Not The Politics Thread.

[Lionator]

8 minutes ago, Claridge said:

Exactly, but he seems to have messed that up somehow

The only thing he messed up was previously supporting the McDonald’s workers. £15 an hour, while fantastic just wouldn’t appeal to taxpayers as realistic, £10 an hour as a minimum wage makes sense and is the least people deserve. 

[Carl the Llama]

11 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Trans rights are an odd one because I don't really notice a left/right sort of view on the topic. I follow a prominent sociologist who is a self proclaimed radical feminist (which is a left wing position) who thinks trans females should be burnt at the stake. On the right I think the view is probably dichotomous (sex over gender).

 

But yeah not an argument Keir needs to get into.

 

The minimum wage stuff on the other hand, that matters.

Both matter.  Trans people are valid but the discourse keeps getting muddied by bad faith concerns.

[Claridge]

The fact labour has less than 200 mps shows what people think of labour, never mind how crap the tories may be. Getting involved in trans right etc… will do him more harm than good . Starmer just seems so far out of his depth for cut throat politics, might not be fair, but life isn’t 

[Sampson]

1 minute ago, Carl the Llama said:

Both matter.  Trans people are valid but the discourse keeps getting muddied by bad faith concerns.

Absolutely. Of course Trans rights matter and Starmer is 100% right to talk about it and come out in favour of trans rights.

Claridge's argument seems to either be "Northerners are transphobic" or this...
 

 

[Sampson]

24 minutes ago, Claridge said:

The fact labour has less than 200 mps shows what people think of labour, never mind how crap the tories may be. Getting involved in trans right etc… will do him more harm than good . Starmer just seems so far out of his depth for cut throat politics, might not be fair, but life isn’t 

It won't. More people agree with Starmer that trans women are women according to yougov polls than don't and that opinion has got to that point very quickly in only about 2 or 3 years, I reckon it will be almost universally accepted within 5-10 years, exactly how the quick shift of opinion in gay rights in the early 2010s went where gay marriage support swung from being a minority to about 80% of the country in favour within the space of about 4 years. 

It absolutely won't do him more harm than good. Again, this "red wall" "traditional Labour voter" meme I see people say goes against virtually all the polling data. London, Birmingham and Manchester are only getting bigger and bigger and a greater and greater percentage of the population, the population is only getting more and more urban and metropolitan, more and more university educated and white-collar and is only getting less and less white. "The middle class luvvie types" as you call them are fast on their way to becoming the voting majority and the white, blue-collar Northerner whose parents and grandparents were all born and bred in England working in factories and down the pits is becoming a dwindling minority of the population.

Edited 28 September 2021 by Sampson

[Carl the Llama]

10 minutes ago, Claridge said:

The fact labour has less than 200 mps shows what people think of labour, never mind how crap the tories may be. Getting involved in trans right etc… will do him more harm than good . Starmer just seems so far out of his depth for cut throat politics, might not be fair, but life isn’t 

I can only refer you back to my comment you initially quoted for my view of this phenomenon of labour bad. 

 

The trans issue is one we'll look back on years from now and wonder wtf society was thinking in the same way we do for racial segregation or same sex marriage.  I can't force you to embrace that future but it will happen whether you want it to or not.  Early support is politically savvy, quivering at trans rights is dinosaur behaviour.

[Strokes]

33 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

Both matter.  Trans people are valid but the discourse keeps getting muddied by bad faith concerns.

They are being used as a political football. Do I hope trans people get recognised normally and as individuals, yes. Am I concerned some of the suggestions could impact women’s rights, yes. 
It’s hard to know what’s best, usually I would just avoid the debate tbh.

[Dunge]

Most of the trans arguments I see are where absolute ideologies collide. The feminist example has already been given, where women’s rights start clashing with “what even is a woman, really?”, and clashes over things like sporting legitimacy and refuges; another similar one is homosexual rights, where some have made the argument for years that their sexuality is completely apart from their gender, but now recent trans rights discussions have muddied that. I think the biggest concern I have is of anyone feeling pressured to change gender due to ideology and then regretting it years down the line, and unlike some of the other similar examples this involves major surgery and physical trauma, let alone psychological.

