as opposed to highlighting double standards in policing and seeking improvements, I’d condemn that.
Just as I’d condemn the hard left rabble who turned up to a vigil for the victim and shouted abuse at all and sundry.
You’re a very generous man to think Farage is being sincere.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
Yeah this is right. Starmer won’t fight Burnham.
It will be a one person contest like Brown in 2007.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
There was me thinking you’d be all in favour of finding as many loopholes and exemptions in the way of people doing their business as possible.
I passed no judgement on it, one way or the other. I'm just explaining why the council were motivated to shut it down.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
So either (a) try to make the countryside make money, bring in visitors who might just use local shops etc or (b) just block everything.
The council chose (b).
Councils often are bound by national policy to refuse things even if they personally don't have an issue with it. They do also set local planning policy of course, which is unlikely to be more permissive than national policy allows, and instead be as restrictive as possible. So it can be partly their fault and partly not depending on the issue.
Now in this case he had a lot of people coming and so it probably was against policy, which generally wants there to be a vibrant countryside economy but not too much actual activity, which would be seen as out of character, the roads not able to take it etc.
As to Dura's point about councillors losing election if they hadn't said no, that is partly why the government is taking away a lot of the power of planning committees (possibly even too much to be honest) - decisions are meant to be made taking account of national and local planning policy, but local politicians still openly make decisions on the basis of 'my residents don't like it', which in itself is not actually enough. They aren't purely democratic exercises and any councillor who says it is is a liar, or a planning officer's worst nightmare who will cost residents tens of thousands more in appeal costs.
It's also silly as residents do not reward you for standing against the local housing development or whatever, if it then gets approved on appeal and built anyway because it was fully compliant with policy. Councillors are meant to exercise discretion where policy allows for judgement calls (eg, does the benefit outweigh the harm? Is the impact reasonable? Is X in character with the area?)
For councillors - half they desire is to stop people calling them out on social media for not standing up against something the voter doesn't like.
One fix would be to simply have items be returned to committee a second time where the consequences of voting can be spelt out (one example round here had the vote changed when costs of £1m was mentioned)
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
If 81 wanted Streeting he would have pulled the trigger by now and laughed at the complaints that Saint Andy wasn't able to be nominated yet.
I'm not so sure about that. There is a little point Streeting winning the leadership before the King of the North has faced the voters in a by-election. If the King loses in Makerfield then that's the end of that. At that point Streeting makes his move.
Exclusive: Andy Burnham will not call an early election if he becomes PM
His spokesperson says he is ruling out a snap election
Only idiots thought that an early election would be on the cards.
I'm an idiot then. The calculation is not whether the party will want one (they don't) but whether fiscal events will trigger one.
The only fiscal event that could possibly trigger an early election, would be a hundred Labour MPs voting down the Budget!
Now it could be that the govt is cajoled into presenting a budget full of spending cuts to keep the bond markets happy, but I don’t think we’re quite at that point yet.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Do you not agree that when it comes to policing, the notion of white privilege still exists despite the error (and many other DEI errors that have been made over the last twenty five years) in the Henry Novak case? I think I am better off being an educated, white, heterosexual male when it comes to any interaction with the police.
The fact that despite Henry's father Peter Novak pleaded for politicians not to add the racial dimension to this tragedy, that is exactly what Farage has done. Unfortunately Philp has also jumped on that bandwagon which is unfortunate. I was listening to Liz Webster whose son Henry was similarly attacked by Asian students and she felt Farage's intervention was despicable.*
It is unfortunate that a number of PB posters are foursquare behind Farage's analysis of the racial element of this tragedy which was perpetrated by an evil criminal.
* My interpretation.
I have not followed what the politicians have said and am mistrustful of their motives for speaking up.
I don't accept a general concept of "white privilege" as justification for adopting a different sort of prejudice or set of assumptions.
What any good investigator has to do is not allow a preconceived assumption to determine their assessment of a situation. This is not easy. Not easy at all. But it is precisely what good training and professionalism - constantly reinforced - have to do.
I rather think that a lot of this has been overlooked or forgotten by the police. Remember what I wrote in 2019 on here following Operation Midland about the police automatically believing victims and how disastrous this is as an approach. Here you go.
Something like that I suspect is happening with the police approach to racism allegations.
