Politics Today

[arthur]

Sturgeon's poll ratings have fallen off a cliff (according to the latest ones) as a result of all this. So it's not all bad. Ironically, it's Labour (whose leader can't say what a woman is) that have been picking up the slack up there.

From the Sunday Times:
"SNP insiders are painfully aware of the damage the controversy over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill — which has been blocked by the UK government in a move Sturgeon plans to challenge in the courts — may do. “Gender recognition is losing us intelligent Scotland,” one senior SNP figure said. “And it could lose us popular Scotland too.”

Referring to the first minister’s “meltdown”, another sympathetic SNP source noted that Sturgeon is “obviously worried and anxious. Voters can’t understand why we are so wedded to this.”

It seems that Sturgeon is doing the politics of reason a huge favour. I think her time is up - the nationalist cause is being severely damaged damaged and they won't put up with this shambles much longer. Jim Sillars for one, a good Scottish socialist iirc:

It may infuriate Nicola Sturgeon, but it seems that JK Rowling’s political judgment is superior: the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill will be Sturgeon’s poll tax. Sturgeon is not in control of this. She allied herself with zealots, ignored public anxieties, denied biology, produced a bill that most can see is deeply flawed, rejected sensible amendments such as barring sex offenders from self-identification, and cannot hide from the people that predatory males, if the bill becomes law, can manipulate it to invade women’s safe spaces. The recent rapist case will not be the only one that will haunt her.

This should be a golden time for the independence movement to raise support to new levels. The main plank of the unionist case from 2014, that Scotland needs to shelter under the big, economically powerful United Kingdom, has been trashed by reality. Even in the high Tory paper, The Daily Telegraph, a recent headline pointed to the UK as a poor country pretending to be rich. Last Wednesday, in the same paper, Philip Johnston wrote: “I look at my two grandsons and wonder how on earth the current levels of welfare and healthcare spending can be sustained until they are my age.”

 

[arthur]

This ill thought out policy could be a defining moment in all this, Labour of course at the moment will keep stum but the closer a GE gets if this becomes a hot potato then they'll have to say where they stand. For me it's not a political issue (As such) It's an issue of fact.

Exactly. "Trans women are women" is not a fact, it's a belief. Yet an extraordinary number of people treat it as a fact, despite there having been absolutely no process to determine that it is. We are all Prince Harry or Donald Trump now it seems: "My memory is my memory...and there's just as much truth in what I remember....as there is in so called objective facts". How on earth has this way of thinking become mainstream?

 

[DB9]

Exactly. "Trans women are women" is not a fact, it's a belief. Yet an extraordinary number of people treat it as a fact, despite there having been absolutely no process to determine that it is. We are all Prince Harry or Donald Trump now it seems: "My memory is my memory...and there's just as much truth in what I remember....as there is in so called objective facts". How on earth has this way of thinking become mainstream?

It has been a slow process to say a Trans woman is a woman in the last 5 to 10 years, Cases in point, Eddie Izzard in NOT a woman, Sam Smith is NOT "they" My main concern is that vulnerable kids and young adults will be manipulated into thinking this is a reason for their problems and undergo non reversible medical procedures which will do untold damage. If you want to dress up in the opposite sex that's your right but don't try and say to me you're not the gender you were born with, Putting on a dress and lippy does NOT make you a woman. I'm sorry if this offends anyone but that is my view based on scientific and biological fact.

 

[tavyred]

BTW I think your term Remainer rump is in danger of becoming seriously out of date, given that the country as a whole is fast concluding that Brexit is a mistake. Brexiter Rump is a more accurate label - the fact that this tendency still constitutes a majority in the incredible shrinking Tory party doesn't make it any less of a rump when it comes to the country as a whole.

Post the next GE may very well be a completely different political landscape Art, but I’m not willing quite yet to give up on the Tory party’s Brexit credentials and lest we forget neither of the major parties is confident enough yet to follow the change you say and the polls are saying has happened with public opinion on Brexit.
The political class are desperate to align ourselves closely to the EU again even if they’re being a bit cagey about it at this stage.

 

[Mr Jinx]

I'm sorry if this offends anyone but that is my view based on scientific and biological fact.

No need to apologise as it's probably the same view of 95%+ of the general populace.

 

[DB9]

No need to apologise as it's probably the same view of 95%+ of the general populace.

I believe the figure is north of 95%+, The noisy minority on SM and within the media try to convince us otherwise.

 

[angelic upstart]

If I believe in it generally, I suppose that would extend globally. Case in point, see where China's GDP per capita has gone the past thirty years. In fact, Globalisation is probably the most visible proof of trickle down. China have been busy dining out on the West as a lot of countries have shifted their manufacturing bases there.

View attachment 10939

Sorry I wasn't very clear in my post. I meant, that the UK import more than they export, so in my view, that's where the money goes. So whilst it trickles down, it doesn't trickle to the UK. Which makes it a non starter from my perspective.

 

[arthur]

The sooner this corrupt and shameless shower is out of office the better

This May, millions of people will be asked to bring photo ID to the polling station for the first time. We’ve raised concerns that the list of ID options published by the government gives few options for younger voters, but it’s poorer voters of all ages who will suffer. Many of the non-passport forms of ID the government has decided to accept require a passport to apply for.

The following can all be used to collect a parcel, but not to vote: Trade union cards, digital ID such a Post Office EasyID or Yoti, birth certificates, building society book, cheque books, cheque guarantee cards, council tax payment books, credit cards, credit card statement, debit cards, marriage certificates, police warrant card, national savings bank book, paid utility bill, Standard Acknowledgment Letter (SAL) issued by the Home Office for asylum seekers.

All the ways the government decided not to make their voter ID rules fairer

This May, millions of people will be asked to bring photo ID to the polling station for the first time. We’ve raised concerns that the list of ID options published by the government gi

www.electoral-reform.org.uk

 

[Phil Sayers]

I appreciate that the government is skint and so is most everyone else following three major economic shocks in quick succession (the first being an entirely self-inflicted own goal, the second being completely unforeseeable but with better procurement potentially not quite as severe and the third we do not really have a choice but to continue spending loads of cash on because if we do not the ultimate cost will be far, far higher) but this is a completely unacceptable state of affairs. The government has many Billions set aside to spend on urgent, contingency situations and if this does not meet that definition I struggle to think what would:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1622362194007543809

IMO they should immediately transfer £10 Billion or more to the MOD as a one-off payment to deal with such things as replenishing stockpiles run down through decades of ill-advised defence cuts (not that there shouldn't have been a significant reduction following the end of the Cold War but it was taken way too far). After the one-off payment a sustained increase is then needed on an ongoing basis - that would not just be govt expenditure if looked at in the round because although it would be a massive up-front cost the govt would ultimately get a lot of it back one way or another.

 

[arthur]

Is there anyone out there who believes that Sunak possesses the political backbone to withdraw the U.K. from the ECHR as is being reported?
Nah.

Enough of the willy waving: Playbook has seen texts exchanged in the “Home Group” of Tory MPs in response to the story over the weekend. Replying to a message from Jonathan Gullis, who had shared it approvingly, Doyle-Price said that “willy waving about leaving the ECHR will do zilch” and declared: “I have been a member of the Conservative Party for 36 years. This group leaves me cold. Upholding the law should never be a matter for debate for a Conservative. Our Home Office is crap. If the government wants to have a phone[y] war over the ECHR instead of sorting itself out it can do it without me.”

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