 

But that’s also all the more reason to get it discussed properly and work out the right balances. It’s a situation where people need to sit down rationally, debate, discuss and appreciate conflicting viewpoints instead of clinging to ideological purity. Discuss when is best to start treatment, the earliest to have surgery, the amount of psychological support needed before a decision is made, how trans, homosexuality and feminism are balanced out in PSE classes at schools (or whatever they’re called these days). Granted it’s unlikely to be the Tories sorting that out unless society gets a long way down the line because Tory voters mostly don’t care much beyond retaining the ability to mock. But it is a legitimate thing for Labour to discuss, and I think it’s vital for the cause that it gets discussed calmly and rationally.

 

I do agree that there will likely be a day not too far from now when trans becomes normalised in the way Carl describes. Although it’s also entirely possible that society could turn back to religion or swing back to the right again after that. After all, every generation seeks to distance itself from its predecessor - particularly once that predecessor claims the high ground and starts making the rules.

[Scotch]

The minimum wage thing for me is an issue. 

 

IMO, it doesn't really make a difference how high you put up the MW if the cost of living goes up with it. It makes no differance th the average worker if they are being paid £8.50 an hour and spending £80 on their weekly shop or £10 an hour and spending £100 for the same shop. All its achieving is driving jobs away from the country with multi national business' going elsewhere to countries that pay their employees less. 

 

Having a lower MW with a cost of living that fits with it (although I conceded is unrealistic) would actually give us a fair chance of keeping industry here. 

 

When I was young, the town I lived in was utterly crawling with factories. It was nigh on impossible NOT to have a job but as the MW crept up, the went to places like Croatia and Eastern Europe where the quality of work was far lower but they paid far less. 

[leicsmac]

3 hours ago, Sampson said:

It won't. More people agree with Starmer that trans women are women according to yougov polls than don't and that opinion has got to that point very quickly in only about 2 or 3 years, I reckon it will be almost universally accepted within 5-10 years, exactly how the quick shift of opinion in gay rights in the early 2010s went where gay marriage support swung from being a minority to about 80% of the country in favour within the space of about 4 years. 

It absolutely won't do him more harm than good. Again, this "red wall" "traditional Labour voter" meme I see people say goes against virtually all the polling data. London, Birmingham and Manchester are only getting bigger and bigger and a greater and greater percentage of the population, the population is only getting more and more urban and metropolitan, more and more university educated and white-collar and is only getting less and less white. "The middle class luvvie types" as you call them are fast on their way to becoming the voting majority and the white, blue-collar Northerner whose parents and grandparents were all born and bred in England working in factories and down the pits is becoming a dwindling minority of the population.

 

3 hours ago, Carl the Llama said:

I can only refer you back to my comment you initially quoted for my view of this phenomenon of labour bad. 

 

The trans issue is one we'll look back on years from now and wonder wtf society was thinking in the same way we do for racial segregation or same sex marriage.  I can't force you to embrace that future but it will happen whether you want it to or not.  Early support is politically savvy, quivering at trans rights is dinosaur behaviour.

Spot on.

 

As much as folks like to say "it's the economy, stupid" and prioritise economic issues over social ones (and sometimes they're right), this social issue does matter. Anti-trans prejudice is one of the few prejudices that if not deemed outright acceptable, is just shrugged at by many in the UK. That needs to be targetted, and changed.

[Claridge]

7 hours ago, Carl the Llama said:

I can only refer you back to my comment you initially quoted for my view of this phenomenon of labour bad. 

 

The trans issue is one we'll look back on years from now and wonder wtf society was thinking in the same way we do for racial segregation or same sex marriage.  I can't force you to embrace that future but it will happen whether you want it to or not.  Early support is politically savvy, quivering at trans rights is dinosaur behaviour.