The political aspect from Farage (and unfortunately, Philp) is essentially there is a white disadvantage when it comes to policing, which is wholly ludicrous. I don't dispute in this case a massive and tragic front line policing error was made on the word of a lying criminal, but does that necessarily represent DEI going mad?
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
If 81 wanted Streeting he would have pulled the trigger by now and laughed at the complaints that Saint Andy wasn't able to be nominated yet.
I don’t think he ever had the names. It’s obvious to me that the PLP has already united behind one candidate.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
Yeah this is right. Starmer won’t fight Burnham.
It will be a one person contest like Brown in 2007.
What a lovely porecedent that is...
Well Tories will be happy, it means Badenoch is set for Downing Street.
Personally I think Labour will win the next election.
I've only watched the first series of Clarkson's Farm (I thought it was pretty good), and I was reading this Independent piece on it which is really more a cataloging of Clarkson over the years, and whilst it was decent I thought the concluding line was a bit odd. Maybe I'm missing something, but even if Clarkson and Amazon are just making entertainment and don't really care about farming, how would the show damage farming in general? Unlike the example of Wrexham in football, I cannot imagine Clarkson's farm could disrupt the already fragile agricultural sector on its own.
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I'd also assume that whether or not Clarkson believes it or is putting it on, farmers know the value of a high profile celebrity bringing up the issues that matter to them a lot.
Exactly!
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
He didn't have planning permission and it attracted thousands of moronic Deanos who wanted to visit the Clarkson World theme park so I'm not surprised the council told him to fuck off. They would have been out on their arses at the next election if they hadn't.
So either (a) try to make the countryside make money, bring in visitors who might just use local shops etc or (b) just block everything.
The council chose (b).
They shouldn’t be allowed to block anything.
That's too strong for me, but a presumption of granting permission ought to be there.
A complete free for all would not be a good idea, but the balance needs to be reassessed. Governments have talked about it and obviously see the value of it, but pull back for the understandable reason that it will typically be unpopular to make it easier to build, well, anything.
The current government is tinkering around the edges, which is frustrating but may be the most realistic way to achieve any changes at all. One curiosity is the requirement for 'nominated officer/member' agreement on when schedule 2 applications can go to committee, and whether in practice officers will defer to the Member similar to common current approaches on 'call-in', or whether they will hold the line and say no, this should not go to committee.
Edit: And, just like that I see the government has today pushed back the implementation of its reforms on a national scheme of delegation. By a month at the moment, but look out for further delays.
The reason for the delay is bullshit by the way, council's generally have provisions to allow officers (in consultation with members or not) to make changes to reflect updates to the law. So it takes only the amount of time necessary to update procedure rules to reflect government requirements, which wouldn't be more than a couple of weeks since no need to go to Full Council etc.
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
If 81 wanted Streeting he would have pulled the trigger by now and laughed at the complaints that Saint Andy wasn't able to be nominated yet.
If he did that, he would tick off a huge chunk of the Labour Party.
He might lose anyway, due to that.
And if he won, Burnham would probably become an MP anyway. And would be ready to pounce if things went wrong.
Given the political instincts that he demonstrated in the leaked WhatsApp messages, I think he would be unlikely to take that route.
Re the police - and indeed other public services - what @Nigelb said in response to my comment on the previous thread goes to the heart of the issue.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
Exactly. In the rush to avoid being seen as racist the police have now been totally captured by a narrative that only whites can be the bad guy in a situation like this.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
Look at it this way. They are giving women a cast iron case for indirect discrimination claims, reporting to the HSE for breach of health & safety rules (a criminal offence) and possibly also a breach of the regulations in place since October 2024 to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of staff.
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
They are also facilitating criminal offences such as voyeurism and indecent exposure and in breach of their safeguarding obligations to students.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
I don’t have a daughter. I understand from friends with daughters that their daughters would call them transphobic if they talked like that. There is a strong generational divide here and the daughters generally do not seem to be in agreement with your position, Cyclefree.
Yes true, but only because they have been influenced by trans activists on social media. I have two daughters and they and their peers readily change their view when the full issues are explained to them in a unbiased and factual way.
It’s a good thing that those who are critical of trans rights have never been influenced by activists on social media.
Defending the rights of women is not being critical of trans rights.
Women and allies fighting back at the erosion of their hard won rights and the invasion of cross dressing men into their spaces is something to be applauded.