Nothing to do with what I want, I was making the point that it doesn’t help Labour. You seem to confuse what I’m saying with what you want to be true. Of course trans people or any other group should have rights, but the reality is that it is not an issue that will gain labour votes and could easily lose them.Labour are terrible at winning elections because they never seem to understand the issues people are really interested in

[foxes1988]

8 hours ago, Claridge said:

The fact labour has less than 200 mps shows what people think of labour, never mind how crap the tories may be. Getting involved in trans right etc… will do him more harm than good . Starmer just seems so far out of his depth for cut throat politics, might not be fair, but life isn’t 

I would argue the SNP is probably the biggest reason that Labour struggle to get elected now.

 

Conservatives just squeezed into office and stayed there when Cameron won his majoritiy because 2008 WORLDWIDE financial crisis bad = Labour bad. Then doubled down on brexit and and Labour never seemed willing to back brexit.  So conservatives managed to sweep the board.

 

Maybe I'm niave but as others have suggested I'm not convinced the switch to more being Conservative as you get older will be as strong or profound as it normally is.  I think we might need the Conservatives to shift their position more then Labour might need to in the next 10 years especially as the baby boomers stop being such a big voting block.

[leicsmac]

54 minutes ago, Claridge said:

Nothing to do with what I want, I was making the point that it doesn’t help Labour. You seem to confuse what I’m saying with what you want to be true. Of course trans people or any other group should have rights, but the reality is that it is not an issue that will gain labour votes and could easily lose them.Labour are terrible at winning elections because they never seem to understand the issues people are really interested in

Beg pardon, but these two statements seem to be contradictory.

[StanSP]

I think we have a wum on our hands. 

[Adrian]

10 hours ago, Sampson said:

Why did you make it so difficult for yourself or others to leave the country then for a warmer climate then? If Brexit hadn't gone through you could move to the Canary Islands or Malta or the Algave or Crete or Cyprus tomorrow without a visa or without needing to find someone who'd sponsor you for a job.

And why did you want to rob other Britons of the opportunity to move to warmer countries then, even if you are one of the lucky few who is able to get a work visa or green card abroad?

Just feels a bit like pulling up the ladder from the treehouse because you don't want to share it.

Because after 40 odd years I oppose  EU rule and believe more UK sovereignty is the right choice now...time for a change.

 

As we are seeing leaving the EU will have an impact but let's not exaggerate them to score points and gain likes...life hasn't and won't change that much...there's other treehouses to climb 

[bovril]

6 minutes ago, Adrian said:

Because after 40 odd years I oppose  EU rule and believe more UK sovereignty is the right choice now...time for a change.

 

As we are seeing leaving the EU will have an impact but let's not exaggerate them to score points and gain likes...life hasn't and won't change that much...there's other treehouses to climb 

It's one of the Brexit paradoxes that we have been under EU rule for 40 years yet breaking free apparently isn't going to change people's lives very much. 

[Adrian]

Ok ok..I'm wrong you are right...🙄

[Sampson]

24 minutes ago, Adrian said:

Because after 40 odd years I oppose  EU rule and believe more UK sovereignty is the right choice now...time for a change.

 

As we are seeing leaving the EU will have an impact but let's not exaggerate them to score points and gain likes...life hasn't and won't change that much...there's other treehouses to climb 

I wasn't exaggerating that. You literally have voted away people's rights to move away to a warm country where most people don't have the ability to get visas in other countries as their career isn't specialist enough. Even if you are lucky enough to do so.

 

Where are these other treehouses I.e. warm countries which will give us freedom of movement coming from? I don't see any queuing up.

[foxes1988]

8 minutes ago, bovril said:

It's one of the Brexit paradoxes that we have been under EU rule for 40 years yet breaking free apparently isn't going to change people's lives very much. 

Was literally just about to say something of this manner although probably not quite in the same view as yourself.

 

I never particularly saw Brexit as the big issue its been made out to be.  'Biggest decision we'll make in our lifetime'.  It wasn't even the biggest decision of the last decade.  I'd argue Scottish IndyRef was easily a much bigger decision in almost every respect and climate change is infinitely more major

 

Seemed to me the remainers claimed it would be some massive disaster which while it was always going to cause disruption obviously it wasn't going to be economic colapse or anything like that and brexiters seemed so obsessed with sovereignty yet for the majority of the EU is just about bleeding fishing and agriculture and development funds.  The only argument I really could at least understand was that if you didn't like immigration voting to exit would limit this to a degree. (Although IMO with our demographics and our need for younger skilled workers we are going to need mass immigration here for a number years still anyway). 

 

Yes economically we will be worse off with some less rights and yes now we can apply a few more rules and laws ourselves then before but personally i just feel a bit meh to the whole thing now.  I voted to remain and would do it again but i just think get on with brexit and move on as there's much more pressing matters to attend to.

[bovril]

44 minutes ago, foxes1988 said:

Was literally just about to say something of this manner although probably not quite in the same view as yourself.

 

I never particularly saw Brexit as the big issue its been made out to be.  'Biggest decision we'll make in our lifetime'.  It wasn't even the biggest decision of the last decade.  I'd argue Scottish IndyRef was easily a much bigger decision in almost every respect and climate change is infinitely more major

 

Seemed to me the remainers claimed it would be some massive disaster which while it was always going to cause disruption obviously it wasn't going to be economic colapse or anything like that and brexiters seemed so obsessed with sovereignty yet for the majority of the EU is just about bleeding fishing and agriculture and development funds.  The only argument I really could at least understand was that if you didn't like immigration voting to exit would limit this to a degree. (Although IMO with our demographics and our need for younger skilled workers we are going to need mass immigration here for a number years still anyway). 

 

Yes economically we will be worse off with some less rights and yes now we can apply a few more rules and laws ourselves then before but personally i just feel a bit meh to the whole thing now.  I voted to remain and would do it again but i just think get on with brexit and move on as there's much more pressing matters to attend to.

Much of the 'debate' has had little to do with the EU, for sure. And the fact it's turned into some stupid culture war is probably remainers fault as much as brexiters.

 

Most other countries I've been to people are more like 'the EU can be a bit of a pain but why would you want to make trade and emigration harder for yourself?'. 

[Finnegan]

19 minutes ago, bovril said:

Much of the 'debate' has had little to do with the EU, for sure. And the fact it's turned into some stupid culture war is probably remainers fault as much as brexiters.

 

Brexit is just our Trump, by and large. 

 

It's a focal point for the global, partisan, over simplified Left/Right mud throwing match that popular politics has descended in to. 

 

[leicsmac]

3 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

Brexit is just our Trump, by and large. 

 

It's a focal point for the global, partisan, over simplified Left/Right mud throwing match that popular politics has descended in to. 

 

One can only hope it doesn't turn out to be as damaging.

[Finnegan]

1 minute ago, leicsmac said:

One can only hope it doesn't turn out to be as damaging.

 

I mean, in the context I mean it, it probably only isn't because as Brits we're not quite as melodramatic and hysterical as the Americans in general. 

 

We do apathy like few others in the world. 

 

But it's still clearly had an impact and left scars socially. 

[Strokes]

6 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

Brexit is just our Trump, by and large. 

 

It's a focal point for the global, partisan, over simplified Left/Right mud throwing match that popular politics has descended in to. 

 

It’s stupid because the argument for leaving the EU would have been far stronger from the left. FOM makes the poorest poorer, it’s a capitalists wet dream on paper. I do wish the debate had not swung into tribalism because the fallout would not have been anywhere near what it was.

[bovril]

6 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

One can only hope it doesn't turn out to be as damaging.

It'll have longer lasting consequences, I think. The trajectory of the UK and EU has changed dramatically because of it.

 

1 minute ago, Strokes said:

It’s stupid because the argument for leaving the EU would have been far stronger from the left. FOM makes the poorest poorer, it’s a capitalists wet dream on paper. I do wish the debate had not swung into tribalism because the fallout would not have been anywhere near what it was.

There is some left-wing Euroscepticism on the continent, but not loads. Very few European leftists want to leave the EU. If FoM is such a capitalists' wet dream you'd think there'd be more, especially as democratic socialism is arguably stronger on the continent than here.