Especially when we have police forces up and down the country used by trans activists to harrass people who don’t agree with them. Something Viewcode equated with Maya Forstaters employment tribunal 🙄
Exactly what rights do these trans people not have that you or I do ?
Lucy Powell basically saying what all of us know: only Burnham has the numbers and therefore will be the only candidate that stands.
Don't you think Burnham is being presumptuous?
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57 Burnham next PM 1.60 Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026) Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Its simple. You need 81 names to challenge the leadership.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
Yeah this is right. Starmer won’t fight Burnham.
It will be a one person contest like Brown in 2007.
What a lovely porecedent that is...
Well Tories will be happy, it means Badenoch is set for Downing Street.
Personally I think Labour will win the next election.
Comments
Apparently a Police Inspector before becoming an MP.
EC currently reckons that Reform would get 245 seats on its 27% of the vote. Which is a fair enough appraisal about today. But there is a whole match to take place yet which can't start until so near the time that the non politically minded (most people) start being participants, and the mainstream MPs start perspiring contemplating their P45s.
The next GE, I suggest, will include hundreds of quasi by elections in which the voters will converge on two parties, one being Reform in most cases. Leaving aside the by election rumpus, Makerfield was a seat Reform were certain to win in 2029, being about 30th on the Reform target list. So, on normal reckoning Reform should win this by election with well over 50% of the vote.
Whereas it is touch and go and too close to call. And it's a seat Reform have to win without breaking sweat if they are to get anywhere.
Which is a harbinger of the next election. None of the polling today tells you anything much about the tactical contest almost every seat will be. But it is increasing looking as if the main bout on the bill will be Reform v Not Reform.
Certainly it has moved from Kenyon is a regular local guy with a normal job, and Labour are useless and Burnham wants to be PM, etc., to immigration, interference, immigration, foreigners.
"It ought not to be difficult to understand that training to deal with existing prejudices cannot mean replacing them with new ones."
It ought not to be. But I rather fear that that is exactly what has happened. Too many public services have adopted new prejudices and created conflicts of interest which impede the proper exercise of their functions.
1) The hard rite vote splits in two
2) The increasing vitriol repels decent voters which increases the Labour vote
Reform/Restore have the exact same problem previous LabCon politicians have had - not realising that not everyone thinks like them and the more they foam on and on the more determined people are to vote against them.
UK (GB), BMG poll:
EU membership referendum
Join/Remain: 52% (-6)
Stay out/Leave: 48% (+6)
+/- vs. 29-30 April 2026
Fieldwork: 26-28 May 2026
Sample size: 1,511
https://xcancel.com/Jonathan_Hinder
Many years ago I at Warwick I was returning from lunch across campus when I came across the research group of one of our academics walking grim faced in the other direction. I piped up with "cheer up, whose died?".
Reader - they had just been informed that their brilliant young academic supervisor had drowned while on honeymoon, and the rest of the department had not yet been told...
At least I don't think any of them registered what I had said. But fuck me I felt awful. Imagine if that was on tape somewhere? And now the nation gets to watch it.
That officer ("I don't think you have mate") will be tormented by that forever. It does nothing to excuse their actions, but I think police culture has led to this (the desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations). And at the end of the day nothing they could do would have helped. Henry Novak shouldn't have been handcuffed and disbelieved in the last few moments of his life. But what the police did or didn't do does not compare with the evil of his killer.
Such defending the minimum wage and working in g conditions from unscrupulous employers?
Which would fix other issues at the same time.
Its also why we have so many happy to comply with the latest DEI bullshit around 'gender' to the utter disregard of womens' rights.
Our Uni is planning on not following the recent government advice, it seems.
"On 21 May 2026, the EHRC Code of Practice following the Supreme Court's ruling defining sex within the Equalities Act (2010) was presented to Parliament. With this news, we want to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring dignity, safety and respect for all people on campus, including our trans, non-binary and intersex staff, students and visitors. As a University, we have zero tolerance for harassment, intimidation, or discrimination, including transphobia, in line with our Dignity and Respect Policy, and we will act where concerns are raised.
Parliament now has 40 days to consider the Code of Practice before a date is set for it to be enacted. The EHRC Code of Practice will automatically come into force if Parliament does not pass a resolution against it within 40 days. We will use this period to consider all of the implications of the Code for the University.
In the meantime, students and staff should continue to use the gendered spaces - including toilets and changing rooms - that align with their gender identity. No one should be questioned or challenged for doing so. If anyone does experience questioning, confrontation, or behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, this can be reported immediately through the Support and Report tool so that appropriate action will be taken.
In addition to gendered facilities, all gender toilets are available across campus. These can be located using the campus map, if you prefer to use them.
We believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to pursuing equity for LGBTQ+ people within the University community. Discussions are currently underway with Campus Infrastructure, Campus Services, and the Health and Safety Team to establish a clear, long term University policy for toilet provision across campus."
We don't know exactly what was going through the police officers' heads in this case. It is jumping to an assumption to conclude that a desire to avoid fecking up racism allegations was, or was not, part of that. The right response to the problem of people jumping to assumptions is not for everyone under the sun to immediately pile in and try to turn this tragic event into a political talking point.
With the accent of a well spoken educated bloke from the area.
Points up a Reform weakness. Just as in G+D the Online campaign narrative was very attractive to people who don't live locally and fired up their prejudices. Yet obvious errors from bots pretending to be local yet having seemingly no knowledge of the basic geography of the area.
If Reform want to win it needs to be immigration all day every day.
Jessica Elgot
@jessicaelgot
You cannot seriously think that Labour MPs would make Andy Burnham prime minister if they thought he was going to call a snap general election where hundreds would lose their seats even in the best case scenario. Truly bizarre.
https://x.com/jessicaelgot/status/2061754913449816554
This shuts down any internal disciplinary process (ha!), protects the pension and means that they have a clean employment record going forward.
In past times, such individuals would apply for jobs with other police forces. After all, no disciplinary issues against them, from their previous work… That route is supposed to have been stopped
This will provide lots of work for all my lawyer friends specialising in this area of the law.
- The rule that Acts should be compatible with the ECtHR
- The Climate Change Committee
- The EHRC
They add a layer of bureaucracy, they prevent Parliament executing its democratic will, and by placing placemen in important roles can subvert Parliament without democratic oversight.Ans while we're at it, let's abolish the SC outright and bring it back into the HoL. The Blair constitutional changes haven't worked and just created activist courts and overreach.
perhaps it is time for the farming community to ask whether Clarkson’s Farm is simply making hay while its celebrity frontman shines, or salting the earth for real, breadline agrarian businesses
https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/tv/features/jeremy-clarksons-farm-amazon-season-5-b2987153.html?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb
Get those questions answered, quickly, and we can move on.
I have enormous sympathy for the police. My dad did 30 years and I had no intention of ever following in his footsteps. And they will sometimes get it wrong. But if its fair to accuse the Met of being institutionally racist over MacPherson, then I think its fair to suggest that attempts to not be racist may have had a role here.
If Kenyon was kosher than maybe it would have worked. But now that he looks about as authentic as a 9 bob note its all gone wrong.
Even the immigration immigration immigration strategy has a problem. Burnham is running *against* the government, not for it. So if voters want change do they vote for the guy who would have the power to actually do it, or for a guy who won't?
Yes it’s entertainment, but the reaction from rural communities has been overwhelmingly positive for the show. Farmers really do struggle to balance their books without outside income, and whenever they try to innovate a bunch of jobsworths and professional protestors do their damned best to stop it.
I remember having to explain to a relative in 2019 that no, the Tories were not stealing the election because someone said a Tory Peer part owned software which was used by election officials, they knew of but had chosen to ignore the hundreds upon hundreds of counts attended by party observers, and chose to believe someone could just flick a switch to transfer hundreds of thousands of votes from Corbyn.
On Reform vs Restore I will eat one of my hats if Restore do more than barely hold their desposit, but the US alt-right will go nuts as they are convinced everyone in Britain besides liberal traitors loves Restore.
Farmers should all promise to convert entirely to solar farm production, people suddenly become very invested in preserving food production and locally owned farms when those get proposed.
Telling a woman faced with a man staring at her while she is changing that she must not query his presence or challenge him is to undermine the steps she needs to take to keep herself safe. It is grotesque advice. Utterly grotesque. It tells women - put up with fear, risk or crime - and don't you dare do anything to protect yourself because the feelings of the man making you feel at risk are more important.
I'd like to ask men here with daughters? Is that what you tell them? Is that what your advice is? And if it isn't why is it ok for a place which has a duty of care to them to give such advice?
But has it been established (for example) what information they were given by police dispatch before arriving on scene ?
I gather that the murdered kid's father has asked that his son's death not be politicised. That should be given a little more respect than Farage's pronouncements.
The people who work his farm on the show, actually work his farm. Yes he can get away with making a loss because TV show, so he’ll do something different with a field every year.
He can afford to be innovative by opening a restaurant full of local produce, at least until the local town boor turned up to the planning committee with a barrister to get it shut down.
Many farmers work at least part time outside to pay the bills, and rates of suicide are some of the highest of any job.
With fewer and fewer people now working in agriculture, it’s out of sight and out of mind for the vast majority of the population, who think that beef comes from a supermarket rather than from a cow.
The fact that despite Henry's father Peter Novak pleaded for politicians not to add the racial dimension to this tragedy, that is exactly what Farage has done. Unfortunately Philp has also jumped on that bandwagon which is unfortunate. I was listening to Liz Webster whose son Henry was similarly attacked by Asian students and she felt Farage's intervention was despicable.*
It is unfortunate that a number of PB posters are foursquare behind Farage's analysis of the racial element of this tragedy which was perpetrated by an evil criminal.
* My interpretation.
2 years would take us to 2028, and if Labour have recovered under Andy they might well go then, as going for the full five years is unusual. But with a massive majority at risk there's no reason to go very early even if there's an immediate Andy recovery.
Personal 'mandate'? A nonsense, which can be shrugged off, opposition will bleat about it without really meaning it, and Labour MPs will ignore it without really caring.
"If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."
Its a joke, but it portrays real situations.
Concerns over racism in the police arose not because of one event, not because of ten events, but because of thousands of events. This is one event that may suggest that sensitivity over racism caused a problem (but may not, let’s see what the IPCC report says). I don’t think the comparison remotely holds up.
If this was Reform vs Labour then that would be one thing. But Reform and Restore need to out goose step each other to secure votes. So they will get worse and worse and worse. This doesn't just damage them in this by-election, I think they are capable of doing damage which lasts far longer.
Combine that with a new Burnham government completely reframing the political narrative, and Reform could find themselves in real trouble.
He has to win the by election, then trigger a leadership election (with Starmer resisting I assume).
Things could change, for example another candidate emerging, perhaps it is thought that a women should have a chance?
I mean, he's strong favourite of course but I at these odds (bf)?:
Burnham next Lab leader 1.57
Burnham next PM 1.60
Starmer replaced month by next permanent leader 1.69 (July - Sept 2026)
Year Starmer replaced by next permanent leader 1.30 (2026)
I think all the odds above are too short.
Could some Latin lovers give me some help, please?
In the Style section of the May 5th New York Times, in "What We Love About the First 'Devil Wears Prada'", I found this sentence: I can guess what the Maya Phillips means, but I couldn't help trying to translate what she wrote. The best I could come up with something like this: Miranda gave Andy weight loss surgery, perhaps using ultrasound.
No doubt some of you can do better than that.
The police may have been misled and the murderer and his family clearly lied to them.
But what I don't understand is why the police - seeing an inert man on the ground, unable to move, repeatedly saying he's been stabbed and cannot breathe and offering no resistance and also seeing his alleged victim standing up and moving around - thought it was appropriate to drag the inert unresponsive man posing no risk across the ground and handcuff him.
That is just a failure of proper policing, possibly aggravated by an assumption. Whatever they were told they should have assessed what they could see in front of them which did not at all match with what they had been told.
I know its fiction but the TV show "Life on Mars" showed the the changes in policing by putting a 2000's copper into a 1970's police force. The Met needed to change.
I don't believe are suggesting that the police force is now racist against whites in a mirror of how the Met (and other forces) where against Blacks. That would be absurd. But the suggestion that trying to avoid being portrayed as racist has played a role here ought to be looked at (and I am sure is or will be).
Because if you get it wrong people might, and in this case did, die. So take no chances and make sure.
I think he’ll be PM by August.
But I will be dissappointed.
The council chose (b).
Therefore it would better if he shut up.
Film at 11
See the odds for Starmer's departure - I don't think July or August are possible given the Lab process, and Sept is only a very small possibility. I'm laying July - Sept.
I don't accept a general concept of "white privilege" as justification for adopting a different sort of prejudice or set of assumptions.
What any good investigator has to do is not allow a preconceived assumption to determine their assessment of a situation. This is not easy. Not easy at all. But it is precisely what good training and professionalism - constantly reinforced - have to do.
I rather think that a lot of this has been overlooked or forgotten by the police. Remember what I wrote in 2019 on here following Operation Midland about the police automatically believing victims and how disastrous this is as an approach. Here you go.
Something like that I suspect is happening with the police approach to racism allegations.
No sitting MP has 81 names. Burnham will have more than 81 names - likely a lot more.
Streeting cannot challenge without the names. So unless some MPs decide they really don't like Burnham or want a long drawn out challenge, then you're looking at Burnham having a Few Hundred names triggering a challenge in which there are no candidates other than him and Starmer.
And with more than half the PLP on the Burnham ticket, Starmer will see there no point fighting and will step down.
I’ve not suggested that angle shouldn’t be looked at. I was criticising the jumping to assume that that was the cause of the police officers’ actions.
It will be a one person contest like Brown in 2007.
https://labour.org.uk/annual-conference/
Just as I’d condemn the hard left rabble who turned up to a vigil for the victim and shouted abuse at all and sundry.
Now in this case he had a lot of people coming and so it probably was against policy, which generally wants there to be a vibrant countryside economy but not too much actual activity, which would be seen as out of character, the roads not able to take it etc.
As to Dura's point about councillors losing election if they hadn't said no, that is partly why the government is taking away a lot of the power of planning committees (possibly even too much to be honest) - decisions are meant to be made taking account of national and local planning policy, but local politicians still openly make decisions on the basis of 'my residents don't like it', which in itself is not actually enough. They aren't purely democratic exercises and any councillor who says it is is a liar, or a planning officer's worst nightmare who will cost residents tens of thousands more in appeal costs.
It's also silly as residents do not reward you for standing against the local housing development or whatever, if it then gets approved on appeal and built anyway because it was fully compliant with policy. Councillors are meant to exercise discretion where policy allows for judgement calls (eg, does the benefit outweigh the harm? Is the impact reasonable? Is X in character with the area?)
Women rely on men behaving decently and no men, whether trans or not, should go into a women only space and universities and others need to have procedures which reinforce that decency and so not put the onus of challenge on women or actively tell them not to. What this university is doing is telling women to put up with indecent behaviour and, far from reinforcing equality, it is putting the demands of a subset of men above all other considerations, including the law.
One fix would be to simply have items be returned to committee a second time where the consequences of voting can be spelt out (one example round here had the vote changed when costs of £1m was mentioned)
Now it could be that the govt is cajoled into presenting a budget full of spending cuts to keep the bond markets happy, but I don’t think we’re quite at that point yet.
Personally I think Labour will win the next election.
The current government is tinkering around the edges, which is frustrating but may be the most realistic way to achieve any changes at all. One curiosity is the requirement for 'nominated officer/member' agreement on when schedule 2 applications can go to committee, and whether in practice officers will defer to the Member similar to common current approaches on 'call-in', or whether they will hold the line and say no, this should not go to committee.
Edit: And, just like that I see the government has today pushed back the implementation of its reforms on a national scheme of delegation. By a month at the moment, but look out for further delays.
The reason for the delay is bullshit by the way, council's generally have provisions to allow officers (in consultation with members or not) to make changes to reflect updates to the law. So it takes only the amount of time necessary to update procedure rules to reflect government requirements, which wouldn't be more than a couple of weeks since no need to go to Full Council etc.
The policy was meant to be introduced on 30 September 2026, but during the consultation concerns were raised that this “did not allow sufficient time for local authorities to amend their constitutions and make the necessary administrative arrangements
https://www.housingtoday.co.uk/news/government-pushes-back-introduction-of-national-scheme-of-delegation/5142527.article
He might lose anyway, due to that.
And if he won, Burnham would probably become an MP anyway. And would be ready to pounce if things went wrong.
Given the political instincts that he demonstrated in the leaked WhatsApp messages, I think he would be unlikely to take that route.
Women and allies fighting back at the erosion of their hard won rights and the invasion of cross dressing men into their spaces is something to be applauded.
Especially when we have police forces up and down the country used by trans activists to harrass people who don’t agree with them. Something Viewcode equated with Maya Forstaters employment tribunal 🙄
Exactly what rights do these trans people not have that you or I do ?